Li-berry Run!

It's usually much more difficult to write good reviews than bad, but I cannot keep myself from talking about the book "Female Chauvinist Pigs" by Ariel Levy.

It's taken me an appalingly long time to get around to reading this book, but it is worth interrupting your current read to breeze through this thoroughly researched and provocative dissection of raunch culture. I'm not going to bore you with summary, save the fact that her thesis ties the commodification of sexuality to our increasingly capitalist society so well that I'm jealous. I shall try a slightly different direction, one that seems to be an undercurrent running through the book: the theory/practice of "reclaiming."

Although the ever-present "them" loom over the idea of selling porno-style sex to women in a way vaguely reminescent of "The Beauty Myth" by Naomi Wolf, one cannot discount the role women/feminists have played along under the name of "reclamation." There is a large amount of corporate group-think telling us what is sexy, but the fact that women are embracing this very image in order to throw it back into the face of everyone in their way merely adds to the confusion.

Levy touches upon this point, particularly in her study of different themes in the lesbian community, but does not follow it further. Women sport the Playboy bunny and Mud-flap Girl in order to show everyone that they're in on the joke-- feminism is not cool, why can't we just have sex like men?-- but in doing so, they're perpetuating the iconography. Reclamation should be about redefinition-- and acting like a porn star to show how nobody really acts like a porn star is not giving the imagery a new referent. It's beyond post-feminism, which is a shame, since we shouldn't really be beyond feminism in the first place.

Granted, I was not there, and am still researching the subject, but it seems that the concurrent timing of the feminist movement with the "sexual revolution" has clouded both issues. Feminism is removing the historically and culturally defined barriers between men and women-- once you stop assuming things as intrinsically male and female, the freedom to develop one's own sexuality will follow. The sexual revolution was a backlash against our Puritan fear of sex: a way to incorporate it into our daily lives, not as something to be rubbed in our faces, but as a healthy part of adulthood. Since everything exploded at once, the two missions intertwined, and now it is assumed that (not to beat a dead horse) "Sex and the City" is the picture of female empowerment. Women are finally free to shag and shop!

It is this reclamation of mass-produced sexuality that undermines feminism. Feminists (feminazis) are humorless-- they go to rallies and distribute flyers; they're the ones forcing us to sit through sexual harassment training; they're the ones who hate lesbians. But the rest of us, we're cool. We wear short skirts. We hate women. We're just one of the guys, sitting in the bar, smoking cigars and belching until we feel horny and make out with you in the bathroom. We can go to law school just like you. There is no glass ceiling-- we've already broken through it and any little chick who whines about it probably just needs to get laid. Off to the strip club!

Since a lot of men don't necessarily respond to the porno-star act, contrary to what we're all told, they're sure to like this non-feminist girl. She's just like them, but with T&A. It's the step beyond just going to a strip club with the guys, because they can take her to the strip club, then actually have sex with her afterwords. For once, someone can have their cake and eat it too.

But this still does not empower women. Embracing porn culture, reclaiming the sexiness of big boobs and bleached hair, is still just merely a show played for both men and women. It's the never-ending game of how many guys can you get, with extra credit points for pissing off other women-- the feminists get mad and the other trash girls are green with envy. Time to jump in the Jell-o pool to fight it out.