In the summer of 2005, I wandered aimlessly through a random book store, unsure of what I was looking for. Sadly enough, I think it was my boyfriend who really wanted to find a book; I was just along for the ride. Suddenly, a hot pink number caught my eye….I pulled it out to reveal the title “Female Chauvinist Pigs.”
I had already read countless examinations and summaries on the state of feminism in previous years and the experience of fighting oppression for the earliest feminists. And while it inspired passion and enthusiasm within me, I was never really sure where we stood now or how it mattered anymore. What did feminism really mean for me besides a history lesson in how far we’ve come? I didn’t feel incredibly liberated in my own life. Was I crazy?
But that book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, by Ariel Levy changed my life. In addition to putting into words all of my own frustrations that I had not yet understood well enough to articulate, it taught me how to analyze the world around me and find the truth about the current progress of women. It acknowledged all the work that had been done and how we rebelled against it in many ways oppressing ourselves all over again by a new set of terms. It revealed to me just how much work was left to do.
Levy interviews a variety of people in her book, but the most important segments were those with teenagers. If you want an idea of where the women’s movement might head in the years to come, ask those who are expected to lead it. You will be frightened. Most girls laid out in detail their obsession with the need for acceptance and how easy it was to use sex as a tool to gain it. Specifically, they needed the attention of their male peers – and all they had to do to gain it was act as if they were down for sex any time and in any way.
In contrast, Levy noted the mentalities of teenage boys were slightly less focused on dating and sex. While they certainly held true to the “horn-dog” stereotype of a teenage boy, what they were really interested in talking about were their hobbies, interests, and their plans for college and careers.
One of the women Levy interviews in her book explains that sex, for her, was about quantity over quality. It’s a popular way of thinking among many women today – defining feminism as becoming like a man, which always seems to equate to having a lot of sex just for the sake of having sex. But Anne admits, “Sometimes having this kind of sex, this shopping kind of sex, is based in insecurities for me….am-I-attractive insecurities.” Levy adds, “Sometimes, what she really wants isn’t sex but proof that she is as desirable, as sexual, as female as the Barbie dolls she played with as a child or the porn stars she enjoyed as an adult.”
This same need is voiced over and over again throughout Levy’s book – this need for validation, for others, men specifically, to desire them in order for them to find their own self-worth. It was expressed by teenagers and younger adults equally. It wasn’t just about being desired, it was about being more desired than anyone else or at least being equally desired as everyone else. Being “not sexy” by a man’s definition or by the general public’s definition seemed to be the plaque of humanity for these women – these women who were a fair representation of most women. They were all different ages, different economic classes, with different backgrounds. The only common factor being that they were female.
I recently noticed another example of this need to be desired in the documentary When Porn Ends. The documentary includes interviews of porn stars explaining how and why they got into the porn industry, how they got out, and what they did afterwards. While there seemed to be three routes for the former sex stars – a reformed survivor now activist against the porn industry, a quiet normal person who felt the experience was overall good with no major regrets, and the in-betweens who felt slightly traumatized by their experiences but were carrying on with life the best they could – there were several things that applied to all of them; One of them being that they all agreed – once you’ve worked in the porn industry you can never go back. People will always eventually figure out who you are no matter where you go and this will limit you in some ways. They all expressed a certain amount of pain, varying in degree per individual, in trying to live happy, normal lives with families, but finding that their children were sometimes persecuted for the tainted reputation of their parents. The other thing most of them had in common was their motivation for doing porn in the first place. While money was certainly a factor, they all admitted the attention and admiration from fans was much more meaningful to them than any of the money they earned. They all shared childhood stories of abuse and/or feeling like outcasts, longing to be desired. Porn provided them with the acceptance and desire they had always craved.
The opinion of porn stars seems to be an important one in today’s culture among youth and adults alike. Women have stepped up to the plate to take equal interest as their male counterparts in the world of porn, stripping, and sex as a product to be used for entertainment – sex as something that can be purchased. Levy outlines this growing interest in strippers and porn stars as liberated role models to great lengths in her book. It is no wonder considering that need to be desired by others that was expressed by teens and young adults was the same need that porn stars claim to have filled through their work in the adult industry.
She explains: “If we were to acknowledge that sexuality is personal and unique, it would become unwieldy. Making sexiness into something simple, quantifiable makes it easier to explain and to market. If you remove the human factor from sex and make it about stuff [....] then you can sell it.” But Levy adds, “You can’t bottle attraction.”
It seems that the problem lies within our inability to talk to teens about sex and lead them in finding their own definition of individual sexuality. I suppose if there seems to be just as many confused adults; it doesn’t seem likely that we could accomplish such a thing. And the monster of mass media is working against us every step of the way – presenting sex as a marketable product, which people mistake for the whole truth rather than the small slice of a limited representation that it is. We have lost our ability to dissect and analyze these messages and use them as a mere tool in developing our own opinions. Levy explains, “I like wearing green, because it suits my skin tone and my self-image. Likewise, certain themes have run through my sexual fantasies since I was very young, just as they now run through my bed. Nobody has to teach me how to want these things, or how to get them.” But that ability to reach our own individual conclusion seems to have escaped most of us. Perhaps it is that lingering need for approval from others, the need to be desired, that causes us to buy into the boxed sexuality mass media is selling with the hopes that it represents what the majority wants. If we follow along blindly and without question, maybe the majority will want us.
The beginning chapters of the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (ironically enough, when I googled her to make sure I was spelling her last name correctly, Betty Crocker was the first name to pop up) provide a nauseating recap of the rise and fall of feminism. Women dreamed of equality, fought for the vote and right to receive an equal education and career opportunities….and they willingly seemed to give it all up to return home to the “real work.” Friedan gives countless examples of how the magazines of the 50’s and 60’s pushed women to believe the best place for them was at home. The most important work a woman could ever dream to do was care for her husband and children. The lists of headlines given as example for this time of oppression were hauntingly similar to the overview of Cosmopolitan I wrote just a few weeks ago. Only now the focus has shifted from marriage to sex.
Publications for young women are no longer urging them to settle down and get married and make babies, they’re just encouraging them to go out and date and enjoy sex. But the importance placed on sex and the chasing of men is equal to the importance that was once placed on marriage and child-bearing. While the mass media once told women their only hope of finding meaning and self-worth was found in undying devotion to being a house-wife, we now seem to be telling women their only concern and hope for finding validation lies in an endless stream of men’s beds. As if devoting yourself to casual sex with men and the constant pursuit of every new opportunity to do so is such a vast improvement from spending that same energy on finding your place in the home. Just as Friedan noted the trend of women taking pride in the title of “housewife,” women today are trying to take pride in titles like “slut,” “sex kitten,” and “whore.” As if the task of fighting against these terms was so daunting, it is much easier to try to wear the crown proudly. If you can’t beat them, join them. We call it liberation.
In the conclusion of Levy’s book, she explains her own views on our newfound liberation, “We have to ask ourselves why we are so focused on silent girly-girls in G-strings faking lust. This is not a sign of progress; it’s a testament to what’s still missing from our understanding of human sexuality with all of its complexity and power. We are still so uneasy with the vicissitudes of sex we need to surround ourselves with caricatures of female hotness to safely conjure up the concept ‘sexy’.” Levy adds that she recognizes and accepts the fact that there are some women who are legitimately attracted to and sexually defined by that plastic porn star sort of representation of sex, and she wishes them all the happiness in the world, but says it is also pretty pathetic that we have limited ourselves to that one and only definition, which many women and men do not identify with at all.
Being a female is a complex thing. Scientists have proven that the chemical make-up of a woman is much more complex than that of a man’s. We’re much less predictable, feeding into the misguided deception that we are irrational and too emotional. It appears to me that instead of encouraging women to be more introspective and decipher their inner workings, defining for themselves what being a woman is and what sexuality means to them, they are repeatedly throughout history turning to others for answers….turning to men for answers. No doubt it is the feeling of “irrationality” that is drilled into us from birth that makes us question our own decisions and opinions.
What is it about our society and the relationship between men and women that makes women so naturally oppressed? Why, even when it seemed we were given opportunity to change, did we feel the need to reduce ourselves back to a place of selling ourselves short? A place of accepting that our sole responsibility was raising children and making happy husbands. Aspiring to anything beyond that call was selfish and “unfeminine.”
And now? Is it that fear of being “unfeminine” that drives women to repeat the same mistakes, only this time around using sex as the ultimate goal instead of marriage? Or are the men we encounter in our daily lives re-instilling the idea of a “woman’s place” just as their predecessors did in the 50’s/60’s? Is it society working as a whole, controlling the mass media and putting image after image in our heads of our place – in the bedroom or on a public stage, objects for sex? Maybe society isn’t to blame at all but rather the select few in command in the marketing and advertising industry. Friedan noted that most of the authors and editors responsible for the housewife trends back in the day were men. They offered the same defense you can still hear today – It’s not their fault. They’re just following supply and demand, giving the people more of what they respond to. Blame consumers, not them.
You don’t have to look too hard to find evidence of these kinds of marketing tools in mass media today. Raunchy sexist and racist humor has become so common we feel severely unaffected by its presence. Just as we’re so quick to call the new sexual terms of women “liberation” we call the practices of media and pop culture “freedom of speech.” But there is a fundamental problem when it comes to the effect that freedom is having on our youth. Lexy explains: “[…] whereas older women were around for the women’s movement itself, or at least for the period when its lessons were still alive in the country’s collective memory, teenage girls have only the here and now. They have never known a time when ‘ho’ wasn’t a part of the lexicon, when sixteen year-old girls didn’t get breast implants, when porn stars weren’t topping the best-seller lists, when strippers weren’t mainstream. None of this can possibly be ‘ironic’ for teens because it’s their whole truth – there’s no backdrop of idealism to temper these messages. [....] They’ve never had a feminism to rebel against.”
All of these issues come close to defeating me with depression, but being the optimist and activist that I am, I still tend to come out on the other side clinging to some sense of optimism, desperately searching for solutions. In the popular film, Mona Lisa Smile, Julia Roberts’ character does her students the greatest favor of all by showing them a slideshow of the articles history would remember them by, providing them with a grim reality check. I give you these examples of how we stand to be remembered if something does not change:
Does this disturb you? Do you feel this is all that needs to be said about women today? Does this look like liberation?
Friedan noted that when articles were published in the “Occupation: Housewife” era, if editors deemed them too complex for a housewife to understand or take interest in, they had to be written in very simple terms with bullet points summarizing all the main points at the end. If knowing that fact offends you:
- go pick up an issue of Cosmopolitan and find all of the ways in which you feel demeaned within its pages and write a letter to the editor.
- Watch an hour of television and write an e-mail to the TV network about diversifying their portrayals of women in their shows and advertisements.
- CREATE – write, act out stories, paint, draw, photograph, write/play music – do anything and everything you can do to put what YOU feel is a fair representation of women out there into the world.
- If you simply open your eyes and look, we have not come so far as we have led ourselves to believe.
- Just as those responsible for the representation of women in the 50’s and 60’s said they were simply giving women what they wanted, so is the understanding of people working in the media today.
- They think this is how we see ourselves and this is what we want to see more of – if you disagree, you have to tell them. We all do.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson
Tags: activism, Ariel Levy, Betty Friedan, Female Chauvinist Pigs, feminism, history, housewife era
