Female Chauvinist Pigs

While reading Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy, I was surprised about multiple things. Levy writes, “If you ever watch television when you have insomnia, then you are already familiar with Girls Gone Wild: late at night, infomercials show bleeped-out snippets of the brand’s wildly popular, utterly plotless videos, composed entirely from footage of young women flashing their breasts, their buttocks, or occasionally their genitals at the camera, and usually shrieking “Whoo!” while they do it.” The first time I saw the infomercials, I thought it was a mistake. How could anything like this be on television? What if kids are wake up in the middle of the night and are flipping through the channels? I couldn’t believe it. The producers of the GGW organization probably have some type of children in their family. It makes me wonder if they think about those children watching such infomercials. I was also surprised about the Olympic athletes posing for Playboy. I think that it is completely degrading for them to do that. While reading Female Chauvinist Pigs, I connect to both books that we have read prior to this one. All three books that we have read have given multiple examples to back up their argument. In Branded, Alissa Quart used many young teens/tweens as examples of how they had been branded. In Hip Hop Revolution, Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar used multiple artists to prove his point. So far in Female Chauvinist Pigs, Ariel Levy has used both “Playboy” and “Girls Gone Wild” to express her opinion. I am enjoying Female Chauvinist Pigs more than I did the other two texts.

Proposal

While writing this paper, I plan to explore Playboy. I will discuss why people pose/work for Playboy and what got them to that point. I will choose certain people that have posed for Playboy, and try to understand why they chose that route. Some of the people I am interested in writing about is the Olympic Athletes that chose to pose for Playboy. They weren't only Olympic Athletes, they were gold medalists. It's not like they needed the money, so it makes me wonder why. I was also look at Hugh Hefner and how he affects what the models do. I have read that the models are basically his slaves, and if they do just one simple thing out of line—like talk to the wrong person, they get fired. I don’t personally understand why someone could live there life knowing that they are being controlled by another person. These girls are obviously beautiful, or they wouldn’t be a part of Playboy. I want to understand why girls with so much going for them choose Playboy over going to school, or having a “normal” family. Some of the models I will use as examples to look at more closely are Pamela Anderson, Drew Barrymore, and Rachael Hunter. I will give an in depth look at how they grew up, and how they ended up with Playboy.