Tim Nguyen

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Raunch: The Rise of "Female Chauvinist Pigs"
Loose Moose Theatre
Tuesday, June 23 - Saturday, June 27

More in: Theatre

Hooker chic, kinderwhore, Girls Gone Wild, boob jobs, labioplasty, strippercize and raunch culture. These are just some of the juicy topics Alice Nelson and Jacqueline Russell explore in RAUNCH: The Rise of “The Female Chauvinist Pig,” playing at Loose Moose Theatre.

Reading Ariel Levy’s book, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, inspired the two Calgary actors to create the show, which they first staged last September.

It was something of a personal awakening for Nelson. “I used to be a female chauvinist pig. I was into acting trashy to impress guys and would put down other girls,” she says, admitting to calling herself and her friends “bitches” and “ho’s.”

“Reading (Levy’s) book made me realize I was not helping other women. I was totally buying into this image that women have to be slutty to get ahead,” she adds.

Nelson describes raunch culture as a hyper-sexualized society for women, and the idea that the new wave of feminism is exploitation of ourselves: being as raunchy as you can be to get ahead.

She cites Joe Francis’s Girls Gone Wild empire as an example. “Why would girls flash for a T-shirt? Is it for attention? Peer pressure from the mobs?” asks Nelson. What’s more, she says, women are sometimes doing the filming, degrading rather than empowering each other. Male-bashing, therefore, is not a part of this show. In fact, there are no male characters at all. “We’re doing it to ourselves, we don’t need any help from the men,” says Nelson.

One of the more troubling aspects of this culture of self-exploitation by women is how it is affecting youth. “Are we empowering the girls growing up?” asks Nelson. “Who is there for young teenage role models? We couldn’t think of anyone that the media hasn’t gotten to,” she says.

Nelson teaches drama camps for kids and has seen the effects of the hyper-sexualization of youth firsthand. “It freaks me out. I just want them to be kids and they’re being forced to grow up,” she says, citing Bratz dolls — with their tight-fitting tops and jeans, exposed bellies, and short skirts — as an example.

See a little girl dress like her doll and the result is, as Nelson puts it, a “kinderwhore”-style.

Nelson taught many girls who showed up for summer drama camp dressed in short shorts and low–cut tops. “They’re only 12 or 13. What’s going on with that? Are the parents really cool with it?” she asks, adding that she was still a tomboy at that age.

While the topics are weighty and disturbing, Nelson and Russell don’t deal with them in a heavy fashion. “The scenes are all satirical and funny. We don’t want to preach to the audience,” says Nelson.

The one-hour show involves a compilation of sketches, which use clowning, music and puppetry. For example, Nelson and Russell dress as giant boobs for a skit on breast implants. A hip hop number explores why girls call themselves degrading names and, to talk about the hyper-sexualization of youth, Nelson and Russell stage a puppet show. Nelson, who graduated from California’s Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre, also performs a clown piece to examine the strippercize phenomenon.

“We show the funny side of it, a mom who is all out-of-shape, to look at the reality of who goes to these classes. We glamourize strippers in our society, but the actual reality is they get loonies thrown at their snatch,” says Nelson.

Nelson and Russell also deal with some topics, like vaginal rejuvenation, through straightforward skits. “The show is like a roller-coaster ride from something really, really funny to something a little more serious and intense,” Nelson explains. “The audience will leave laughing, but thinking.”

There is also a multimedia component to get some of the facts across — displaying statistics and quotes related to the staged material. “I hope the show will get people talking and get women to realize they still have a choice, that they don’t have to be brainwashed by all the bullshit out there,” says Nelson.

At the same time, she makes sure to point out that RAUNCH doesn’t make the decision for anyone. “You leave the show deciding for yourself,” she says.

However, she does have some advice for helping young girls navigate a society that appears to celebrate raunch culture. “Watch what you’re buying them, watch what they’re tuning into, and have really open dialogue with them.”

What’s more, Nelson wants to take back the “f-word” — feminist — for this and future generations. “It’s something we worked for, it’s not a dirty word. We have to have some self-respect — self-respect it seems like we threw away,” she says.