Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

If male chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat, female chauvinist pigs of today are doing them one better, making sex objects of other women -and of themselves. With a wink and a nudge, they are welcoming back strippers, porn stars and Playboy Bunnies as the heroes of post-feminist culture. Taking off your bra used to mean liberation - now it's just the sign of another girl gone wild in her attempt to win favour from the boys. In "Female Chauvinist Pigs" journalist Ariel Levy asks the question: What's in it for us women? In her quest for the answer, Levy interviews the college women who flash for the cameras on MTV and teenage girls raised on Paris Hilton and thongs. She talks to the high-powered women who create 'raunch culture', the new oinking women warriors of the corporate and entertainment worlds. And she sits down with Second Wave feminists, such as Susan Brownmiller and Erica Jong, to find out where they think women are headed today. As she explores the phenomenon of the Female Chauvinist Pig, Levy explains that these new women believe they are expressing sexual liberation and female empowerment, when really they are only conforming to stereotypes cooked long ago. Terrifically witty and wickedly intelligent, "Female Chauvinist Pigs" stands firmly in the tradition of Susan Faludi's "Backlash" and Naomi Wolf's "The Beauty Myth". It is the first book of its kind to emerge in more than a dozen years - and it's not a moment too soon.…