Book Review: Female Chauvinist Pigs (Ariel Levy)

Sex sells, and the vast majority of female celebrities (the charming young generation who can't take a few cents out of their extensive paychecks to buy some undies) know; they follow this unwritten creed of the adverstising and beauty industry as a mantra. In a culture where females as young as ten twirl a stripper pole as a baton of empowerment, how thin is the line between women’s liberation and carefully-disguised exploitation? Ariel Levy explores this and other issues in her first book, Female Chauvinist Pigs. In Levy’s study to determine whether porn stars, strippers, and swingers really are unshackled from the binds of culture, or just creating a new, equally limiting, culture, she examines everything from lesbian sex parties to ‘Girls Gone Wild’ casting ploys. In her interviews with everyone from self-proclaimed liberated ‘bois’ to Christie Hefner herself, Levy quickly uncovers the destructive irony hidden in raunch culture, where women aren’t pushed around by men anymore, they’re pushing each other themselves. Female Chauvinist Pigs is as darkly humorous as it is terrifying, an essential read for any female (or any man) who dares to call herself empowered in this sex-saturated world.