Ariel Levy wrote “Female Chauvinist Pigs” after discovering that new found “raunch culture” had replaced sensuality with sexuality and elevated porn above pleasure. In the book, Levy notes a number of porn culture influences including strip-club inspired aerobics classes and aerobic pole dancing.
“It actually makes perfect sense when we think about it,” writes Levy. “Raunch culture is not essentially progressive, it is essentially commercial. By going to strip clubs and flashing on spring break and ogling our Olympians in Playboy, it’s not as though we are embracing something liberal — this isn’t Free Love.”
Raunch culture, she says, is “about endlessly reiterating one particular — and particularly commercial — shorthand for sexiness.”
Just blaming men misses the bigger picture, Levy says. The women’s movement has empowered women and provided myriad choices, she points out. Sexuality is a complex business, yet “somehow, we [women] have accepted as fact the myth that sexiness needs to be divorced from the everyday experience of being ourselves.”
Read the Aerobics and Fitness Daily pole dancing review guide.
