Check out this great book by Jessica Valenti
I get so frustrated when feminism gets blamed for the degradation of contemporary society in the United States, specifically in relation to negative connotations of sexuality. At the present moment my frustration lies with Jill Buck, author of the article “The Downfall of ‘Do Me’ Feminism.” The title, most certainly phrased as such for its shock value, doesn’t actually have anything to do with the book the article features. The introduction claims that “the new feminist movement has attempted to convince women that true liberation lies in being sexually aggressive, and adopting what they believe to be a male tendency to remove sex from emotion” and yet the rest of the article does not support a single one of these claims. The article highlights the book Prude by Carol Platt Liebau, a conservative take on the hyper sexualization of young women in contemporary society. Liebau doesn’t talk about feminism at all in the interview Buck’s article highlights, but talks about sex in an open and moderate way.
Now, while I don’t doubt that Prude has a very conservative view of sexuality, especially for young girls (Liebau is a staunch Republican) but everything I have read about the book (I was not about to spend the $15.99 to purchase the book and Amazon didn’t have an inside view of the book) points to the fact that Liebau has some good points. Points such as Paris Hilton and Britney Spears are not good role models, duh. I don’t think there is a self-respecting feminist dead or alive that would be proud of the image those two have portrayed. What Prude does is join in the conversation. There is a great conversation going on about young women and sexuality, Jessica Valenti’s book The Purity Myth, addresses many of the same issues, though from a different perspective. What we don’t need is blind acceptance of the contemporary media landscape; people pretending that the media isn’t effective or penetrable. What we don’t need is a mud slinging match with scathing headlines that have no support. That would be playing the media game the likes of Paris Hilton and Britney spout.
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