Ariel Levy might argue that the scariest sight this Halloween isn’t to be seen in a haunted house or a horror movie.
Rather, it’s to be found in costume stores across the country, where normally modest women shop for Halloween outfits with the philosophy “the smaller, the tighter, the better.”
Levy’s 2005 book, “Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture,” explores the social trend exemplified by all those Playboy Bunnies, sexy stewardesses and hot nurses you’ll see on Halloween — women who embrace the idea that sex equals power and who thrive in a society that continually encourages them to exploit their sexuality for fun and profit.
Levy argues that pornography and plastic surgery have so invaded pop culture that Americans expect women to ramp up their sexuality at all times.
“Because we have determined that all empowered women must be overtly and publicly sexual, and because the only sign of sexuality we seem to be able to recognize is a direct allusion to red-light entertainment, we have laced the sleazy energy and aesthetic of a topless club or a Penthouse shoot throughout our entire culture,” she writes.
Flashing for the cameras of “Girls Gone Wild,” sleeping with dozens of men, wearing thong underwear, idolizing “Sex and the City,” refuting the “girly-girl” stereotype: according to Levy, these are ways in which women have fooled themselves into thinking sex equals empowerment.
In reality, she says, this breed of feminists are just female chauvinist pigs, or FCPs.
Read more at ABCNews
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