Raunchy Behavior

The issue being addressed is woman’s participation in applying double standards culturally set up by men to one another in the form of slut shaming. Women are internally persecuting one another and basing one another’s status on such with a disregard for any other social structural roles held in society. Furthermore, this judgment

Sexual objection and non-sexual objectification were mainly measured in body exposure and body movements. The different areas of a woman’s body being displayed were used to operationalize the idea of sexual objectification. Similarly, camera angles such as panning down bodies and shots down shirts were tallied to create a solid definition of “sexualizing” for the purpose of this research. (see Appendix A and B)

Ariel Levy, a staff writer at the New Yorker, and author of the article “Female Chauvinist Pig” has brought up a very interesting topic about Raunch Culture. Now, what particularly is raunch culture? Raunch culture, in my own words, I can say is defined as a culture which allows a woman to participate in male-dominant cultures of raunch that deals a lot with sex in a way that is meant to be funny. Women who participate in this culture have to reject some of the things women are known to do, which they consider “girly-girl”. Although some things that they wear or do are considered “girly-girl”, women still have to embrace, acknowledge and accept certain male stereotypes in order to participate in raunch culture.

If a trend is not popular, the media will not expose it. Raunch culture was a popular trend, and women of all ages followed it. If one was to see a fifty year old lady wearing revealing jeans it would be considered uncouth. Likewise, the media implied that dressing raunchy was acceptable. Levy describes, "I'd walk down the street and see teens and young women- and the occasional wild fifty year old wearing jeans cut so low they exposed what came to be known as butt cleavage" (143). Although raunch culture was a solid trend, Levy disagrees with the media and feels that women should uphold a certain standard. In the essay, she claims "I'd graduated from Wesleyan University, a place where you could pretty much get expelled for saying "girl" instead of women" (144). Levy emphasizes the importance of a woman and that women should carry themselves with high standards. According to Levy, the raunch trend was exploiting women’s sexuality. On the contrary, some women may have questioned raunch culture the way Levy did. However, the media would simply state that it is feminism and it was acceptable to be raunchy. In Levy’s essay it claims, "This new raunch culture didn't mark the death of feminism, they told me it was evidence that the feminist project had already been achieved. We've earned the right to look at playboy; we were empowered enough to get Brazilian bikini waxes" (144). The media was able to manipulate the

reputation for feminism. Levy ask some women about raunch culture, she was told that these

In the book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture ch.6 "shopping for sex" by Ariel Levy, critiques the highly sexualized American culture in which women are objectified, objectify one another, and are encouraged to objectify themselves. Levy refers to this as "raunch culture". There is no denying that raunch culture is everywhere today. Music videos, advertisements and even children products are more often targeted as ‘sexy’ because, let’s face it, sex sells. Ariel Levy explores and discusses how this culture has risen and how the second-wave feminist struggle has appropriated into the war cry that sex and stripping now means liberalisation for women. Levy sets out to ascertain why raunch culture is so appealing to women, particularly young, educated women and more concerning, young teenage girls, some as young as twelve, who strive to embody the raunch culture by wearing make-up and snapping g-strings at boys. Levy discovers that raunch and sexual appeal have become separated from the act of sex itself. Levy also details the history and battles of the second-wave feminist movement and key activists. Women have finally broken through the barriers and have presumably gained gender equality. The problem is, as Levy suggests, that women are still not free to act as ‘women’ or as themselves but they are now pressured to act as ‘men’ so they will be

While feminist movements today have been branded as “raunch culture” most notably by writer Ariel Levy in 2005; 2016 public figures in the media such as Beyonce and Amber Rose have shown that it’s all about reclaiming your sexuality.

In this patriarchal society, women find practicing sexual agency difficult because there is a double standard that exists in which being either “slutty” or chaste has negative consequences. Marilyn Frye (2004) explains this concept as the “double bind,” which Frye defines as “situations in which options are reduced to a very few and all of them expose one to penalty, censure or deprivation” (p. 184). Women cannot express their sexualities, wants, or needs in a legitimate and safe way because they will face punishment if they happen to be on either end of the continuum. Kristen Firminger (2006) suggests that women’s magazines define for

Our project topic was centered on Social Control, as discussed in Chapter 8 of the Kottak textbook. Social Control is defined as “maintaining social norms and regulating conflict” (Kottak 2013; 165). More specifically, we decided to focus on the phenomenon of “slut-shaming.” According the Oxford Dictionary Online for American English, “slut-shaming,” is defined as the “action of stigmatizing a woman for engaging in behavior judged to be promiscuous or sexually provocative.” Although Oxford singularizes women in this phenomenon, the practice of slut-shaming is inclusive to both genders. It is the stressed implication that women are more targeted that begged us to question: are women more likely to follow societal regulation in regards to their sexual acts than men? In other words, are women more likely to follow the social norms of the culture regarding their sexual activities than men? Shame and gossip are informal forms of social control that are usually practiced in small communities, which further correlates with the idea that women will follow the informal regulations put into place in order to avoid these consequences. With such ideologies in mind, we hypothesized that in American culture, men are less likely to be confined to sexually-charged social constraints than women.

The push for de-sexualizing women in ads can be a part of this third wave of feminism. Even though women have been seen as sexual objects for years, the problem hasn’t been solved and is shaping into new forms that continue to reintroduce this way of thinking. In the context of a school environment, a female student can get sent home for showing collar bone whereas a male student could simply get away with a tank top shirt. In this situation, the boys education is being prioritized more than hers. The idea that the collar bone being visible is offensive or a distraction, is just another way of sexualizing a young girl. The same problem occurs within the work environment and women’s jobs have been put in jeopardy because of the sexualization of their

Since the beginning of recorded history, our world has put certain expectations and rules on female and males alike. Whether it be in the workplace, at home, or in society. There is a list of unwritten rules that every person should abide by if they want to fit in to their culture. For women in America, filling this quota is a lot harder than it seems. The Western woman is under the influence of unrealistic expectations regarding the media, this is true, but it is more complicated than that. Scholars have noticed a trend in the guidelines for women, from the stories in the bible to today’s modern media. The woman is to be a sexual being, a vixen, a wild child; while at the same time remaining reserved, submissive and pure. This phenomenon

To conclude, raunch culture is not the issue but rather people like levy who try to compare everything women do to a man’s standard. Levy demonstrates throughout her novel the reasons why she does not agree with raunch culture but never gave a clear image on how she expects women to carry themselves. She simply shames women who try to use different methods to be successful. Levy ridicules loophole women but seems like one herself. She may not attend strip clubs and objectify women but she sure tries to be different from other women. She states that “if you are the exception that proves the rule, and the rule is that women are inferior, you haven’t made any progress” but, she is part of that percentage of women she writes about in her book because

fter reading “Female Chauvinist Pigs” by Ariel Levy, I have come to the epiphany that there is not just one or two types of women in this world. I was dumbfounded at how unaware I was of this new social change and “raunch culture”. Growing up as a young girl, I thought there was only two types of girls, and those types were tom-boys and girly-girls. You either hung out with the guys or you hung out with the girls. There was really no in-between in my mind. At no time, did I ever stop to think about the inequalities that surrounded us.

Some women have decided to embrace these stereotypes to get ahead in life. The women are called Female Chauvinist Pigs. These women encourage other women to utilize their beauty and/or physical attributes to get ahead. “Their bodies are their instruments” (Nevins 267). This concept of women encouraging other women to objectify themselves to gain success is known as raunch culture.

It is important to note that she recounts even her work as a magazine editor and the booming profit she got. Levy claims that the raunch culture had not only infected the mainstream media program, but also the people on the streets. She narrates her encounter with people of different calibers; the young women, the teens and occasionally “wild-fifty year olds” wearing inappropriately. She also recalls her social friends who had resorted to strip clubs and they believed it was fun, sexy and religious. The author argues that the behaviors of her social friends somehow started to influence her, although she did not get deeper into it. Thanks to her parents, the Levy overcame the temptations to join the raunch culture that was the order of the day among the young women, men and even small