Quills and Ink Spills

A Quill this time to Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Published in 2005 (Free Press), this book unfortunately remains current (considering we keep hearing that low rise jeans are going out of fashion, I keep seeing errant thong straps and plumber's views). Levy's thesis is that we are a society that has reached the bottom of the barrel in terms of self-abasement, and that as women we have encouraged and aided what we claim to hate: men treating women like meat. Dressing like whores from an early age (see also Why Do We Dress our Daughters Like Skanks and related articles and books, http://dadventure.ca/?p=58), we wonder why women's lib isn't working for our generation, whilst wearing Tshirts with "I'd f*** me"; there is a disconnect between image, fashion, presentation and social identity. This can begin as a parenting issue, but as a society we perpetuate the problem, accepting Girls Gone Wild and Porno Valley as basic cable viewing. I always want to ask self-revealing girls, why do you want to look like a prostitute? What possible advantage could there be to saying to the world, 'I am trash'? There are other daring ways to compete, to stand out, to rebel. Levy proposes that underlying this smiling veneer of female strength and freedom is self-hatred and non-existent self-esteem; many are the girls she interviews who say they perform favours for male acquaintances purely for social acceptance. This book is not for the prudish. It is a book for every parent of a girl or boy of any age; pretending your child will not be affected in some way by raunch culture is delusional.