Analysis Of 'Female Chauvinist Pigs' By Adrienne Rich

Although the United States is established on the idea of equality, women continue to be oppressed and face inequality. In Adrienne Rich’s commencement speech, “What Does a Woman Need to Know”, she talks about what women should understand, in order to prosper in the “real world.” The same perception occurs in an excerpt of Ariel Levy’s book “ Female Chauvinist Pigs”; Levy grabs your attention about how women have learned to adapt to male qualities in order to succeed in their prestige. Both authors show us that in order to liberate women who are oppressed by men, we must defeat the system that produced the oppression that is still being built to keep women down. In Adrienne Rich’s commencement speech, “What Does a Woman Need to Know”, she
Rich states, “As a woman, you have been viewed and still are being viewed as existing, not in your own right, but in the service of men” (Rich, pg. 76). Women today are often viewed as being weaker than men since a woman’s duty is to take care of the environment for her husband and children. Rich believes that most women will then lose their outsider’s eye, which is a way for a woman to remembering she is not in power. For instance when a women gets caught up with her house chores and children, she tends to ignore empowering herself. However, Rich feels that women should carry an outsider’s vision to develop as independent women and to increase more understanding of themselves, as well as the world around
A major problem in society is that men are often in power, leaving a woman to feeling weak and not taken seriously. Men will continue to dominate as a male society, unless women take action to ending this oppression. When the action is taken, only then can a woman increase the knowledge she needs to become empowering and to make a significant change in society. Rich’s message had an important meaning to the 1979 Smith College graduates, and Rich’s meaningful words will continue to hold significance to women in the future.
In an excerpt of Ariel Levy’s book “ Female Chauvinist Pigs”, Levy discusses the escalation of the raunch culture, which is a culture that encourages sexual illustrations of women that are fortified by women themselves and how women think they have succeeded by using their appearances and stripping to liberalize a woman. Women are still not free to be themselves, instead they are distressed to act like a manto feel included in this male dominated world. The raunch culture is so interesting to women because sexual illustrations of women captures the boy’s attention which will make a woman feel accepted by a