On Our Best Behavior
I’ve interviewed hundreds of people over the years—and learned something resonant from each of them—yet it was a small aside from psychotherapist and author Lori Gottlieb that lodged like a piton, deep in my mind, and became the spark that ignited my book—a book that I'm thrilled to formally announce today: On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good is now available for pre-order, coming May ‘23.
The aside from Lori was about envy, and how she advises her patients to pay attention to what it signifies: As she explained to me, envy tells you what you want.
In the days and weeks after our conversation, I couldn’t get this idea out of my head. Lori’s framework is not at all how I had internalized envy; I’d always thought envy was shameful and gross–something to be denied rather than mined. But Lori prompted me to dig a little deeper. I started to search within myself for its contrails, wondering what signals envy had sent to me that I had missed: What wants had I sublimated and repressed? And I also started studying the wider culture, wondering if undiagnosed envy wasn’t at the root of why women get so worked up about the behaviors, decisions, and achievements of other women, and why it’s so hard for us to get on-side with each other. Is all of that catfighting just…envy, coming out sideways?
I felt like I was onto something, but not the whole thing. I started pulling on the thread and a web emerged—a particularly sticky one. A web that is so striking in its obviousness that I believe it’s largely escaped our detection: It’s not just Envy that we find so shameful. It’s also Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Anger, and Pride. They make up the Seven Deadly Sins. First codified in the Egyptian desert in the 4th century, these edicts live on inside of us today, regardless of our religious upbringing or inclinations. I believe that we police these precepts in ourselves and in each other, that they’ve become a checklist, or punch card for what it means to be a “good” woman. By subconsciously abiding by them, women end up equating self-denial with virtuousness. But denying ourselves in an effort to be "good" means we participate in our own oppression. On Our Best Behavior traces the way each of these sins has taken root in our lives—and what we can do to break free.
Writing this book changed me. It wasn’t a purely mental exercise, it therapized my soul. I had to interrogate every part of my life to understand the tenterhooks of these sins and how they corralled my existence. I had to go deep into our cultural history to find their footprints and the way they’ve burrowed into our consciousness. It’s been a ride, and I can’t wait to share it with you. And talk about it with you. While very few people have read this book—a strange experience, to be alone with something for so long—early feedback suggests that the frame alone is enough to send women deep inside of themselves. I cannot wait until it’s in your hands.