In which I dissent from Rich Lowry’s lamentation of raunch culture:
In her Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Levy asks how it is that if feminism won, so many unenlightened, bimbo-loving guys are so happy. She reports from the front lines, traveling with the crew of Girls Gone Wild, which films young women flashing the camera for videos sold on late-night TV. They are eager to perform. “It sounds like a fantasy world dreamed up by teenage boys,” she writes. “Any hot girl you see will peel off her bikini top, lift up her skirt … all you have to do is ask.”
“A baseline expectation that women will be constantly exploding in little blasts of exhibitionism runs throughout our culture,” Levy argues. “‘Girls Gone Wild’ is not extraordinary, it’s emblematic.” Women strive to look the part. Breast-augmentation procedures zoomed from 32,607 a year in 1992 to 264,041 last year.
While I will admit that I am extremely pessimistic about the ultimate fate of the Equalitarian Society, I find it impossible to lament the fact that significantly more American women are now sporting finely sculpted C- and D-sized breasts. I know a fair number of women who have upsized on the topside, but I had no idea how popular the procedure was becoming.
I wonder how long it will be before some grim-faced politician somberly declares the War on Porn? Like the War on Drugs and the Bush administration, that will be another disastrous, invasive and liberty-destroying beast embraced by deluded conservatives.