sex-crazed or sexually free: can a feminist wear Playboy?

For over a year, a pink hooded jumper has sat folded between the neutrals and blacks of my wardrobe, smelling of mothballs and awaiting patiently for me to end its hibernation by ripping off the price tag and caressing it against my skin. It’s not that I dislike the hoodie; in fact, I think it looks caaauuuute. With its pastel pink tie-dye design, cropped length, and tightly fitted hem, it is a statement piece for sure and one that is bound to show off my waistline. But I must admit, there was something I had overlooked upon purchase. Embroidered on the front of the hoodie sits a silhouetted bunny, its eye ready to wink at anyone who dares to gawk: it’s the iconic Playboy logo.

It’s just a label, I remember telling myself at the digital checkout. If post-feminism and Carrie Bradshaw had taught me anything, it was that wearing the infamous bunny logo would reveal to the world that I am free to be me; free to make my own decisions over what I wear without hostility from the sex-radical feminists breathing down my neck. However, when the hoodie finally arrived and I tried it on, I couldn’t help but feel guilty. I felt as though I were betraying the sisterhood of feminist thinkers and activists whose philosophies had helped me to raise my voice in the world and to question the patriarchy, which continues to fabricate illusions over female agency.

Did this hoodie really represent freedom or was it merely a straitjacket? If I wore it in public, would I suddenly find myself trapped behind the gates of the Playboy mansion, sipping mojitos poolside with men I despise, and gossiping with women in giant fur ears, questioning their acquiescence to supporting an industry that commercialises their sexuality for the pleasures of men? It wasn’t until I read Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy that I became aware of why I found it so difficult to choose between my inner sexy self or my sexist self. It wasn’t just a label; it was so much more.

Female Chauvinist Pigs questions the rise of raunch culture and its influence on female sexuality during the 2000s. From leaked sex scandals, MTV’s Girls Gone Wild, bestselling pornstar autobiographies, and televised fashion shows where lingerie-clad angels strutted down runways, sex was clearly the hot topic. Levy points out how during this period women were not only objectified by western culture but were encouraged to objectify themselves. Feminist scholar and cultural theorist, Rosalind Gill describes this as sexual objectification masked as sexual subjectification––a concept many feminists claim still exists today.

Sexual subjectification has been manufactured by patriarchal power structures, often implemented through popular culture and mass media as a form of female liberation. Big corporations know that sex sells, so what better way to misconstrue such an intimate and personal experience by plastering it across billboards and magazines and slapping a sign of ‘empowerment’ over it. This was never about freedom, but profit.

Raunch culture has simplified the way we view sex appeal. Levy explores how the norm of the ‘lusty, busty, exhibitionist’, manufactured by companies like Playboy, have alienated other forms of sexual expression that do not fit into this narrow, highly commodified window. ‘If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire,’ says Levy. ‘We need to allow ourselves the freedom to figure out what we internally want from sex instead of mimicking whatever popular culture holds up to us as sexy. That would be sexual liberation.’

Female Chauvinist Pigs was published in 2005, but in many ways the book is still relevant within our highly sexualised digital landscape today. If companies like Playboy have distorted girls’ views on sexuality during the flip phone era, have social media companies like Facebook taken the baton during the smart phone era?

Social media platforms feature an abundance of touched-up, filtered, cropped, and warped images and videos, which have generated a culture of social comparison, leading to an increase in cosmetic surgery procedures and mental illnesses such as body dysmorphia. Girls on these platforms, some as young as ten, have not matured enough to understand the enigma of self-control that has been perpetuated by raunchy pop-culture over the past twenty years. Images of the ‘perfect body’ flood our screens to the point where the body begins to stand as the sole identity. Forget about the teenage girl behind the bikini selfie posted on Instagram, ignore what the promo model is thinking whilst lying seductively on the bed wearing a new lingerie set, nobody cares about these women – her thoughts, her desires, her feelings – the viewers only want to see the body, her assets. This is success. And in order for girls to be successful they must imitate what is currently trending as ‘sexy’, always striving for the illusion of the perfect body.

When I first saw the Playboy hoodie online it didn’t exactly scream ‘objectification’ to me because I was so numb to the brand’s underlining meaning. Growing up the silhouetted bunny was everywhere – on car seat covers, jewellery, beach towels, bedspreads, apparel, even cocktail glasses – it was synonymous with the golden arches towering over the freeway or the black tick on the side of a pair of sneakers. Because it was so ingrained into everyday life, it seemed normal for the female body to become an obsession.

I don’t think feminism is full of contradictions, I just think that it has generated great angst and apprehension for those who have always remained on top of the social ladder – cis, white, heteronormative males. For decades, patriarchal power structures have distorted and confined female sexual liberation in order to regain control. But power and profit are not the only important things in western society, so too is knowledge. If I had never read Female Chauvinist Pigs I would have worn the hoodie in public, strutted down the sidewalk and ignored my grandmother’s raised brows. I would have thought that I was sexually free, that this piece of clothing was the epitome of sexiness, and perhaps that feminism was irrelevant. Remaining unconscious to the ongoing commodification of the female body doesn’t alleviate injustice, it exasperates it.

It’s too late to return the hoodie, and I’d hate for the local Salvos to have to question whether to trash it or rack it, so I’ll keep it for now. Perhaps I’ll just wear it to bed. After all, it really is cute.

Caitlin Burns is a freelance writer from Melbourne, Australia. Her work has been published in Style Magazine Australia, Intrepid Travel, The Blue Nib Literary Magazine, and Wordly Magazine. You can check out more of her work at www.caitlinburns.org