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ricepudding24's review
emotional
informative
reflective
5.0
lol some people complaining abt how this book is “slut-shaming” etc obviously didn’t read the entire book and only took bits and pieces without the rest of the book’s context — makes sense since a lot of these ppl say they read it for classes. and also, a book being ‘outdated’ doesn’t mean it’s worse; its reference to culture at the time obviously needs to be taken into the context in which it was written.
drpeeper's review
3.0
Not bad--Levy definitely raises some interesting points on the problems with modern day "feminism" and its emphasis on raunch culture. Something was missing here for me though; can't put my finger on it. Any ideas?
serru's review against another edition
2.0
Overall this was an easy and fast read, with some of valid points. However, I read this a few years after it first came out and the main premise of this book seems very obvious to me, especially now that many of her examples (Girls Gone Wild, stripper culture) are so widespread in popular culture (Girls Gone Wild even seems outdated now).
mld12's review
4.0
This book is an excellent example of an academic analysis of popular culture without being... well, academic. It's also a swift read! Levy does a great job telling short stories and setting the scene for each of her interviews, and she laces each encounter and analysis with historical and theoretical perspectives. Despite its age, this book is an excellent read for positing why the 2000s were imbued with raunch culture, and we can start to draw a path from where we were to where we are now.
amalauna's review
1.0
This is not a feminist book. It's a judgmental attack on women. The author takes gleeful pride in attacking women while hypocritically bemoaning women gleefully attacking women.
Read Caitlin Moran instead.
Read Caitlin Moran instead.
bookysue's review
3.0
A lot of good points and ideas.
I do think there was a fairly substantial problem of response bias present in the words from some of her interviewees. Obviously I don't know what went on behind the scenes, but the sense I got is that some of these women knew or could intuit Levy's general thesis, and they wanted to reconcile their ideas and lifestyles with that thesis.
The clearest example of this to me is on page 194: Levy analyzes the words of interviewee Lynn, who says she enjoys "titty bars" because she likes "the bored looks on their faces" when the dancers are "just staring up at the ceiling." Levy is confused by this contradiction, wondering why Lynn would take pleasure in "seeing a person wear a compromising costume and watching the tedium of her life unfold." To me, the answer is pretty clear: Lynn probably goes to strip clubs and takes part in raunch culture because she, like many women who do this, thinks it makes her interesting and cool. The women I've known who did these things were women who wanted to seem apart from other women -- better than and cooler than -- especially in the eyes of men.
But when faced with that question of "why?" Lynn didn't want to say "because it makes me seem interesting and cool to dudes." Or, if she actually is turned on by strip clubs, which is certainly possible, then she could obviously tell that the idea of that did not appeal to Levy in the least, so she changed her words to minimize her actual motivations -- once again, to maintain her coolness.
We've all seen it happen when with a group of friends: Someone boldly states they like something -- a comedian or a TV show or a restaurant -- and the majority of the rest of the group quickly comes out against it, making lighthearted fun of the person who originally spoke up. And this forces that first person to minimize or rationalize their enjoyment of that thing in a way that brings them back into harmony with the group. "I like The Bachelor!" "What?? That show is terrible!" "Well, yeah, but I just like it because it's such a train wreck to watch! Imagine the people who actually watch that show because they like it HAHAHA losers!"
I liken it to the negative and positive signs that appear above characters' heads in the game The Sims. We're always working toward positive signs, and if the signs do turn negative after we say something, we immediately start a sort of negotiation to bring them back to positive.
To me, that was obviously what Lynn (and several others in the book) did, which explains why their answers were so seemingly contradictory. Of course, this wasn't a controlled study in a controlled environment -- Levy was just interviewing women one-on-one out at bars and restaurants and such -- but still. I think to analyze the exact wording these women used when they're clearly editing their responses yields a less-than-accurate conclusion.
The other little critique I have concerns Levy's criticism of women for being sexually promiscuous or adventurous and then saying they are living like a man (as on page 195, for example). She really picks apart this explanation, and to me, it's simple: These women actually mean that they're doing things in a way that society has traditionally billed as male behavior, not that they're actually necessarily doing things the way men do them. Again, picking apart their exact wording without discerning the deeper meaning results in a convenient conclusion for the book, but a less accurate one than actual analysis might have yielded. And some kind of acknowledging head-nod toward that might have been nice.
And now, my least favorite and most favorite passages from the book:
Worst:
pg 179:
"But the stakes are very different for a porn star than for an actor or a journalist, because porn stars are selling something more than a skill: They are giving up the most private part of their being for public consumption."
First of all, what are they giving up? This reminds me of people saying women are "giving up" or "losing" their virginity when they have sex for the first time. Second, and more importantly, wtf is she saying is the most private part of someone's being? To me, someone's thoughts and maybe secret feelings would be the most private part of their being -- not the way their genitals look or whatever it is Levy is saying here. This statement, more than any other in the book, confused the hell out of me. If she's saying their sexuality is the most private part of their being, then her own argument counteracts the idea that they are giving that up when they star in a porn film, because porn is a performance and not necessarily reflective of their actual sexuality (which is certainly true). Maybe I completely misunderstood the intent here, but it stood out to me as strange and unpleasant.
Best:
pg 185-186:
"My father taught me that chopped liver is a delicacy--part of our cultural heritage, something to be savored on festive occasions. To me it will always be smelly cement. But I have always liked anchovies, which not everybody does. I like wearing green, because it suits my skin tone and my self-image. Likewise, certain themes have run through my sexual fantasies since I was very young, just as they now run through my bed. Nobody had to teach me how to want these things, or how to get them.
"Wattleton is right that one way we discover that we like plums or cashmere or oral sex is by being exposed to them. But there is a problem with using porn as a tool for mind expansion. You can see almost any sexual act imaginable if you spend enough time on the Internet, but no matter how much porn you watch you will end up with a limited knowledge of your own sexuality because you still won't know how these things feel. That will depend on who you do them with, what kind of mood you're in when you do, whether you feel safe or scared (or scared in a good way) when you go about it, and so on. The idea that sex can be reduced to fixed components as it is in pornography--blow job, doggie style, money shot, girl-on-girl--is adolescent: first base, second base, all the way. It is ironic that we think of this as adult entertainment. I don't see why we should regard porn as a way to enjoy 'sexuality in all of its explicitness' any more than we consider looking at a chart of the food pyramid to be a feast."
Perfect.
I do think there was a fairly substantial problem of response bias present in the words from some of her interviewees. Obviously I don't know what went on behind the scenes, but the sense I got is that some of these women knew or could intuit Levy's general thesis, and they wanted to reconcile their ideas and lifestyles with that thesis.
The clearest example of this to me is on page 194: Levy analyzes the words of interviewee Lynn, who says she enjoys "titty bars" because she likes "the bored looks on their faces" when the dancers are "just staring up at the ceiling." Levy is confused by this contradiction, wondering why Lynn would take pleasure in "seeing a person wear a compromising costume and watching the tedium of her life unfold." To me, the answer is pretty clear: Lynn probably goes to strip clubs and takes part in raunch culture because she, like many women who do this, thinks it makes her interesting and cool. The women I've known who did these things were women who wanted to seem apart from other women -- better than and cooler than -- especially in the eyes of men.
But when faced with that question of "why?" Lynn didn't want to say "because it makes me seem interesting and cool to dudes." Or, if she actually is turned on by strip clubs, which is certainly possible, then she could obviously tell that the idea of that did not appeal to Levy in the least, so she changed her words to minimize her actual motivations -- once again, to maintain her coolness.
We've all seen it happen when with a group of friends: Someone boldly states they like something -- a comedian or a TV show or a restaurant -- and the majority of the rest of the group quickly comes out against it, making lighthearted fun of the person who originally spoke up. And this forces that first person to minimize or rationalize their enjoyment of that thing in a way that brings them back into harmony with the group. "I like The Bachelor!" "What?? That show is terrible!" "Well, yeah, but I just like it because it's such a train wreck to watch! Imagine the people who actually watch that show because they like it HAHAHA losers!"
I liken it to the negative and positive signs that appear above characters' heads in the game The Sims. We're always working toward positive signs, and if the signs do turn negative after we say something, we immediately start a sort of negotiation to bring them back to positive.
To me, that was obviously what Lynn (and several others in the book) did, which explains why their answers were so seemingly contradictory. Of course, this wasn't a controlled study in a controlled environment -- Levy was just interviewing women one-on-one out at bars and restaurants and such -- but still. I think to analyze the exact wording these women used when they're clearly editing their responses yields a less-than-accurate conclusion.
The other little critique I have concerns Levy's criticism of women for being sexually promiscuous or adventurous and then saying they are living like a man (as on page 195, for example). She really picks apart this explanation, and to me, it's simple: These women actually mean that they're doing things in a way that society has traditionally billed as male behavior, not that they're actually necessarily doing things the way men do them. Again, picking apart their exact wording without discerning the deeper meaning results in a convenient conclusion for the book, but a less accurate one than actual analysis might have yielded. And some kind of acknowledging head-nod toward that might have been nice.
And now, my least favorite and most favorite passages from the book:
Worst:
pg 179:
"But the stakes are very different for a porn star than for an actor or a journalist, because porn stars are selling something more than a skill: They are giving up the most private part of their being for public consumption."
First of all, what are they giving up? This reminds me of people saying women are "giving up" or "losing" their virginity when they have sex for the first time. Second, and more importantly, wtf is she saying is the most private part of someone's being? To me, someone's thoughts and maybe secret feelings would be the most private part of their being -- not the way their genitals look or whatever it is Levy is saying here. This statement, more than any other in the book, confused the hell out of me. If she's saying their sexuality is the most private part of their being, then her own argument counteracts the idea that they are giving that up when they star in a porn film, because porn is a performance and not necessarily reflective of their actual sexuality (which is certainly true). Maybe I completely misunderstood the intent here, but it stood out to me as strange and unpleasant.
Best:
pg 185-186:
"My father taught me that chopped liver is a delicacy--part of our cultural heritage, something to be savored on festive occasions. To me it will always be smelly cement. But I have always liked anchovies, which not everybody does. I like wearing green, because it suits my skin tone and my self-image. Likewise, certain themes have run through my sexual fantasies since I was very young, just as they now run through my bed. Nobody had to teach me how to want these things, or how to get them.
"Wattleton is right that one way we discover that we like plums or cashmere or oral sex is by being exposed to them. But there is a problem with using porn as a tool for mind expansion. You can see almost any sexual act imaginable if you spend enough time on the Internet, but no matter how much porn you watch you will end up with a limited knowledge of your own sexuality because you still won't know how these things feel. That will depend on who you do them with, what kind of mood you're in when you do, whether you feel safe or scared (or scared in a good way) when you go about it, and so on. The idea that sex can be reduced to fixed components as it is in pornography--blow job, doggie style, money shot, girl-on-girl--is adolescent: first base, second base, all the way. It is ironic that we think of this as adult entertainment. I don't see why we should regard porn as a way to enjoy 'sexuality in all of its explicitness' any more than we consider looking at a chart of the food pyramid to be a feast."
Perfect.
sunnyd123's review
4.0
I would give it 3.5. Agree very much with what was presented - but what’s the alternative! What’s the imagined sexual liberation. would love to have that detailed further. also, interviews with women who ARENT “FCP”s. too selective w the interviewing. I fuck with u though ariel levy. queen
horfhorfhorf's review
4.0
A must-read for all strident feminists, be they prudes or provocateurs.
If the ideas expressed herein prove difficult to truly consider based on social norms you've accepted regarding sexuality as influenced by 'raunch culture', try Empire of Illusion first.
If the ideas expressed herein prove difficult to truly consider based on social norms you've accepted regarding sexuality as influenced by 'raunch culture', try Empire of Illusion first.
rcharbonneau's review
2.0
I disagreed with much that the author said. I found it to be overly cynical, speculative, and accusatory. Levy blames individuals instead of structures for modern feminist issues. Do not recommend.