On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A groundbreaking exploration of the ancient rules women unwittingly follow in order to be considered “good,” revealing how the Seven Deadly Sins still control and distort our lives and illuminating a path toward a more balanced, spiritually complete way to live
Why do women equate self-denial with being good?
We congratulate ourselves when we resist the donut in the office breakroom. We celebrate our restraint when we hold back from sending an email in anger. We feel virtuous when we wake up at dawn to get a jump on the day. We put others’ needs ahead of our own and believe this makes us exemplary. In On Our Best Behavior, journalist Elise Loehnen explains that these impulses—often lauded as unselfish, distinctly feminine instincts—are actually ingrained in us by a culture that reaps the benefits, via an extraordinarily effective collection of mores known as the Seven Deadly Sins.
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.
In On Our Best Behavior, Loehnen reveals how we’ve been programmed to obey the rules represented by these sins and how doing so qualifies us as “good.” This probing analysis of contemporary culture and thoroughly researched history explains how women have internalized the patriarchy, and how they unwittingly reinforce it. By sharing her own story and the spiritual wisdom of other traditions, Loehnen shows how we can break free and discover the integrity and wholeness we seek.
Customers say
Customers find the book deeply researched and thought-provoking, with one review noting how the author quotes dozens of great thinkers. The writing style receives positive feedback, with customers describing it as well-written and essential reading for women.
11 reviews for On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good
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Victoria C. –
Game changer! A must read!
I didnât know what to expect when my girlfriend suggested this book, but I have to say itâs been transformative. I feel like I underlined the entire book! So many pearls of wisdom and I resonated with so much in each chapter. I donât think there is a woman alive who wouldnât find herself in these pages. This is something I will pass down to my daughter to read. I also liked the format. It wasnât âpreachyâ or too heavy in content, where it made it difficult to read. The author injected plenty of stories and examples from her own life and those of people she knows, to make it thoroughly entertaining as well. Buy a few copies and send it to all the important women in your life, as I have.Victoria
Shelby Webb –
Beyond well written
12/10 every feminist needs this book
Bryan Carey –
Patriarchal Control Through the Ages
Whether or not youâre religious, there is a good chance you have heard of the seven deadly sins; those seven acts or thoughts that are considered the basis of wrongdoing and, if not kept under control, could lead you to a place in the afterlife you would rather not be. These so- called sins have been used to keep people in their place, especially women, by controlling what they can or cannot do or think, and they form the basis of this book.What you get with this book is a cross- examination of these historic sins and how they have been used and abused over the centuries to subdue the people. Each sin gets its own chapter, and each sin is dissected, showing what its intent was historically and how its restrictive nature has been used to subjugate women in countries where Christianity rules the day.This book is less philosophical than I expected it would be. Instead, it focuses on human behavior and the influence of these sins on what people consider moral or immoral. The bookâs core message is that these sins are, in most ways, not sins at all and while the book doesnât advocate taking the extreme opposite position, it does recommend looking at each one in a more moderate light. For example, donât think of greed as necessarily a bad thing, because it isnât. Greed is often essential as a means to motivate people to do better. The same goes for sloth. We all need rest, and we shouldnât deny ourselves the needed breaks that we deserve.I think we would all agree that women throughout history have been more constrained by these sins, but men have been controlled as well, just in different ways. One issue I have with the book is that it does tend to state things in black and white terms, which is off- putting and inaccurate. More than once, I caught the book making a statement like âno man has ever done thisâ, which is patently false. However, the book makes up for this shortcoming in other ways, like when it presents actual statistical data from research studies that shows what the true breakdown of male vs female tendencies really are, showing that it isnât a 100 percent to zero percent dichotomy.This book is a good one for open discussion purposes. It gets you thinking about restrictions on humans in general and how we, as a society, have pigeonholed people into groups, making them think that certain behaviors are unacceptable for their specific sex or other group. Progress has been made, but we still have a way to go before we live in a truly equitable society. On Our Best Behavior is a good book for encouraging everyone to think about equality and how authoritarian, dogmatic thinking is bad for society as a whole and why it needs to be changed, for the betterment of humankind.
Diane Burroughs –
Being Good Is Not The Way To True Happienss, WOW!
Women have been under the thumb of the ancient notion of the famous Seven Deadly Sins: 1) pride, 2) sloth, 3) greed, 4) envy, 5) anger, 6) gluttony, and 7) lust. Come to find out they werenât in the bible; they were originally put in place by a desert monk, Evagrius Ponticus (A.D. 345-99) as âEight Thoughtsâ, written for other monks.The Eight Thoughts were 1) Gluttony, 2) Fornication, 3) Love of Money, 4) Sadness, 5) Anger, 6) Listlessness, 7) Vainglory, and 8) Pride. He wrote eight books, called Talking Back for these monks. It was a way to work spiritually with their inner demons.A few decades later, they were inscribed as vices in the New Testament by Pope Gregory I (A.D. 540-604). He took out sadness and changed the name to the Seven Deadly Sins, and assigned these vices to Mary Magdalene. Anyone who indulged in them needed to atone, preferably with âcharitable donations.â Our illustrious author unpacks each sin illustrating that the current interpretation diminishes the full potential of womenâs lives.This book focuses on the âwrong and unsound thingsâ taught to women. A glaring example is teaching a woman to believe she is naturally subordinate. Because tradition and culture have decreed women are inferior, we are perpetually desperate to prove our basic goodness and worth. Yikes, no wonder women are at a higher risk for low self-esteem!I was so blown away with this book. Reading it is like sumptuously eating a dense healthy meal. In the intro of this 355-page study, sheâs careful not to offend anyone identifying as a woman. While she interrogates our culture in relation to how it treats women, she doesnât presume to speak for all women. Her focus is to illustrate how our culture corrals all people who identify as women in universal ways.In the first chapter, Elise realizes after a hyperventilating episode that lands her in an intense therapy session, that sheâs been trying to be a âgood girlâ her whole life. Sheâs been running herself ragged; caring dutifully for her family, friends, and colleagues; punishing her body to stay a certain size; and keeping her temper in check. This life crisis thrusted her to ask, âWhat If I justâ¦stopped?âThus began her excavating expedition through history discovering that goodness and acceptability were conjoined for women, not men. She pit stopped at her childhood to trace when that programming first caught her in the jaws of that oppressive agenda.Precocious and curious is the best way to describe our author as a child. Needing to impose logic on a society that felt chaotic she sensed a code of behavior. Boundaries of acceptance, belonging, and goodness seemed to ensure her safety, success, and survival. Elise learned from an early age how a âgood-girlâ who wanted to belong should behave.As a self-proclaimed white-cis-heterosexual-upper middle-class-agnostic-spiritual, she still felt prisoner of these Judeo-Christian ideas of âgoodness.â She sought guidance to help her replace it with something truer. She pursued interviews from deep thinkers to cultural influencers, the whole gamut of anyone who had insight into the human condition. She concluded weâre all after the same thing: to have a purpose, to love and be loved. Interferences to those goals may come from a traumatic childhood, natural disasters, etc. But more frequently, the barriers that keep us from our full expression are intangible. For example, self-doubt, limiting beliefs, or social constructs of roles and responsibilities.Eliseâs findings bang the gong of resounding truth so many times it left me reverberating in respect for women recognizing the clandestine ways they are snowed. I beseech you to read and be illuminated. Ingest the concept of how the Seven Deadly Sins keep you small.I leave you with some tantalizing quotes to motivate you to order this book. âWe are compelled to prove our virtue, in our moral perfection. But we will never be able to prove our virtue, as the word itself is out of reach for women: Its etymology is Latin (vir) for man.â âThe pleasure (a female orgasm) of women is a vortex, a gate to a deeper experience of surrender and aweâ¦A way to touch the divine and deepest impulses of life.â Those quotes are WOWS! Enjoy this granular exploration of the feminine spiritual journey and realize âbeing good,â is not the way to true happiness.
Trevor Jess –
Lots of good content
I have to say I got a great deal from this especially as someone how grew up in the church. I also felt like she got off topic sometimes and I found myself skipping sections that felt less relevant to her overall message. I would definitely recommend reading it – take what you need from it and leave the rest.
Amy Williams –
Thought provoking, illuminating read
I read this book after listening to the authorâs interview on Liz Moodyâs podcast. As someone who went to Catholic school for 15 years and who was already well aware of the patriarchal programming to which I was exposed, this book was illuminating and validated feelings of unease Iâd experienced throughout my life. It was very well-researched. The authorâs analysis was sharp and her arguments clearly articulated. The personal anecdotes woven throughout the book made it more approachable even though it is academic at timesâthe author specifically recognizes this in the first chapter where she gives an overview of the evolution of the patriarchy. The book sparked personal self reflection and interesting conversations with friends.
Barbara Barreto –
Can only recommend
Jacqui –
By far one of my favourite books of the past few years. Cannot recommend highly enough!
Semiramis –
This book is mind blowing, truly! As women we are told to be good for everyone but never for ourselves, it eats at us and limit us, we need to remember our power, we need to be free to be us. This book opened my eyes to this and more.
Brian Griffith –
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, society, etc. Loehnen discusses such things, but when she gets personal it is 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)âand 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.
Christine Gillies –
Elise Loehnen articulates the complex feelings that women everywhere experience but canât put a name to and, at times, are too ashamed to admit.We struggle to be enough, do enough and achieve enough. We pretzel ourselves for others, accommodating wants of everyone around us and not speaking up â we unconsciously participate in a system that holds us back. This book is sham-packed with revelations and ideas that will shift your schemas, help you slow down, bring self compassion, ask for more, and challenge others who want to keep you âgoodâ, small and compliant. Canât recommend this book enough. I bought 20 copies for all my friends & family and Iâve never done that beforeâ this book holds a message that is essential for humans. Read it.