Kiss, Marry or Kill: 06

THE BOOK, a hiking upgrade, the funniest commercial you'll see all week, and a legitimately life-saving iPhone hack to protect your data and wallet

This is a new weekly (ish) series for subscribers only, where I’ll share things that caught my eye this week in a fun and flirty way (kiss), a sustainable way (marry), or a not-so-good way (kill). And yes, this trendy game is technically “f***, marry, or kill” but we run a family-friendly-ish show around here.

Kiss (things I like right now)

Elise Loehnen’s new book. I’ve been a superfan and friend of Elises’s for a very long time, and we share an editor so I have been harassing Whit for an advance copy. On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good comes out May 23, and I have been CHEWING on this book. It’s a feast, not a snack, and its equal parts satisfying, infuriating, and empowering to digest.

The book uses the framework of the seven deadly sins to unpack all of the ways (eight, surprisingly) that the patriarchy keeps women small and compliant through our inherent desire to be “good.” There’s a quiz you can take to identify the "sin” that lives the strongest in you (for me: gluttony), which I highly recommend you take before you start reading. Each chapter shines a piercing light into the dark corners of the patriarchy’s influence (the infuriating part), and shows you how to break free from the expectations and rules that have so thoroughly and invisibly shaped our lives (the empowering part, in a “f*** you, I won’t do what you tell me” kind of way).

I am not a Bible person. This is not a Bible-y book. But the framing of our compliance and goodness in a way we are all so familiar with is brilliant, relatable, and completely on the nose. Also, though my quiz results were definitive, the Pride chapter gutted me. This book is a masterpiece, and it will deliver us from evil. (“Evil” being the gross misclassification of our feelings, needs, and desires as sinful.) On Our Best Behavior shows us all how to reclaim our power by reframing what we have learned, acknowledging our light and our shadows, and evolving together—and gives us the permission slip we’ve been waiting for to do just that.

Please read this book so I have someone to talk about it with. Pre-order it today, because you know how much pre-orders mean to authors, and this one is worth your vote of confidence.