Some blame Carrie Bradshaw’s initial penchant for short-term flings in “Sex and the City.” Some credit the gyrating hips of Carmen Electra in her Striptease Aerobics series. Some argue that Madonna started it all, and the decades of her followers have made American culture so steeped in sexuality.

Regardless which celebrity contributed most, a number of books have emerged that explore the trickle-down effect that increasingly mainstream sexual expression has had on society. While more TV shows, movies and magazine articles feature women of all ages finding empowerment through sexual openness, some students find that femininity takes many forms.

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS

The books in question — “Pornified,” “Female Chauvinist Pigs” and “Prude” — all reveal a sex-saturated society. In “Female Chauvinist Pigs,” author Ariel Levy spends three days shadowing a Girls Gone Wild film crew during spring break, discovering that in most cases, all it takes to get college-aged women to bare all is the promise of a free hat touting the show’s logo.

After filming various “scenes” for GGW, 19-year-old Debbie Cope told Levy: “People watch the videos and think the girls in them are real slutty, but I’m a virgin… The only way I could see someone not doing this is if they were planning a career in politics.”

This mentality, oft-repeated during the course of Levy’s research, led the author to coin the term “female chauvinist pigs” — referring to women who “pursue casual sex as if it were a sport” and, who she argues, are “making sex objects out of other women — and of themselves.” …