Women are subject to a number of societal recommendations about what it means to be an 'ideal' woman. These recommendations take the form of social scripts, constructing an idea of ideal femininity, which women must perform in order to be socially accepted and successful. 'Emphasized femininity', a white, Western, script of femininity is dominant and has been critiqued by feminists, social theorists, and individual women for the limits that it places on women's behaviour. As a result a number of alternative scripts of femininity have arisen. These scripts can provide alternatives to restrictive understandings of female sexuality and beauty - they can serve to challenge 'appropriate' feminine behaviour and hence allow women to live more freely. Raunch femininity is a contemporary alternative that uses sexually explicit public performance, and encourages specific body and dress norms, in an attempt to challenge the norms of emphasized femininity. This thesis looks at raunch femininity, specifically its norms of sexuality and beauty, in the hopes of understanding what the effects of such a script are on women's behaviour. Theoretical understandings and explanations of women's lives are often contradicted by reports that women provide of their lived experiences. For this reason, this thesis investigates the lived experiences of women who self-identify as subscribers to this script in order to assess to what extent superficial expressions of freedom have deeper effects on women's freedom. The tension between theory and empirical reports is evident. However, in many cases, the reports of research participants reveal that the script of raunch femininity, like other scripts of feminine behaviour, has its own limits that women must abide with in order to be accepted. This thesis argues that these limits outweigh the benefits of this script. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in