The empty feminist pews

Some interesting thoughts in the Herald newspaper today:
http://smh.com.au/news/opinion/todays-girls-just-want-to-have-fun-with-the-boys/2005/12/30/1135915694082.html?page=2

"But still there remained that niggling uneasiness, that internal voice that asks how it is we've brought up a generation of young women who appear to equate equality with a striving to behave like boys but whose feminine role models exhibit a stereotypical womanhood, one in which the overtly sexual and physical is paramount. Ariel Levy's book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture documents beautifully what I had vaguely noted and not quite understood.
Her argument suggests that while feminism aimed to liberate women from the bonds imposed by male culture, today's young women have taken on self-imposed chains in the mistaken belief they empower them.

Empowerment for women, she writes, has been bent to the point that the Playboy logo is common on teenage girls' T-shirts and nighties, that stripping and pole dancing are the norm in the average rock video (the Herald ran a story about young women attending suburban stripping classes just this week) and so much of what was the province of the porn star - Brazilian bikini waxes, breast implants, full body depilation - has become the fodder of teen zines.

Levy observes that the young women she interviewed, who both absorbed and gave life to this raunch culture, also argued that theirs is simply a form of sexual liberation, that all they are doing is being one of the boys. But Levy argues the opposite is true: how can women conforming to stereotypical male fantasies do anything to enhance female choice?"

Indeed, where are the ideals of the powerful woman, independent of male demands and approval?

If the pews of the churches are emptying, things in the feminist church are no better.