Levy was raised in a Jewish family[5] in Larchmont, New York, and attended Wesleyan University in the 1990s, graduating in 1996. She says that her experiences at Wesleyan, which had "coed showers, on principle,"[6] strongly influenced her views regarding modern sexuality.[7] After graduating from Wesleyan, she was briefly employed by Planned Parenthood but claims that she was fired because she is "an extremely poor typist."[8] She was hired by New York magazine shortly thereafter.
Levy criticized the pornographic video series Girls Gone Wild after she followed its camera crew for three days, interviewed both the makers of the series and the women who appeared on the videos, and commented on the series' concept and the debauchery she was witnessing. Many of the young women Levy spoke with believed that bawdy and liberated were synonymous.
Levy's experiences amid Girls Gone Wild appear again in Female Chauvinist Pigs, in which she attempts to explain "why young women today are embracing raunchy aspects of our culture that would likely have caused their feminist foremothers to vomit." In today's culture, Levy writes, the idea of a woman participating in a wet T-shirt contest or being comfortable watching explicit pornography has become a symbol of strength; she says that she was surprised at how many people, both men and women, working for programs such as Girls Gone Wild told her that this new "raunch" culture marked not the downfall of feminism but its triumph, but Levy was unconvinced.
In 2013 The New Yorker published her essay, "Thanksgiving in Mongolia" about the loss of her newly-born son at 19 weeks while traveling alone in Mongolia.[9] In March 2017, Random House published Levy's book, The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir, about her miscarriage, an affair, her spouse's alcoholism, and their eventual divorce.[10][11]
In April 2020, Levy wrote a controversial article for The New Yorker about Renee Bach, a white American missionary accused of pretending to be a medical professional and performing procedures on Ugandan children.[13] Levy took a sympathetic view towards Bach. The group No White Saviors, whose co-founder, Kelsey Nielsen, was interviewed for the article, demanded a full retraction and apology, claiming Nielsen was misquoted and discredited, and that Levy "underrepresented and manipulated" the experiences of alleged victims and purposely left out evidence against Bach in the article.[14]
Levy is openly bisexual.[16] She married Amy Norquist in 2007.[17] They divorced in 2012.[18] Levy chronicled the divorce in her memoir.[19] In 2017, she married John Gasson, a doctor from South Africa who tended to her during her miscarriage in Mongolia.[20]
— (2011). "Female chauvinist pigs". In Rosenblum, Karen E. & Toni-Michelle C. Travis (eds.). The meaning of difference : American constructions of race, sex and gender, social class, sexual orientation, and disability : a text/reader (6th ed.). Dubuque, Iowa: McGraw-Hill.
— (January 2, 2012). "Drug test". Letter from Bangalore. The New Yorker. 87 (42): 30–36.[a]
— (March 4, 2013). "Gaonnuri". Goings on About Town. Tables for Two. The New Yorker. 89 (3): 10.
— (March 18, 2013). "Bagman". The Talk of the Town. Dept. of Coveting. The New Yorker. 89 (5): 25.
^Levy, Ariel. "About". ariellevy.net. Ariel Levy. Archived from the original on February 1, 2017. Retrieved September 25, 2013.
^Levy, Ariel (November 18, 2013). "Thanksgiving in Mongolia". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. Retrieved December 4, 2013.
