Raunch Culture
A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manualGloria Steinem
Not anymore, Gloria. The second-wave feminists’ condemnation of pornography for its oppressive and degrading representation and treatment of women is now a distant echo. Just 40 years on and the dynamics have shifted dramatically. A woman reading Playboy in 2006 doesn’t feel she’s sidling up to the enemy. Instead, it makes her feel ‘empowered’ and ‘sexually liberated.’ Playboy is now so acceptable to women that pre-teen and adolescent girls are sold duvet covers and stationary sets with the bunny logo. The words of Gloria Steinem seem old-fashioned and irrelevant in today’s popular discourse. Playboy is not the enemy of woman- it’s her ally. It represents fun, liberation and sexual self-assurance for the modern woman.
But does it? This is the question posed in Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, the first book by New York magazine writer, Ariel Levy. Articulate, intelligent and certainly relevant enough to enter the feminist literary canon alongside The Female Eunuch and The Beauty Myth, Ariel’s book questions 21st-century America’s obsession with a version of femininity which rests on unleashing your inner porn star and getting breast implants- and its co-option of feminism in encouraging women to do this.
Ariel’s critique has the potential to open up the debate and set the impetus for a feminist challenge to the increasing pornification and commercialisation of women’s bodies and identities in Western culture. The Guardian and the Sunday Times have given the book good reviews and have used it as the basis for their own features exploring this popular notion of womanhood. Just a few weeks ago founder of The Body Shop, Anita Roddick, attacked the “pimp and whore culture” seen in much of the imagery of popular music. And at the grassroots, organisations such as Object are campaigning against the sexual objectification of women in the media by petitioning against lad mags and meeting with MPs to get porn on the top shelf. A spokeswoman says: “Most people would claim our culture is becoming more and more sexualised, but I would say that it’s a question of our society becoming more tolerant to porn, which at best offers a very narrow version of sex and at worst is oppressive and violent.”
Perhaps it won’t be too long before women’s consciousness is raised and Gloria Steinem’s words will be an eye-opener once again. Because the model of 21st-century womanhood that Ariel Levy and Object describe and that is so steeped in our cultural mainstream deserves to come under attack. While Chauvinist Pigs centres on American culture, women in the UK are equally entangled in the model. The model that defines the woman who poses for lad mags as the epitome of femaleness, that coerces young women into having cosmetic surgery to attain an ageless and acceptable body and sees no problem with selling porn-branded T-shirts to underage girls. This model is so pervasive and so perverse, that a backlash can’t come soon enough.
But where is this version of womanhood coming from- and what does that mean for its challenge?
The media
The notion of the 21st-century woman as someone who conforms to a commercial version of sexuality and wouldn’t question having intrusive and risky surgery just so she can look better, has its roots in the media. The press, television, music and advertising all play a more pervasive role in our culture than ever before and therefore have a powerful and influential part to play in socialising and encouraging women to conform to the representations of women they offer. What determines these representations? Largely, the commercial context in which the media industries operate. Given the increase in the number of media outlets and products in the past few years, they are operating in a competitive arena, battling to secure advertising revenue to ensure their survival. This reliance on advertising inevitably affects the representations of women in our magazines and on our televisions. Perhaps this wouldn’t be such a problem if the representations they offered were varied, covering all facets of womanhood. But instead, what the media offers us is a generic and inauthentic picture of what it means to be a woman in the new millenium- and it’s everywhere.
Publishing
It’s on the pages of tabloid newspapers and magazines - both women’s weeklies and lad mags - that the most ubiquitous manifestation of this commercial version of femininity can be found. On the newsagents’ shelves, women see the limited options for their gender on display: Page 3 glamour model, lad mag pin-up, Playboy bunny or celebrity wannabe.
This definition of woman is narrow and artificial, but increasingly popular. The Sun and The News of the World, their pages full of bare-chested girls and leering headlines, are the best-selling newspapers in the UK (ABC figures).
It’s the lad mags though - which have grown exponentially in the 21st century - that have proved a fertile breeding ground for that air-brushed look of fantasy which has come to be synonymous with innate femaleness. FHM, Nuts and Zoo were the top-selling men’s lifestyle magazines for the period July-December 2005 - the latter two saw sales increase by around 10 per cent (ABC figures). Their dumbed-down rhetoric and portrayal of women as nothing more than sexual commodities sell well in today’s marketplace.
However, unlike recognised porn magazines such as Playboy which are placed on the top shelf, the likes of Nuts and Zoo are often not. This amounts to the fact that women - and children - cannot fail to be confronted with a representation of woman that is founded on the commercially-attained attributes of breast implants and air-brushing.
This mainstreaming of pornified representations of women is a particular concern for Object who see these women as being treated as nothing more than, “commodities which can be bought and then discarded.” A spokeswoman added: “Putting lad mags on the top shelf would minimise the feelings of humiliation and degradation felt by many women who are confronted by these magazines in newsagents, supermarkets, train stations. The increased availability of pornographic materials and the ease with which they can be bought are factors which contribute to the normalisation of porn and what it stands for.”
But are the magazines sold to women much better?
Just like the lad mags, the women’s weeklies - in particular the celebrity gossip magazines - are the other magazine publishing success of the past few years. The sector sold around 860,000 more copies per week last year than in 2004; Reveal alone saw a 44 per cent increase in sales during July-December 2005 (ABC figures). Lots of women are consuming these magazines and in turn their representations of women; and what’s so unnerving is these representations are similar to those of the lad mags.
The likes of Jordan, Paris Hilton and Big Brother’s Chantelle are favourites of both Nuts and Heat. Both celebrate the woman who has entered the fickle world of celebrity by doing not much more than taking off her top; making a sex tape; flaunting daddy’s money and offering catty opinions on the other Z-list female celebrities they battle it out against for the next cover of OK.
But while Nuts et al., rely on the airbrush, the women’s celebrity weeklies revel in their ability to show celebrities in their natural state. In their uniquely catty appraisals of the female celebrity’s body, sweat patches, cellulite, spots and greasy hair are all no-nos. Some may defend this by saying it allows readers to feel better about themselves if celebrities are shown to be infallible too. However, the inclusion of such photo spreads does have a less earnest motive. Women’s magazines rely on advertising revenue from one of the biggest consumer industries aimed at women; the beauty industry. Yes, the female reader can comfort herself with the fact that Kate Moss has wrinkles too, but turn the page and there’s an advert for anti-ageing cream. If these magazines really wanted women to feel good about their natural imperfections, why do articles along the lines of ‘Cosmetic Surgery Made Me Feel Better About Myself’ feature so consistently and so prominently?
The representations of women these magazines present are commercial; if a magazine needs to survive with the ad revenue from concealer manufacturers and Harley Street surgeons, their readers need to be sold a notion of femininity that celebrates flawless complexions and breast implants. They are not concerned with representing women’s bodies and lives as they are.
Television
This lauding of the female form as flawless, youthful and pert-breasted can also be seen all over our television screens.
Forming a close relationship with the lad mags, celebrity rags and tabloids is reality television - again a media phenomenon of the 21st-century - which equally puts women who conform to this narrow definition of femaleness on a pedestal. The most popular female reality television contestants - particularly those who take part in Big Brother - are those who bare their breasts and act dumb (Jade, Orlaith, Chantelle). The latter’s inclusion in the Celebrity Big Brother house seemed to rest on the fact that she conforms to the standard set for female success in the entertainment world. With her blonde hair, fake tan and girly giggles, the producers obviously thought this was enough to potentially fool her housemates into believing she was a celebrity too. Doing nothing more than acting young and dumb in front of television cameras is enough to secure lucrative magazine and advertising deals. The message is a female can have all the success and attention she wants if she looks and acts according to a set of arbitrary standards set by the mainstream; standards based on her appearance, not her mind.
How can the average woman ensure she meets these standards though? After all, the natural process of ageing and any other overtly unique physical attributes can banish a woman’s chances of gaining recognition and respect. The answer lies in the makeover show. But we are not talking about a slot on daytime television which treats a woman to a new haircut and flattering make-up. The whole concept of the makeover has mutated into a more virulent strain.
Whole television series are now dedicated to makeovers - Ten Years Younger on Channel 4, Make Me Perfect on ITV1, Channel 5’s Cosmetic Surgery Live - founded on the principle that undergoing surgery is the logical approach to perfecting your appearance. The mainly female subjects who feature on these programmes either look too old, fat, masculine; in other words, they’ve all ‘let themselves go’ in one way or another. Once they’ve been critiqued, it’s off to the cosmetic surgeon who’ll mark them up and cut them open to remove excess fat on the thighs, insert silicone implants into the chest and drop acid onto the face; all presented as the perfectly reasonable solution, no bigger a deal than getting your hair cut. But it is a big deal. It is enforcing an idea upon women that again their identity and sense of self-worth is tied to their appearance and that the only way to make the most of themselves is to undergo intrusive and potentially harmful - not to mention expensive - surgery.
The reason these television series have cropped up onto our screens can again be related to the commercially competitive context the television channels are operating in. People ask why aren’t there programmes dedicated to helping women raise their self-esteem from the inside? But there’s no money to be made from telling women to believe in themselves no matter what they look like. Telling a woman she needs to improve herself by consuming - by buying anti-ageing cream and having Botox - ensures advertising and sponsorship deals for the television companies. So again, what we have is a commercialised version of womanhood sold to us as commonsensical.
Real lives
How does this all-pervasive, artificial version of womanhood so symbolic of the 21st-century media landscape, manifest itself in the lives of ordinary women and young girls? Are they affected by these hyper-sexualised and commercialised images they are led to believe are inherent to their gender?
The clearest sign that these images are having an effect on the real lives of women is in the huge growth of the cosmetic surgery industry. Botox injections and liposuction are not something only those on makeover shows have access to. The number of surgical procedures carried out by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons in 2005 was up 34.6 per cent from 2004; 22,041 operations in total. Not surprisingly, 89 per cent of these procedures were carried out on women; breast augmentation being the most popular. While it’s always simplistic and often wrong to suggest that women are having surgery because they saw it on the television, it’s certainly a factor. With the media’s obsession with the modern woman’s physicality described above, is it so surprising that women are starting to feel insecure about their bodies and considering such drastic ‘solutions’, especially when our culture treats cosmetic surgery so lightly?
What’s even more disturbing is the effect this is having on young women and teenage girls. A Sunday Times report last summer revealed that surgeons have seen a rise in the number of UK female undergraduates undergoing breast augmentations and nose jobs as a route to feeling more confident on campus. Teenage girls are not immune from the pressures; 32 per cent of them “would consider plastic surgery” according to a survey carried out by Bliss magazine last year.
Ultimately, women are getting the message that to look your age, to put on weight and be au naturel, is abhorrent to their identity as women. This message and its solution in cosmetic surgery represent control of the female body. Price tags are attached to women’s vulnerabilities and insecurities to be turned into profit for the cosmetic surgeon who ‘fixes’ them. The commercial motives behind the existence of the makeover series are being morphed into the commercial exploitation of real women’s bodies in everyday life.
While women of a certain age can remember a time before Botox, Big Brother and bare breasts staring back at them in the newsagents - perhaps counteracting their influence - can the same be said for the generation of young girls growing up in the midst of it? There’s a whole generation of pre-teen and adolescent girls who are surrounded by images of this commercial version of femaleness and cannot recall anything else. They watch Big Brother and recognise the most popular female contestants are the ones who take their clothes off. The most iconic women of their childhoods are Jordan, Abi Titmuss and Jade from Big Brother. Magazines aimed at them, such as Mizz and Shout, choose the likes of Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson to adorn their front covers.
Is it any surprise then that in a survey carried out last year, 63 per cent of teenage girls said they would rather be glamour models than doctors or teachers? That 33 per cent of the respondents saw Jordan as a role model as opposed to the nine per cent who chose JK Rowling? (www.thelab.tv survey). Object don’t seem to think so, citing the “absence of other role models and the glamourised promotion of the porn/sex industry and its workers by society at large and directly to teenagers and children,” as the reason. Young girls recognise the most successful women are those that don’t necessarily do anything; and our culture applauds this.
The marketing of porn-branded merchandise to young girls is another sign that our culture treats females as nothing more than sexual commodities. Playboy Enterprises have recently launched a whole range of merchandise from ring binders and lamps to make-up stamped with the bunny logo; and much of this is being marketed to young girls. While WH Smith put Playboy magazine on the top shelf, they see no problem putting its bunny logo stationary sets next to the Groovy Chick pencil cases. Argos has Playboy duvet sets in the Kids’ Bedding section of their catalogue. An Object spokeswoman says: “The marketing of porn-branded merchandise to children is the grooming of children by big business.” A brand that rests on selling sex and treating women as sexual commodities - with the help of family high-street retailers - is blatantly marketing these ideals to teenage girls. It amounts to the disturbing realisation that while our society rightly vilifies paedophiles, it doesn’t see a problem with people making money from the marketing of porn-endorsed merchandise to underage girls.
The feminist challenge
The images of women popular culture is serving up are at least a stagnation - if not a step back - for women’s freedom and equality.
What we are sold is a false notion, a mirage, an image of woman entirely separate and arbitrary to the real identities and experiences of womanhood.
The growth and consequential commercialisation of the media industries has had its part to play in leading to this seemingly co-ordinated, all-consuming commercial model of femininity coming at us from advertising, the press, television and the high street.
But is this the only reason for the emergence of the model? Over a decade ago, Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth pointed the finger at patriarchal society for ensuring that the beauty industry - in tandem with the media and other institutions - were enforcing the importance of a woman’s appearance on her as an opium to counter the effects of women’s newly-granted economic and legal rights which could potentially upset the patriarchal structure. This argument is still relevant; but it doesn’t explain the whole picture. Yes, the economy and the media are rooted in patriarchy - but most of the images of the 21st-century femininity have been produced by women - not men.
The overly commercialised images of women in the media have appeared counter-parallel to women’s progress in the production side of the media over the past few years. The controller of BBC television is female, while women make up a significant number of heads of department and commissioning at the company. They commission, produce and direct entire television series - 10 Years Younger is the product of a wholly female production team while Channel 4’s features department- which commissions the programme - is dominated by females; the executive producer of Make Me Perfect is a woman. The managing directors of magazine publishing brands, Emap Entertainment and IPC Connect - which contain all the celebrity and women’s weeklies of these two groups - are women. A woman edits The Sun, the biggest-selling newspaper in the country. The CEO of Playboy Enterprises and its Senior Vice President of Licensing - the arm of the corporation responsible for merchandising - are women.
It is women who are creating the programmes and magazines that uphold this commercialised version of woman, which encourage women to surgically alter their appearance, to aspire to be a Z-list celebrity. Women in positions of media power are choosing to play the commercial game, sidle up to advertisers and put profit margins before the representation and celebration of women’s real lives and identities.
They are similar to the “Female Chauvinist Pigs”, Ariel Levy discusses in her book, “women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves”.
Adding to the issue, is how these images and practices have adopted the discourse of feminism; perhaps not surprising if women have taken control of them. It is now an ‘empowered choice’ to have Botox. A young girl snuggling up under a Playboy duvet is ‘just having a bit of fun’. Stripping for lad mags and baring your breasts on television is a sign of ‘sexual liberation’.
Yet, while liberation and empowerment are terms that are constantly bandied about, feminism itself remains a dirty word. Women do not receive the same pay as men for equal work; the rape conviction rate is at an all-time low and abortion rights for women in the USA are slowly being eroded. Yet many young women - surrounded by Playboy and Paris Hilton- are growing up in a culture that says freedom and empowerment come from posing naked or appearing on reality television - not from working for anything more substantial.
This is what makes the feminist challenge to these images potentially difficult; because they have largely been produced by women and have taken on empowering and liberating connotations.
Yet it should be pointed out that the root cause of this new image of woman is bound up in the patriarchal structure; the expansion of the media and its reliance on profit, cosmetic surgery itself and the lad mags are all male domains. Women enter these powerful positions in the media only to co-opt the patriarchal, commercial attitudes that lead to these inauthentic representations that uphold these domains.
But instead of playing along, shouldn’t we step back and ask: is it right for women to be sold the idea that they need to undergo risky surgery to improve themselves; is it socially responsible to sell bunny pencil cases to underage girls; could we encourage young girls and women to aspire to be more than the next celebrity wannabe? Could we then see an alternative to the current – false - images of woman that have come to dominate our cultural landscape so fiercely?
By Michelle Wright
Summer 2006
Essay originally published in Issue 1 of Subtext (feminism, politics & culture) magazine
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