Ariel Levy wrote in Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of [Teen] Raunch Culture that she first started to notice a rise in teen raunch culture around 2002 when she started seeing, among other raunchy concerns, teens: [...] wearing jeans cut so low they exposed what came to be known as butt cleavage paired with miniature tops [...] and pierced navels alike.”
Levy defined Male Chauvinist Pigs as “men who regarded women as pieces of meat”, while she defined Female Chauvinist Pigs as “women who make sex objects of other women and of themselves” (i.e., self-sexualization).
In addition to Female Chauvinist Pigs, Levy coined the phrase “raunch feminism”, which is where “stripping is a valuable to elevating womankind as gaining an education” and where “[t]he basic requirements are hot girls and small garments.”
Levy related that Jenna Jameson, “the world’s highest grossing porn star”, wrote the best seller How to Make Love Like a Porn Star that was published by Judith Regan. Interestingly, Regan opined on CBS, “I believe that there is a porno-ization of the culture [...]”
Levy gave an example of the “porno-ization of the culture” when she wrote about “Cardio Striptease” classes that were offered at Crunch gyms in big cities like New York, LA, and Chicago where students were encouraged “to attend their workout sessions in bras and thongs”. Provocatively, for her “sweet sixteen celebration”, a California nymphet and eight of her friends participated in a Cardio Striptease class. (Levy did not disclose if the nymphets wore bras and thongs.)
Relatedly, Anne, a student at Head-Royce, a private school in the wealthy section of Oakland, shared: “[...] like my friend is having her eighteenth birthday party and she wants to have strippers there.”
The chapter most relevant to this blog is intriguingly titled “Pigs in Training”, which is in reference to teen Female Chauvinist Pigs (i.e., self-sexualized nymphets).
[Note: As I’ve previously detailed what Levy wrote on Swiffer Girl, (i.e., Danielle Miller, a Horace Mann prep middle school student, who produced three (3) self-shot teen masturbating videos that prominently displayed a Swiffer broom.), I’ll avoid her here.]
Levy began the chapter with several examples of teen oral sex - including middle school school bus oral sex:
There’s a rumor going around that “rainbow parties” are the latest teen rage. Rainbow parties are good old-fashioned slumber parties, with a distinctly contemporary twist: All the girls in attendance put on a different color of lipstick, invite over one lucky boy, and then one by one they treat him to oral sex until voilà! His penis is a spectral color chart.
(This reminded me of a previous post where we related that Laura Sessions Stepp wrote in the article "Parents Are Alarmed by an Unsettling New Fad in Middle Schools: Oral Sex" (July 8, 1999) for the Washington Post that nymphets at Williamsburg Middle School, "a mostly upper-income community" in Arlington, Virginia, were performing oral sex at house parties and in parks.)
In December 2002, a middle-school girl performed fellatio on the high school boy sitting next to her on the school bus in Kingston, Massachusetts, while their classmates watched.
The same thing had happened with a pair of seventh-graders on a school bus back in 1999 in Talbot County, Maryland, where an eighth-grade girl also fellated her neighbor during a crowded study hall.
These incidents may have inspired two thirteen-year-olds in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, who were suspended for engaging in a round of oral sex (her on him) in the back of a school bus during a spring field trip in 2004.
These examples hit home, because I know of a Manhattan public school teacher whom had a scandal in his freshman year science class. It happened the day after his students returned from a field trip when a schoolgirl learned that her boyfriend received oral sex from their classmate - on the school bus.
In the novel Hummingbirds, Mr. Landry, the headmistress of Carmine-Casey - a Manhattan prep school, shared with Binhammer, an English teacher, that she: “[...] got a call from a parent just two weeks ago giving her ninth-grade daughter permission to leave school when her boyfriend, who is a freshman in college, came to pick her up in his car.”
And in an example of art imitating life, Alexa, who, at the time, was a junior at Oyster Bay High, shared with Levy that 7th graders were “hooking up or having sex” with high school seniors:
“In my school, what was very popular was seventh- or eighth- or ninth-grade girls hooking up or having sex, whatever, with junior and senior guys,” she said. “Parents kept calling the school, like, why is this senior at my house when my daughter is a freshman? They dressed so provocatively, the guys couldn’t really tell how old the girls were…all they see is a hot girl.”
Thus, it appears that those Oyster Bay High nymphets were practicing what Levy termed “raunch feminism” where : “The basic requirements are hot [teen] girls and small garments.”
Degrassi | Middle School Thong
Unsurprisingly, Levy wrote that “everybody” at Oyster Bay High shared with her that they wore teenthongs. And Levy related a story about a middle-school nymphet (“who was 12 or 13”) at Head-Royce whom: “[...] pulled up her shirt, pulled out the strap of her thong from under the side of her skirt, and snapped it [...]”!
In addition to performing oral sex (on school buses) and wearing thongs under small garments, it’s not unusual for nymphets to participate in lipstick lesbianism or what the previous owner of my copy of Female Chauvinist Pigs annotated as “bisexual appropriation”.
Therefore, it’s not unanticipated that Levy described “girl-on-girl action at school dances”. For example, David and Anne, classmates at Head-Royce, shared with Levy that schoolgirls do live girl-on-girl scenes to “appeal to the guys” (i.e., for “a lot of attention…definitely”) :
An example, he said, would be all the lap dancing and girl-on-girl action at school dances. “There’s this whole stereotype, and it’s probably largely true, that guys kind of like two girls kissing each other. So you’ll see a guy sitting on a chair—at, you know, a high school dance—and two girls will just go up and give him this huge lap dance and start making out. [...] just doing it to appeal to the “guys…always trying to find this new way in to appeal to the guys.
One of David’s best female friends, Anne, agreed. “Definitely girls hook up with other girls because they know the guys will like it,” she said. “They think, Then the guys are going to want to hook up with me and give me a lot of attention…definitely. If they think a guy’s going to like it, they’ll do it.
But it appears that (some) teachers and schools, like at Dalton in Manhattan, may condone schoolgirl (oral) sex and even teen masturbation. For example, Peggy Cowan, the president of the New Jersey Physicians Group, related to Levy: “I heard of one woman teacher who tells kids how to masturbate. Explaining it! About fantasizing when you shower!”
And we shared that Tamar Lewin posted in "Teen-Agers Alter Sexual Practices, Thinking Risks Will Be Avoided" (April 5, 1997) for the New York Times that at Hunter, a top high school on Manhattan's wealthy Upper East Side, provides "mint-flavored condoms with no spermicide, labeled ''ONLY for oral sex'' for the Hunter High nymphets.
In the end, Levy related that the behavior of teen Female Chauvinist Pigs is not always about getting attention. In some cases, nymphets are expressing their sexuality. Connectedly, Levy shared an anecdote about Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, which Levy referred to as a “groundbreaking collection of women’s sexual fantasies”. In terms of teens expressing their sexuality, here are three examples from My Secret Garden:
Clarissa shared that she remembers when she and her friend were caught masturbating with candles when they were 12.
Theda's first sexual fantasy started after she gazed upon her teacher's "rotund posterior" when she was about 7 or 8. She wrote that she had "an infantile urge” to slide her hand “[…] down his bum cheeks and round to 'the front' [...]".
Alexandra fantasized about having an affair with her high school teacher. She stated emphatically, "[...] I'm sure it would not be a fantasy if I gave him a little encouragement."
Levy even shared that some of the same sexual fantasies she had when she was “very young” currently run through her bed:
“Likewise, certain themes have run through my sexual fantasies since I was very young, just as they now run through my bed. Nobody had to teach me how to want these things, or how to get them.”
And the author shared that when she was a 17-year-old high school student, she visited Wesleyan, where, as part of her college tour, she was taken to a “Naked Party” that was decorated with a crepe paper penis and vagina. And Levy learned that at Wesleyan: “Group sex, to say nothing of casual sex, was *de rigueur.” Needless to say, Levy is an alumna of Wesleyan. But doesn’t Levy’s anecdote contradict her subtitle? Maybe there hasn’t been a [sharp] rise in teen raunch culture but rather a gradual continuation.
*de ri·gueur | adjective: required by etiquette or current fashion. (Oxford Languages) [Emphasis added]
Interesting, girls have always gone to great lengths to attract the boys. I remember as a highschooler, being dumped as a friend, when a girl found a new boyfriend. Or else, I dumped them because the boy was all they could talk about. They would crawl back into the friendship outside of school, when they broke up, desperate for sympathy from me. I felt about this switch in allegiances back then. It was as if they believed a male friend was way more important than a female one.
I feel sorry for the nymphets. Sure they'll get a lot of interesting sex, but never anything deep and meaningful, and after a while that will be tedious and unrewarding for them without love. Pics on Facebook or Instagram will be seen before job interviews, and they'll be judged harshly.
Worst of all, their brains are not developed enough to cope with the ramifications of oversexualised behaviour for no long term reward. Being considered a sexualised object, negates and overrides any good qualities they might have.
Wholly dependant on their looks for attention, the nymphets will be plagued by feeling worthless, hollowed out, and having low self esteem all their lives.
Like it says in that great old song: "You'd better watch out for the skin deep..."
Interesting, girls have always gone to great lengths to attract the boys. I remember as a highschooler, being dumped as a friend, when a girl found a new boyfriend. Or else, I dumped them because the boy was all they could talk about. They would crawl back into the friendship outside of school, when they broke up, desperate for sympathy from me. I felt about this switch in allegiances back then. It was as if they believed a male friend was way more important than a female one.
I feel sorry for the nymphets. Sure they'll get a lot of interesting sex, but never anything deep and meaningful, and after a while that will be tedious and unrewarding for them without love. Pics on Facebook or Instagram will be seen before job interviews, and they'll be judged harshly.
Worst of all, their brains are not developed enough to cope with the ramifications of oversexualised behaviour for no long term reward. Being considered a sexualised object, negates and overrides any good qualities they might have.
Wholly dependant on their looks for attention, the nymphets will be plagued by feeling worthless, hollowed out, and having low self esteem all their lives.
Like it says in that great old song: "You'd better watch out for the skin deep..."