For my birthday, my FF (Fabulous Friend) Karen got me Ariel Levy's eye-opening book, Female Chauvinist Pigs.
"If male chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat," Levy writes, "Female Chauvinist Pigs of today are doing them one better, making sex objects of other women- and of themselves."

When at one time, college women were burning their bras, today they get implants. The women who once scoffed at men for refering to them as "chicks" are now calling each other "bitches" and "hos". Women who angrily spoke out against female genital mutilation in third world countries are now forking over big bucks to get their own labia cut off. College girls bare all for Girls Gone Wild- not for money but for trucker hats.

We can't blame the guys this time; women are literally doing this to themselves.

Those of you shrugging your shoulders right now and saying "Hey, that's liberation," need to read Levy's book first.

Levy is not a conservative and she is by no means "anti-sex". A feminist who fully supports gay-marriage (and who points out how hypocrital America is in it's ban on gay-marriage, stating that if we block this basic right to homosexuals then "all the cardio-stripteases in the world aren't going to render us sexually liberated"), Levy also supports female sexuality- the problem, as she points out, is that what is being sold to us right now as "female sexuality and empowerment" is just the opposite- the "liberated" girls and women whom she interviews admit to many one-night stands and brag about "f*cking like a man", but they also admit to not enjoying sex and to seeking out conquests for status rather than for pleasure. "A lot of guys expect oral sex," one of Levy's teenage subjects tells her, "Not girls...people would think they were weird if they did."

FCP is as much an anti-consumerist book as it is a feminist one. As Levy writes, "If you remove the human factor from sex and make it about STUFF- big fake boobs, bleached blonde hair, long nails, poles, thongs- then you can sell it. Suddenly sex requires shopping; you need plastic surgery, peroxide, a manicure, a mall."
Hmmm...very interesting theory- and one can't deny the fact that people were getting it on long before silicone was invented.

What really struck me was how most of Levy's female subjects were, inspite of their professed love for Playboy and porn, anti-woman. They said things like "I'm not a girly-girl", "I don't like other girls", "Most of my friends are guys", "I'm like a man- not a prissy girl". What happened to Sister-hood? What happened to "Girl Power"? Or as Levy points out: "Even if you are a woman who achieves the ultimate and becomes like a man, you will still always be like a woman. And as long as womanhood is thought of as something to escape from, something less than manhood, you will be thought less of, too."

What is also interesting is that when a FCP say's she is "like a man"- she is referring to the most banal, worst male stereotype- the beer swilling, loud mouthed, farting perv. I've met many men in my life but only a handful who fit neatly in to this package. Most men I've come in contact with are much more complicated than that.

Levy's book is written with razor sharp wit and is downright colorful to read- I finished the book in one day. It's also chock full of interesting tid-bits of the second generation of feminism (or as Levy calls it, "the time when feminism was fun"). Who knew, for example, that before either were famous, a mutual friend tried to set Gloria Steinem and Hugh Hefner up on a blind date? (Needless to say, it didn't work out).

Near the end of her book, Levy writes-
"There are other choices. If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire. We need to allow ourselves the freedom to figure out what we internally want from sex instead of mimicking whatever popular culture holds up to us as sexy. THAT would be sexual liberation."
Hey- it's gotta beat a lame trucker hat.