Female Chauvinist Pigs (19 page)

1
“When I was in porn”:
Frank Rich, “Finally, Porn Does Prime Time,”
New York Times,
July 27, 2003.

2
“embraced by young women”:
Jennifer Harper, “Buy Playboy for the Articles—Really,”
Washington Times,
October 3, 2002.

An earlier version of the Girls Gone Wild section of this chapter first appeared as dispatches from Miami, Florida, on www.slate.com on March 22, 23, and 24, 2004.

3
“a public execution”:
www.girlsgonewild.com.

4
“radical feminists, with our deeper understanding”:
Susan Brownmiller,
In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution
(Delta, 1999).

5
“I believe that there is a porno-ization”: 60 Minutes Wednesday,
CBS, January 5, 2005.

6
“Strong, powerful women”:
I interviewed Jeff Costa after I sat in on a Cardio Striptease class he taught on March 19, 2003, at a Crunch gym in Los Angeles.

7
A contestant on
The Bachelor: The fall 2004 season.

8
“did this for nothing”: Larry King Live,
CNN, May 1, 2004.

9
Between 1992 and 2004, breast augmentation:
American Society of Plastic Surgeons, www.plasticsurgery.org/ public_education/Statistical-Trends.cfm.

10
“The younger girls think”:
Alex Kuczynski, “A Lovelier You, with Off-the-Shelf Parts,”
New York Times,
May 2, 2004.

11
“The hetero porno antics”:
Simon Doonan, “Simon Says,”
New York Observer,
September 22, 2003.

12
“If that’s not being part of the Establishment”:
Alex Kuczynski, “The Sex-Worker Literati,”
New York Times,
November 4, 2001.

13
“who hasn’t dreamed”:
Libby Copeland, “Naughty Takes Off,”
Washington Post,
November 30, 2003.

14
No region of the United States:
Jim Holt, “A States’ Right Left?”
New York Times Magazine,
November 21, 2004.

15
In fact, eight of the ten:
Andrew Ward, “South Finds Families That Pray Together May Not Stay Together: Lawmakers Count the Cost of Embarrassingly High Divorce Rates,”
Financial Times,
January 24, 2005.

16
“my boyfriends always tell me”:
Vanessa Grigoriadis, “Princess Paris,”
Rolling Stone,
November 19, 2003.

17
“it was sexy stuff”:
Seymour M. Hersh, “Escape and Evasion,”
The New Yorker,
November 12, 2001.

18
“After Enron, Deregulation Is Looking Less Sexy”:
Kirk Johnson,
New York Times,
February 10, 2002.

19
“She’s a wonderful role model”:
“Driven: Christina Aguilera,” VH1, August 6, 2002.

20
Jay Leno sits floppy faced:
Though Leno has maintained a long lead in the late night ratings, he has also announced that he will turn over
The Tonight Show
to Conan O’Brien in 2009.

21
her $65 million contract:
Michael Starr, “Matt Gets $5M Less Than Katie,”
New York Post,
May 2, 2002.

22
I went to visit her in Chicago:
I interviewed Christie Hefner, Linda Havard, and Cleo Wilson for about one hour each at the Playboy offices in Chicago on May 8 and 9, 2003.

23
“Beginning with nude modeling”:
Jenna Jameson,
How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale
(Regan Books, 2004).

24
recruited to be live-in hookers:
Ron Moreau and Michael Hirsh, “Poor Little Rich Kid,”
Newsweek,
August 17, 1998.

25
“When you get yourself into the really contortionist”:
“Centerfold Babylon,” VH1, October 12, 2003.

26
“Our job is to go out and bring ’em back”:
Ibid.

27
“I would like to be in close association”:
Mary Cantwell, “The American Woman,”
Mademoiselle,
June 1976.

28
“theatrical bravura”:
Susan Brownmiller,
Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape
(Simon & Schuster, 1975).

29
“Being good at what was expected of me”:
Susan Brownmiller,
Femininity
(Fawcett Columbine, 1984).

30
“Women as a class”:
Susan Brownmiller, “Sisterhood Is Powerful: A Member of the Women’s Liberation Movement Explains What It’s All About,”
New York Times Magazine,
March 15, 1970.

31
“Background, education, ideology”:
Todd Gitlin,
The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
(Bantam, 1987).

32
“The position of women in SNCC”:
I’ve heard Stokely Carmichael’s infamous quote reiterated in various, slightly different formulations (which always include the words “position,” “women,” and “prone”). The phrasing I quote here is the most common, cited by both Gitlin in
The Sixties
and Brownmiller in
In Our Time.

33
“Friedan, the mother of the movement”:
Brownmiller, “Sisterhood Is Powerful.”

34
“The momentum was extraordinary”:
Telephone interviews with Susan Brownmiller, January 2001 and January 2004 and several subsequent e-mails.

35
“I was committed to being a part”:
Ayers was quoted in Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s remarkable film
The Weather Underground
(Docurama, 2003), for which the documentarians interviewed everyone from Don Strickland, the FBI agent assigned to stalk the Weathermen, to Kathleen Cleaver, a former member of the Black Panther party and the wife of Panther Eldridge Cleaver.

36
“We served a mix of Italian”:
Telephone interview with Dolores Alexander, December 1, 2003.

37
“It was more than jubilant”:
Telephone interview with Jill Ward, December 13, 2003.

38
Hite distributed 100,000 questionnaires:
Shere Hite,
The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality
(Dell, 1976).

39
“our ferocious antisexuality”:
Oriana Fallaci, “I Am in the Center of the World,”
Look,
January 10, 1967.

40
“I was a feminist before”:
Wil S. Hylton, “What I’ve Learned,”
Esquire,
June 2002.

41
“rather alienating and dull”:
Lisa Eisner and Roman Alonso, “An Eye for the Ladies,”
New York Times Magazine,
March 30, 2003.57

42
“The rabbit, the bunny, in America”:
Fallaci, “I Am in the Center of the World.”

43
“If you’re somebody’s sister”:
Hugh M. Hefner, “Introduction,”
Playboy,
December 1953.

44
“Women were the major beneficiary”:
Hylton, “What I’ve Learned.”

45
“at a loss for words”: Inside Deep Throat
(film), Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (Universal, 2005).

46
“I looked at pornography”:
Michael Moorcock, “Fighting Talk,”
New Statesman & Society,
April 21, 1995.

47
“Suddenly, pornography became the enemy”:
Interview with Candida Royalle, New York City, December 1, 2003.

48
“[I]f one’s sexual experience has always”:
Andrea Dworkin,
Intercourse
(Free Press, 1997).

49
“Bill Clinton’s fixation on oral sex”:
Andrea Dworkin, “Dear Bill and Hillary,”
The Guardian
(London), January 29, 1998.

50
“The new sexual revolution is”:
www.cakenyc.com/index nav.html as of March 23, 2005.

51
“gooey, sweet, yummy”: 20/20,
ABC, February 20, 2004.

52
perceived weaknesses of
Sex and the City: They write, for instance, “moving on to a [2004] episode of
Sex and the City,
women were treated to a rather unhealthy dose of what we like to call ‘Have your CAKE, but don’t eat it too.’ Samantha is told (by a male physician) that her breast cancer could be caused by the fact that she has not had any children—swiftly invoking the age-old idea that being sexually active without reproductive intentions may be threatening to your health. Unfortunately, the message ended there and did not in any way explain why, how, or if there is an increased chance of having breast cancer if a woman does not bear children. Moreover, what could have been a great opportunity to make a positive statement about women and their sexual choices quickly dissolved into a reactionary response.” I think they’re being weirdly literal here. The whole point of the episode was that being diagnosed with cancer is a shocking, destabilizing experience, so the character Samantha bolted from her male physician’s office before he could explain anything or offer any positive statements about women and their sexual choices, telling him, “You’re lucky to have touched my breasts!”

53
the front page of the
New York Post: John Lehmann, “Inside the Freak Box,”
New York Post,
June 12, 2001.

54
“CAKE Underground”:
October 3, 2003

55
“serious sisters of the sixties”:
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards,
Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000).

56
“I was standing in the shower”:
I interviewed Erica Jong on the telephone on February 15, 2002, and we spoke again in person after an event at the 92nd Street YMHA on November 4, 2003, in celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of
Fear of Flying.

57 Maxim
magazine’s “Hot 100”:
June 11, 2003.

58 “you
try getting 800 people”:
Virginia Vitzthum, “Stripped of Our Senses,”
Elle,
December 2003.

59
“They kicked Betty upstairs”:
Telephone interview with Jacqui Ceballos, January 2004.

Selections from this chapter originally appeared in the article “Female Chauvinist Pigs,”
New York
magazine, January 22, 2001, including my interviews with Sherry, Anyssa, and Rachel and my visit to the set of
The Man Show.

60
On the first warm day:
The New York Women in Film & Television brunch for Sheila Nevins was held at The Society of Illustrators in New York on May 31, 2000.

61
She was once profiled:
Nell Casey, “The 25 Smartest Women in America,”
Mirabella,
September 1999.

62
“a revered player”:
“New York’s 100 Most Influential Women in Business,”
Crain’s New York Business,
September 27–October 3, 1999.

63
In 2003, women held:
This information comes from Dr. Martha M. Lauzen, a professor at San Diego State University’s School of Communications, who has conducted studies of both the film and television industries annually for the past decade.

64
“I think really that your desire”:
Nancy Milford,
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Random House, 2001).

65
“from behind”:
Gail Sheehy, “Flying Solo,”
Vanity Fair,
August 2001.

66
“masculine kind of independence”:
Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock,
Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon
(Norton, 2000).

67
“I have the biggest cock in the building!”:
Judith Newman, “The Devil and Miss Regan,”
Vanity Fair,
January 2005.

68
Erin Eisenberg, a city arts administrator, and her little sister Shaina:
I met with the Eisenbergs at their parents’ apartment in New York City on October 8, 2001.

69
“My best mentors and teachers”:
Carrie Gerlach e-mailed a letter to the editor on January 30, 2001 in response to my
New York
magazine article “Female Chauvinist Pigs.”

70
“the wrongheadedness, distortions and wishful thinkings”:
J. C. Furnas,
Goodbye to Uncle Tom
(William Sloane Associates, 1956).

71
“a Spanish gentleman”:
Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(Norton Critical Editions, 1994).

72
“in all other respects as white”:
James Baldwin, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,”
Partisan Review
16, June 1949.

73
“theatrical industry called ‘Tomming’ ”:
Mary C. Henderson and Joseph Papp,
Theater in America
(Abrams, 1986).

74
“if civilization had been left in female hands”:
Camille Paglia,
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
(Yale University Press, 1990).

75
“They have this stupid, pathetic”:
Camille Paglia,
Sex, Art, and American Culture
(Vintage, 1992).

76
“even made teeny-weeny bikinis”:
Mary Wells Lawrence,
A Big Life (in Advertising)
(Knopf, 2002).

77
“Mary Wells Uncle Tommed it”:
Steinem made the comment on the local television news in Dallas, Texas. Wells Lawrence printed an account of her reaction in her memoir (ibid).