- Dawn Morgan
- Ariel Levy (center) at the conclusion of her speech at Eckerd on Tuesday night
Ariel Levy has been writing and reporting for the New Yorker since 2008, and before that she served on the staff of New York magazine, but what has distinguished her from the pack of New York city based journalists is her 2006 book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture , which continues to be taught in Women's Studies classes years after it was first published. It's also been the vehicle for her to give speeches around the country on college campuses about feminism in the 21st century, such as Tuesday night at Eckerd College in Gulfport.
Speaking before a crowd that looked to be between 120-150 people at the Fox Theatre, Levy talked about what led her in the early part of the aughts to write Female Chauvinist Pigs.
Levy said it was around a decade ago when she began seeing the first elements of what she calls "raunch culture" begin to take root in American pop culture, referring to things like Comedy Central's "Man Show" that featured two women producers, as well as young women willing to exploit themselves for free in the making of Joe Francis' "Girls Gone Wild" videos. "I wrote this book because I noticed there was something weird happened," she began.
This article appears in Apr 26 – May 2, 2012.