Elise Loehnen on How and Why Women Are Culturally Programmed and Deeply Controlled by the Desire to Be “Good”

I was doing my scroll of all of my favorite magazine’s sites when I saw a headline on Vanity Fair that read “Elise Loehnen Would Like Mothers to Give Themselves a Break.” Now, look, I’m not even a mother, and even I get how much mothers giving themselves a break is necessary. I have so many friends that are moms, and even beyond mothers, just for women, in general, that pervasive guilt always seems to be so present—that we’re never doing enough, or, perhaps even more catastrophically, that we ourselves aren’t enough. That’s why I wanted to release today’s episode on the Friday before Mother’s Day specifically—Elise is my guest on the show today, and her message is one all mothers and all women need to hear, and her book, On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good, is one all mothers and all women need to read. This isn’t just a book—it’s a masterclass, a manifesto, a book of a generation. Truly. On Our Best Behavior has one of the best frameworks I’ve ever seen for a book, one that uses the Seven Deadly Sins—ancient ideas of morality that still control and distort women’s lives today—to reveal how these are rules we unwittingly follow in order to be considered “good,” and how we equate self-denial with being good. These unselfish, often distinctly feminine instincts are ingrained in us by a culture that reaps the benefits of it. The Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth have exerted insidious power and have done so since their adoption in the fourth century up to the present day. Elise’s book is at the same time very modern, tying everything to the present day, but also steeped in history—and, thankfully, it teaches us how to break free from the chains that bind us. The book is a New York Times bestseller and has been since its release in May 2023, a groundbreaking work that every woman and, really, every person needs to read. By the way, Elise taught me that the seven deadly sins were actually once eight sins. I really can’t tell you how much this book impacted me, and how excited I am for you to read this book and hear this conversation. Closing out this incredible week on the show, we have Elise Loehnen herself, who is not just the writer of On Our Best Behavior but is also the host of the podcast “Pulling the Thread” and the Substack newsletter of the same name. Elise went to Yale and, interestingly, was a national championship mathlete finalist, which I deeply appreciate made the cut of her bio. She was a deputy editor at Lucky magazine (which we’ve talked about on the show before, in our episode with Jean Godfrey June), was editorial projects director at Conde Nast Traveler, and was chief content officer of Goop—where she hosted the Goop podcast and the Goop Lab series on Netflix and oversaw Goop magazine. She actually left Goop in 2020 to focus on this book. This is actually not Elise’s first book, not by a long shot—she has worked as a ghostwriter on a ton of books in the areas of self-help, style, and business, and has worked with Ellen DeGeneres and Lea Michelle, for example. She’s co-written 12 books, and five of those were New York Times bestsellers, which is incredible. On Our Best Behavior is her first book written under her own name and not ghostwritten. Elise is a frequent contributor to Oprah and has written for The New York Times, Elle Décor, Stylist, and more. She is a wife and a mother of two sons, and they live in L.A. I can’t wait for you to meet her in this conversation.

On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good by Elise Loehnen

“Elise Loehnen Would Like Mothers to Give Themselves a Break” in Vanity Fair