Female Supremacy Articles - Page 22

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Female-centered families are here to stay, and it is important to accept their legitimacy. But the same social changes that give women new options in their personal and professional lives also open new opportunities for paternal involvement in families, on far more egalitarian terms than in the past. That development is just as welcome -- and surely just as revolutionary -- as the new possibilities for lesbians and heterosexual women to rear children successfully without the involvement of fathers.

Stephanie Coontz, the author of "Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage," teaches at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

SMART GIRLS IN A SEXY WORLD

By SHEILA MARIKAR

Oct. 25, 2006 — Ariel Levy might argue that the scariest sight this Halloween isn't to be seen in a haunted house or a horror movie.

Rather, it's to be found in costume stores across the country, where normally modest women shop for Halloween outfits with the philosophy "the smaller, the tighter, the better."

Levy's 2005 book, "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture," explores the social trend exemplified by all those Playboy Bunnies, sexy stewardesses and hot nurses you'll see on Halloween — women who embrace the idea that sex equals power and who thrive in a society that continually encourages them to exploit their sexuality for fun and profit.

"Female Chauvinist Pigs," just out in paperback, is only a year old but it already reads a little like ancient history.