On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good
ISBN: 9780593243039
Publisher : Dial Press Trade Paperback - 26 August 2025
Hardcover, 400 Pages
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.