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

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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. One of the most empowering aspects of "On Our Best Behavior" is Loehnen's encouragement for women to embrace their imperfections and let go of the need to be "good" at all times. She reminds readers that it's okay to be human and make mistakes, and that true growth comes from learning from our missteps and finding balance in our lives. 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. 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?

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. While we tend to think of the patriarchy as an inevitable reality, this conception is wrong. For most of human existence—from 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 b.c.—we were nomads, ranging across the planet in small collectives that were partnership societies, dependent on what many disparate bands thought of as the “Great Mother,” the creative force behind all life. In these partnership societies, women were revered for their generative powers—after all, birth is a miracle. What if women finally found freedom—because we gave it to ourselves? Elise Loehnen brilliantly reframes our toxic cultural programming and helps us to see that what we thought were our sins are actually our greatest virtues. This book is the gift we have all been waiting for.” —Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone 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.

Customer reviews

Ughhhh this book. I had such high hopes but it just wasn't what I was expecting. I really wanted the author to draw a direct line from these sins being codified to how people (especially women, trans, and BIPOC) are shoved in a box based on these expectations. It's not that, and that's fine! But this didn't hit the mark for me. In the insightful and captivating book, On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good, author Elise Loehnen takes a unique and thought-provoking approach to examining the societal pressures that women face. Through the lens of the traditional Seven Deadly Sins, Loehnen explores how these age-old vices manifest in the lives of modern women, revealing the high cost they pay for trying to meet impossible standards. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of being a woman in today's world and looking for a refreshing perspective on the challenges they face.

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. A stunning, big, and bold encyclopedia of how to live—the first post-pandemic book to take our latest measurements and provide something fresh to comfort, embolden, enlighten, and enrich who we are today . . . On Our Best Behavior is nothing short of a tangible necessity in our new intangible world.” —Lisa Taddeo, New York Times bestselling author of Three Women A raw cri de coeur, penetrating social analysis, and revealing personal reflection . . . Elise Loehnen deftly deconstructs one of the central ideological buttresses of patriarchal society: the shaming of women for having human desires, strengths, capacities, and strivings of body, mind, and soul. Doing so, she provides a guide to liberation and a return to the authentic feminine self.” —Gabor Maté, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Myth of Normal Having a daughter who is about to embark on her own life and going to college. I have always worried whether I have prepared her enough for her future years and the choices that I have made. On some levels I can say I am almost ashamed of some of the things that I have may portrayed and how they could be damaging to this culture of not supporting other women and isolating ourselves. I plan to remedy that before she leaves on her own life adventure. It also allowed me to examine a part of my life that I have been struggling with giving up and what that says about me. She on many levels opened my eyes and has given me the ability to evaluate myself on a deeper level without shame.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.