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 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 girls raised on Paris Hilton and g-strings; she talks to 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 Erica Jong, to find out where women are headed today.
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'. (But oh SO much more entertaining.) It is the first book of its kind to emerge in more than a dozen years - and it's not a moment too soon.
