Raunch Culture… Empowering or Oppressive?

Like many topics of discussion, raunch culture provides another controversy over interpretation. There are two opposing view of this so called raunch culture. Is sexual provocativeness and promiscuousness by women an advancement in the fight for equality or merely another means by which woman are objectified by men?
Starting with the view postfeminism, raunch culture is looked at as a means empowerment for women. The postfeminist wants to escape the sense that women are passive victims of patriarchy, rather women are now entitled to enjoy cultural live as they choose (Baker, 284). Therefore, raunch culture can be viewed as a representation of female liberty to embrace sexuality “like a man” in a sense. In accordance to these views, women are destabilizing the norms of sexuality and presenting behavioral tendencies previously common to men.
On the contrary, traditional feminist find sexually explicit material dehumanizing and demeaning. Raunch culture is just another means of objectifying women. Just because women are choosing to openly display their sexuality is not resulting in equality with men. A very popular voice on this issue of raunch culture is Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Levy proposes that the goal of raunch culture is not enhancing or enabling female pleasure, but instead encourages an imitation or performance of that pleasure. Who is being served? Men. This behavior is seeking male approval and attention, Levi notes “attention’s not the same thing as power”.