Female Chauvinist Pigs

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, by Ariel Levy

I first became aware of this book when the author was a guest on the Colbert Report and I immediately felt a sense of recognition. I realized that she was touching on something that I have felt for some time, and no doubt many others have felt as well. Levy, a writer for New York Magazine, explores how raunch culture have gone mainstream and questions whether the new model of the "empowered" woman is really what feminists fought for. She argues that far from being liberating and pleasurable, the new culture is actually forcing a kind of narrow conformity. She shows how many women themselves have bought into the objectification of women, feeling they need to embrace the sleaze culture, or appear to be repressed or prudish. Levy thinks there is another way, and I wholeheartedly agree.