Ariel Levy

Ariel Levy is a contributing editor at The New Yorker magazine, where she recently wrote about the life and death of feminist Andrea Dworkin. She has written cover stories on a wide range of subjects, including the actor Jude Law, the Atkins diet, and the recreational use of medication for mental health. Female Chauvinist Pigs is her first book.

Ariel Levy has uncovered a new character in American culture the Female Chauvinist Pig a woman who objectifies other women and sells herself out as well. In FEMALE CHAUVINIST PIGS: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Levy argues that Female Chauvinist Pigs are everywhere you look. These women are not on the outskirts, theyre typical of a culture obsessed with Britney Spears, breast implants, and Brazilian bikini waxes. In Female Chauvinist Pigs, Levy coins the term "raunch culture" to define the spread of the aesthetics and values of a red light district into mainstream society and she argues that this trend has become so pervasive, we barely notice it in action.

Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell calls Ariel Levy "feminism's newest and most provocative voice, brilliantly laying bare the contradictions and evasions and self-deceptions that pass for empowerment." Levy conducted extensive interviews with women and girls across the country to reveal how this trend permeates almost every aspect of our society - from Spring Break in Miami Beach to the corporate headquarters of Playboy Enterprises in Chicago and from the high schools of Oakland to elegant luncheons on Park Avenue.

As writer Cathleen Schine puts it, Female Chauvinist Pigs is "both a convincing expos of sex and desire in contemporary America and an important cultural history." With intelligence and wit, Levy contends that the rise of raunch doesnt show how far women have come, it only proves how far they have left to go.