The Lipstick Proviso: Women, Sex, and Power in the Real World

By Karen Lehrman Bloch and Karen Lehrman

Book Overview

Many women today prepare for a big meeting by reading a stack of folders and applying lipstick. They order their male colleagues around, then wait for those same men to help them on with their coats. They have higher-status jobs than some of the men they date, yet they never call men socially or ask them out.

What's going on? Why such seemingly contradictory behaviors? Have women completely failed feminism--or has feminism failed them?

In The Lipstick Proviso, Karen Lehrman--hailed by the New York Times as the "sharpest" of the new feminist thinkers--shows that women today are failing neither feminism nor themselves. Rather, they've entered a new stage of feminism, one in which the personal is not political, differences between the sexes need to be respected, and courtship, chivalry, and the nuclear family don't have to be jettisoned just because they existed before the sixties.

Thirty years after the women's movement liberated women from narrowly defined roles, Lehrman argues, we are finally beginning to see which traditionally feminine behaviors are more deeply rooted in biology and which are more heavily influenced by culture. Lehrman asserts that the result--whatever it is--will not undermine feminism as long as women still retain equal rights, opportunities, and responsibilities. Dispensing with the outdated notion of sisterhood, Lehrman offers women a "lipstick proviso" women don't have to sacrifice their complex individuality in order to be equal.

As the first book to move beyond a critique of orthodox feminism, The Lipstick Proviso sets a radically new course for the future of the women's movement. While there's still much political work to be done, Lehrman argues that women should now focus on the personal sides of their lives. Women can't rightly be called autonomous if they stay with abusive or even emotionally challenged lovers; say "yes" to sex when they really mean "no"; overeat or undereat to hide their sexuality.

With wit and grace, Karen Lehrman offers in The Lipstick Proviso a way to complete the feminist revolution, and clearly establishes herself as the definitive voice of the next generation of feminism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385527667
• ISBN13: 9780385527668
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

FINALLY-A LOGICAL VIEW OF FEMINISIM

After reading so many books by feminist authors it is wonderful to finally read a book that validates what I knew in my gut all along and was faulted for by "feminists"---its OK to be "feminine" and powerful at the same time. Its ok to be sexy and successful simultaneously. Men and women are different. We should revel in the difference and use the difference to enhance our position in our personal and professional lives. I now know that I am an "equity feminist". This book taught me that not all feminists are alike! I hope there are more books by this wonderful level headed realistic author. The quote from the book that has stayed with me is something along the lines of "I believe in equality of opportunity-not equality of result"!!