Raunchy Jersey (Media Project)

The television show, The Jersey Shore is a chauvinist pig’s playground for women who “get it,” men who own it and everyone else in-between. Ariel Levy in Female Chauvinist Pigs explains the so-called “raunch culture” of popular American media as an expression of power through sexuality, specifically the female heterosexual and ownership of “it.” She describes this “it” as an ego boost in the form of treatment as an honorary man (page 117). In The Jersey Shore the female characters work the raunch culture to their advantage. Keep in mind this is a reality TV show which has a lot of controversy about its portrayal of Italian Americans, but not so much of women. The characters/people spend most of their summer on the New Jersey shore looking to “hook-up” but not fall in love; however sex is perfectly acceptable. Now I’m not judging having sex without love, but I what wish to examine is why people feel empowered by sex without love specifically through the character Snookie. I will also examine how violence perpetuates raunch culture though and around sexuality.

In the third episode, Snookie is hanging out in the house eating pickles and wearing a hat with the label “porn-star in training.” The conversation starts when one of the male cast members says, “Snooks, who are you hooking up with Snooks?” She responds, “I don’t know, lets find me a man to bring home.” She then takes a pickle out of the refrigerator and two of the male cast members start laughing at her about eating the pickle. She tells them how she eats the pickle (sucking the juice out first) and the scene ends with Paulie, a male housemate, telling her she “really is a porn-star in training” (see right). Snookie here is appealing to raunch culture to try to “bring a man home” or perhaps entice one of the men she to whom she is talking. Her overt sexual innuendo about sucking on a “pickle” while wearing a hat that portrays her idols as porn-stars, exemplifies her real goal of finding a man.

Ariel Levy would say that most of Snookie’s behavior is an attempt to gain power by subjecting herself to objectification. I agree that Snookie’s actions are motivated by an attempt to gain power, but I think she can only understand her power through affection from a man, not respect from a man like Levy says. Snookie and the other female characters on the show use sex as a way to find love. They consider love the only thing that can validate them as people. They are all female chauvinist pigs in the sense that they use their bodies and attempt to be “in” on the joke of female objectification, but their main goal is not equality but love from a man. Levy discusses raunch culture in the eyes of the educated white upper/middle class woman and definitely not through the “guidos” at the Jersey shore. Snookie’s actions on the show represent how most women, not women with the highest forms of education, understand raunch culture. They see it as a way to empower themselves through validation of being considered “hot” and worthy of a man’s love. Levy tries to show it as an understanding and attempt for respect, but I think she is off the mark. Most women are using raunch culture to snag a man, not a job.

The condoning of violence on The Jersey Shore is also worth noting within this notion of raunch culture. Sex and violence have become two activities closely linked through alcohol. On The Jersey Shore, most nights start with a search for sex (by men with the goal of finding a woman just for the night and for women with the intention of finding a man to fall in love with), use alcohol as a lubricant to increase the sexual tension to encourage people to act more raunchy, and can either end in sex or violence. In http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/12/11/the-sexist-outcry-over-snookie-getting-punched-in-the-face/, Amanda Hess notes the different times when violence is part of the norm on the show. Is violence part of raunch culture? I wonder what Levy would say.

Violence usually stems from a power struggle and Levy notes that sexuality in the raunch culture also stems from a power struggle. However, with these images of violence, women have not created a way to be “in” on the joke; they still do not think it is funny. For example, when Snookie gets punched in the face over a power struggle for a drink, the community on screen and off is outraged (see right). However, as Hess points out, if women really wanted equality, violence toward women would be acceptable as long as it was equally abusive to men. Here, Levy falls short of including the Maximizers argument. I would have to agree with the Maximizers because on average, most women are physically weaker than men so receiving cross-gender violence will never have the same impact on women than it does on men. On the show, Jwow tries to punch a male character but the offense is seen as much less dire as the one that happens to Snookie (see left). In this way, women can never be 100% equal to men.

Perhaps this is why raunch culture developed, because men use violence for power but women could not so they used sex instead. Maybe women created raunch culture to gain men’s attention, to tell them to stop fighting with each other and look up at us. It is cool to think that women were really in control of this exploitation and perhaps we are gaining some power out of it. Slowly, I believe we will figure out a way to use this raunch to be even more powerful then physical power. Right now we are in an in-between stage; Levy’s book should have been a manifesto to bring us to the next point, not a critique of what we have done so far.