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

by Elise Loehnen

It may have been the yoke around our necks for eons, but it is actually not a woman’s job to make everyone else happy. It’s not our job to serve the needs of others at the expense of our own. It’s not our job to stifle and suffocate our own desires out of fear that we’ll offend or lose connection to those we most love.

It’s a process diametrically opposed to how so many of us have been conditioned to think: It’s her or me, there’s room for only one of us, scarcity, scarcity, scarcity. In Lacy’s world, it’s She has it, and so I can have it too.

1. They’ve been in the exact place you’re in now, whether it’s struggling, or lack, or limit, or not having what they want. 2. They’ve gone on to become successful in, own, or embody what you’re calling in. 3. Their success track feels believable and obtainable to you. 4. They give you an aha moment that sounds egotistical, but it’s not. You know you’ve been expanded on a subconscious level when you have an aha moment where you go, “Oh…oh my gosh, if they accomplished that, then I can do that too.”

(e.g., you think you really want to own a restaurant, find an expander living that life, and realize by studying her that being a chef is very difficult—you might not lose the dream, but you might ground it more in an awareness of the challenges).

When we shame another woman for dreaming and acting “big,” for daring to think she’s something special, we oppress our own potential.

Nobody likes a show-off. When you win or stand out, be modest, even embarrassed, ideally a little ashamed. Then deflect. A girl who is “full of herself” will have no friends.

critics laud her for writing “strong women”—“I don’t know any women who are not strong!”—and points to the fact that we never modify our descriptions of men by appending adjectives like strong or smart.)

My body said no because my throat wouldn’t open to say it for me.

trees and the fungi have a codependent and complex relationship—one reaching its branches toward the sky, the other extending its mycelium network below the surface of the soil—who is to judge which contribution is more essential or important?

you can get a lot from your parents and still not get everything you need.

As children, we know: We know when our painting of an apple looks like a sad turd; we know when we’re sad, or scared, or lonely—and to be told that’s not true is at best confusing. At worst, it means you lose faith in yourself to know yourself. We crave accuracy of assessment—we

you can’t hurt us when we’ve hurt ourselves first.

Glennon Doyle’s bestselling book Untamed

Oprah said: “Playing dumb, weak, and silly is a disservice to yourself and to me and to the world. Every time you pretend to be less than you are, you steal permission from other women to exist fully. Don’t mistake modesty for humility.”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?

is the last bastion of acceptable bias, disguised in the morality of health.

The Obesity Paradox, antifat bias has become a “dog whistle that allowed disdain and bigotry aimed at poor people and people of color to persist, uninterrupted and simply renamed.” It’s a mechanism for racism, sexism, and classism wrapped up as “healthism.”

those of us who walk a few miles a day are as active as our hunter-gatherer ancestors. They, too, spent a lot of time sitting and resting.

What I learned in boarding school is

Part of the trauma I had suppressed in my body involved feeling pleasure when I consciously didn’t want it. I realized I had always felt betrayed by this, deeply ashamed by these mixed signals—a voice saying no, a body saying yes.

emotions to emerge so they can be metabolized, integrated. He talks about the impact of trauma on digestion, how when we eat compulsively and quickly, enzymes don’t have time to break down our food and we swallow air, leaving us bloated and uncomfortable.

hate my body. I hate my weakness at being unable to control my body. I hate how I feel in my body. I hate how people see my body. I hate how people stare at my body, treat my body, comment on my body. I hate equating my self-worth with the state of my body and how difficult it is to overcome this equation…. I hate that I am letting down so many women when I cannot embrace my body at any size.”

We need a structure in which we can all find ourselves, one where there are no body standards at all, where we’re free to just be, exactly how we are, no comment or label required.

Perhaps they understood the slippery slope of possession: Once you start with the idea of more, it’s hard to know when you have enough.

Is it appropriate for anyone to have that much money, even if halved? Should a few white, largely male people be self-appointed to attend to the world’s most complex and intransigent problems? And how does it figure that most of these billionaires are way richer than they were a decade ago?)

Our wealthiest citizens, who have inarguably extracted the most, do not believe in redistributing wealth.

more other-minded than their male counterparts: According to a report in Barclay’s, women give away nearly twice as much as men.

We are then persecuted doubly by greed: We are trained away from money, taught it’s not really for us, and we are, at the same time, programmed by our cultural messaging to believe it’s our job to drive the economy by buying stuff. Society champions our consumerism. The women I know are deeply ambivalent about money: We’re attracted to its promise of security and power and repelled by the inequities it perpetuates.

We are less financially literate and more pressured to spend on consumer goods rather than stocks. I think it goes even deeper than that, though. I believe women don’t participate in the market to the same extent as men because women feel it’s wrong to make money materialize without effort.

For us, wealth is grounded in the material, not a magical illusion attached to no output, talent, work.

Dependence on a spouse for money is terrifying, and this dependence is the root of the patriarchy’s power.

women were conditioned to not talk about money, to hide their wanting it, to silence their real fears of being ditched for a younger model and left with nothing—and accused of freeloading in the interim.

I wouldn’t have my career today if it weren’t for a number of men I dated in my twenties who inadvertently did reverse psychology on me. I was bait for Trustafarians, bored corporate lawyers, and hedge funders who loved my educational pedigree and Condé Nast résumé but thought my subtle weirdness and outlier Montana roots made me quirky enough to annoy their grandmothers in Quogue.

met my husband, Rob, when I was twenty-nine. We fell in love fast, and because neither of us was making much, we moved in together quickly—in New Jersey.

Meanwhile, so grateful to be there, I tripped over myself to show value—to prove it, illustrate it, underline it, and then circle back to make sure it was enough. This has been my impression of most of the women I’ve worked alongside over the years. We hustle to show we’re worthy, every single day

And here we land right back in the world of likability and acceptance, because the patriarchy insists that women be conciliatory all the time, that we be obedient, that we keep things nice. As the stakes get higher, as pressures mount, this expectation means that women prioritize the comfort of other people over their own needs.

the undertones that we’re greedy—is one of the most insidious swipes. Our culture conditions us to prioritize care, to harbor, to protect, to feed—both inside and out of the womb. This isn’t a bad instinct, but it’s wrong that it’s continually milked, that women take less so that men can take more.

you think about water when it’s moving, when it’s flowing, it purifies. It makes things grow, it cleanses. But when it’s hoarded or held or stuck, it becomes stagnant and toxic to those who are holding onto it.”

Do we treasure what we have, or will there always be more? Save or spend?

Culturally, being unemployed is one of the most stigmatized states, more than infidelity or divorce.

These boys didn’t seem to care if I was in the room or in my body. And I probably wasn’t in there at all.

It is like a liquid pool, more ephemeral, less centralized—powerful and yet intangible, an unreachable ache. It’s visible on men and boys, yet the female equivalent is hidden away. Because of the invisibility of our desire, women are not taught to locate it in our bodies, to give it a name, to study it, or to learn how to express it physically, either alone or in partnership.

girl was supposed to be a passive object, waiting patiently for the moment a boy parted the crowd to find her, when she was “seen”—always chosen, never choosing.

It’s odd to me that we always connect physical pleasure and touch with sexual desire, even when we’re describing children.

When my cat arches her back toward my hand, purring with her whole body while I stroke her, I don’t assume she’s sexually aroused. Instead, I think of her as an animal who desires, craves, and enjoys touch, who wants the intimacy of my flesh, who wants to feel good. Why can’t I extend that same understanding to myself?

Parental alienation is the mechanism by which a father, when charged with abuse, turns it back on the mother and accuses her of implanting stories in the child.

wonder how many women are disassociated from their bodies because they don’t believe their own history, which is housed in their own flesh.

stereotype alive that Black men are predators and is yet another pernicious example of how women are expected to sacrifice their bodies and psyches to keep the reputations of others safe.

“himpathy,” a term coined by philosophy professor Kate Manne to describe the ways in which we prioritize the emotions, health, and happiness of men over their female victims. Himpathy

reporting. There’s no catharsis. Every outcome is terrible. It’s retraumatizing, humiliating, as everyone’s “part” is litigated. Was it the “R” word? Was your “no” stated with enough vehemence? How hard did you fight? Were you drinking? What were you wearing? How many sexual partners have you had? Was it enough of a struggle? Did you fear for your life?