A few years ago I noticed something strange was happening in my native United States. I would turn on the television and find strippers in nipple-tassels explaining how to lap-dance a man to orgasm. I would flip the channel and see babes in tiny uniforms bouncing up and down on trampolines. Britney Spears was becoming increasingly popular and increasingly unclothed, and her undulating body became so familiar that I felt like we used to go out.
In my own industry — magazines — a porny new genre called lad mags were hitting stands and becoming a huge success by delivering what Playboy had only occasionally managed to capture in the past: greased celebrities in little scraps of fabric humping the floor.
Some odd things were happening in my social life too. People I knew (female people) liked going to strip clubs (female strippers). It was sexy and fun, they explained; it was liberating and rebellious. Only 30 years ago, our mothers were supposedly burning their bras and picketing Playboy, and suddenly we were getting implants and wearing the bunny logo as symbols of our liberation. How had the culture shifted so drastically in such a short period of time?
What was even more surprising were the responses I got when I started interviewing the men and — often — the women who edit magazines such as Maxim and produce reality television series about strippers. This new raunch culture didn’t mark the death of feminism; it was evidence that the feminist project had already been achieved. We’d ”earned” the right to look at Playboy; we were ”empowered” enough to get Brazilian bikini waxes. Women had come so far, I learned, that we no longer needed to worry about objectification or misogyny. Instead, it was time for us to join the frat party of pop culture that men had enjoyed all along. If male chauvinist pigs were men who regarded women as pieces of meat, we would beat them at their own game and be female chauvinist pigs: women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves.
I tried to get with the programme, but could never make the argument add up in my head. How is resurrecting every stereotype of female sexuality that feminism endeavoured to banish good for women? Why is labouring to look like Paris Hilton empowering? And how is imitating a stripper going to render us sexually liberated?
There is a widespread assumption that, simply because my generation of women has the good fortune to live in a world touched by feminism, everything we do is magically imbued with its agenda. But it doesn’t work that way. ”Raunchy” and ”liberated” are not synonyms. It is worth asking if this bawdy world of boobs and gams we have resurrected reflects how far we’ve come, or how far we have left to go.
Many women today, whether they are 14 or 40, seem to have forgotten that sexual power is only one, very specific, kind of power. And what’s more, looking like a stripper or a Playboy bunny is only one, very specific, kind of sexual expression. Is it the one that turns us — or men — on the most? We would have to stop re-enacting this one raunchy script to find out.
We have to ask ourselves why we are so focused on silent girly girls in G-strings faking lust. This is not a sign of progress, it’s a testament to what’s still missing from our understanding of human sexuality. We are still so uneasy with the vicissitudes of sex that we need to surround ourselves with caricatures of female hotness to safely conjure up the concept of ”sexy”. It’s kind of pathetic.
Sex is one of the most interesting things we as humans have to play with, and we’ve reduced it to polyester underpants and implants. We are selling ourselves unbelievably short.
Without a doubt, there are some women who feel their most sexual with their vaginas waxed, their labia trimmed, their breasts enlarged, and their garments flossy and scant. I am happy for them. But there are many other women (and, yes, men) who feel constrained in this environment, who would be happier and feel hotter — more empowered, more sexually liberated — if they explored other avenues of expression and entertainment.
Women’s liberation and empowerment are terms feminists started using to talk about casting off the limitations imposed upon women and demanding equality. We have perverted these words. The freedom to be sexually provocative or promiscuous is not enough freedom; it is not the only ”women’s issue” worth paying attention to. And we are not even free in the sexual arena. We have simply adopted a new norm, a new role to play: lusty, busty exhibitionist. 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.
If we believed that we were sexy and funny and competent and smart, we would not need to be like strippers or like men or like anyone other than our own specific, individual selves. That won’t be easy, but the rewards would be the very things Female Chauvinist Pigs want so badly, the things women deserve: freedom and power. — Â