On Our Best Behaviour: The Price Women Pay to Be Good

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Highlights the conflicting priorities or a patriarchal society (looking after the children’s and men) vs the capitalist society (work to make money)-the result of which is that women try to do it all. After finding out who Elise Loehnen is, the previous Chief Content officer for Goop, made me a little uncomfortable as Goop is a questionable company, as is its owner. I won't hold her accountable for the shittiness of said company, and owner, but I can choose to not read something by someone that worked so closely with such methods of thought. The golden thread of the 7 deadly sins was a really interesting take on this topic and Elise Loehnen makes incredibly clear and rational arguments to support her hypothesis. La forma en la que la religion ha moldeado lo que son los pecados capitales me voló la mente, el contexto histórico, los estereotipos generacionales, las culpas, los temores todo lo que la autora confronta es muy interesante.

También hay que ver el lado cultural que influye en esta doctrina que se nos ha plantado (en mi caso) desde pequeños. ¿Quien hizo la medida con la que se determina si mi descanso es una necesidad física o si es mera pereza y por qué esta tan mal vista? ¿En que se basa la línea que divide mi hambre o mi gula y quien determina que se me deba castigar por mis necesidades alimenticias? o ¿en que momento mis metas se vuelven avaricia? All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book. The author pays attention to the particular challenges faced by those in the minority who face additional discrimination but recognises that in the position of a privileged white woman she cannot speak to their experiences. This book is a great idea. The chapter titles alone offer fantastic food for thought. However, in this author’s hands, this topic is better suited to a magazine article. There is no there there.

To understand how the Seven Deadly Sins influence our lives, even to this day (even if we don’t consider ourselves religious), we must understand the system that produced them: the patriarchy, which has defined Western culture for millennia. Its forefathers adopted and shaped early Christianity to enforce behavior in ways that continue to affect us. I struggled to understand how someone like me, even with all my privileges—white, cis, heterosexual, upper middle class, agnostic/spiritual—still feels prisoner to these Judeo-Christian ideas of “goodness.” Why do I feel bound to keep from committing these “sins”? To answer that question, I’d need to examine the story about who we are, a story we’ve been telling each other through history. A warning: This chapter is the book’s densest and most academic—skip it if you’re inclined—but to imagine something new, it’s important to understand where we’ve been. In Loehnen's words: "We need to process the ways in which the legacy of "goodness," defined as purity and abnegation, continues to both limit and torment us."

Since being codified by the Christian church in the fourth century, the Seven Deadly Sins—pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth—have exerted insidious power. Even today, in our largely secular, patriarchal society, they continue to circumscribe women’s behavior. For example, seeing sloth as sinful leads women to deny themselves rest; a fear of gluttony drives them to ignore their appetites; and an aversion to greed prevents them from negotiating for themselves and contributes to the 55 percent gender wealth gap. She is very smart, a good writer, and also a bit woo woo herself. She has had some amazing experiences in interviewing celebrities and major thinkers. It's interesting because I wonder if she would've written this book if she hadn't lost her magazine job. Creo que ha sido una lectura que hace conexión con muchas otras que he leído este año, ha sido una gran influencia en cómo he visto mi vida en estas últimas semanas y si bien ya hace años que no practico ninguna religión creo que este libro dio por cerrada mi relación con esos dogmas.This is a hard book to review. Parts of it felt more 3-star to me but I'm bumping it to 4 because there are parts that definitely resonated. Her argument is that we're all (but especially women) living with a lot of unnecessary rules and guilt because of what's known as the "Seven Deadly Sins." She outlines how she thinks this thinking went wrong from a Biblical perspective. The value that is placed in this book on allowing women to be who they are naturally are and to allow all of those in society to express and feel all emotions is powerful. Elise Loehnen's writing style is friendly, witty, and engaging. The tone of the book is conversational, making it feel like you're chatting with a close friend over a cup of coffee. This approachable writing style makes connecting with the author's experiences and perspectives easy, allowing readers to see themselves in her stories and relate to her feelings. It is interesting to think about how this concept of the Seven Deadly Sins has lasted in our culture. It would be nice to read a book that actually traces that thread in history, philosophy, psychology, and social science. This book is more interested in telling us what “society” expects of us. In the chapter on sloth, she laments the overwhelming busyness of modern life and in the next paragraph goes on a long tangent about how women need to step up and save the world.

I was surprised at how personal this is, and how good that makes it. The question Loehnen asks is fascinating to me. But being a mental guy, I was looking for info on the effects of traditional moralism on history, etc. Loehnen discusses some of that, but when she gets personal it's gut-punchingly powerful. What does it do to us when we presume that our basic needs for rest (sloth), role models (envy), self-respect (pride), nutrition (gluttony), ambition (greed), sexuality (lust), fairness (anger)—and an original eighth deadly sin, grief (sadness), should all be eliminated as much as possible? Loehnen explores the benefits of these things, looking for optimal balance rather than maximal purity. Sometimes it sounds like a self-help guide, but the personal stuff brings it alive, and it gets very relevant for men.Whether you take in her analysis of how women have been effected over their life time by society’s norms and being dictated by our patriarchal society or not. The resources the alarming facts are insightful and some what devastating. Since being codified by the Christian church in the fourth century, the Seven Deadly Sins--pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth--have exerted insidious power. Even today, in our largely secular, patriarchal society, they continue to circumscribe women's behavior. For example, seeing sloth as sinful leads women to deny themselves rest; a fear of gluttony drives them to ignore their appetites; and an aversion to greed prevents them from negotiating for themselves and contributes to the 55 percent gender wealth gap. Loehnen reveals how women have been programmed to obey the rules represented by these sins and how doing so qualifies them as "good." There were other parts of the book that I was so thankful that I had not fallen into that particular sin and have used my sense of self to guide me and hopefully helped my daughter make better choices with this guidance. While analyzing history, fairy tales, myths, folklore, religion, and much more, Loehnen provides us with an important argument around how owning our desire leads to wholeness and a rich human experience not a sinful one. These so-called 'deadly sins' have been used by the patriarchy to control women throughout our history. For instance, a fear of gluttony drives us to ignore our appetites and an aversion to greed prevents us from negotiating a better salary at work.