Did Girls Really Gone Wild? or Is It The World?

In her book, “Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture”, Ariel Levy strongly stresses how the contemporary American culture has been jammed with the excessively sexual representations of women. For instance, when you walk down the street, you may see quite a lot of girls or “women” dressed up overly sexual and perversely. Also, when you turn on televisions or read magazines, you may see women celebrities dancing or posing perversely wearing only few clothes. In this excerpt, the author greatly remarks that people especially women should notice and recognize this rise of the “new” phenomenon of the culture in America.

According to Levy, this “Raunch Culture” came slowly and naturally without any disharmony or friction, and people became so familiar with this “modern” culture and view toward women by the media. Through films, TV shows, and magazines like “Charlie’s Angels”, “Girl Gone Wild”, and “Maxim”, people started to perceive the ideal image of good women as glamorous, sensual, and sexy, rather than smart, wise, and intelligent. The author puts this blame on the “Female Chauvinist Pigs”, which is the term that the author uses to describe the women who regard themselves and other women as sex objects just to appeal to males. Levy argues that this sudden change of representation of femininity or beauty of women brought by the “Female Chauvinist Pigs” makes young teen girls and other women feel pressured to fit into this “Raunch Culture” and look like the “Female Chauvinist Pigs”. Throughout this book, Levy firmly asserts that this “Raunch Culture” made America to adopt wrong ideal of sexuality from the “Female Chauvinist Pigs”.

Since this new “Raunch Culture” has incredibly changed the trend of sexual representations of women in America, it has also affected the images of women depicted in advertisements. Even the body wash advertisement that I chose for the analysis paper had shown some aspects of this whole new “Raunch Culture”. For instance, my body wash advertisement had three women standing in front of some panel boards; however, these three women, who should supposedly to show the benefits of the product after using it, are just wearing bath towels around them. The company, Dove, who made this advertisement, must have intended the effect of the new sexual representations of women, which is the rise of the product sales.