The Women's Freedom Network Newsletter
Spring 1997, Vol. 4, No. 2.

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

by Karen Lehrman

Reviewed by Donna Laframboise

"Contemporary feminist theory is in desperate need of being updated for the real world," writes Karen Lehrman in the preface to "The Lipstick Proviso". The 200 clear-headed pages that follow contribute much toward this monumental task. The author of a 1993 "Rolling Stone" cover story that uncovered alarming trends in women's studies programs, in this book Lehrman demolishes much of the twaddle that currently passes for feminist thought. Declaring that the personal is no longer political, she says the expectation that an organized women's movement, government body or educational institution can solve many of women's problems is misguided. Instead, she says, individuals must assume responsibility for their own lives, for self-defeating patterns of behavior and bad decisions. "Now that society has finally begun to treat women like adults, they have to learn how to act like adults," she writes.

Pointing out that women have made more progress during the past thirty years than in the previous three centuries, Lehrman has no sympathy for whiners. She observes that the angry young feminists associated with many women's studies departments ironically belong to "the first generation of women who have grown up with nearly every option open to them." Substituting a "society-is-destiny" world view for the "biology is destiny" thinking of earlier generations, she says many academic feminists look at the world around them and see oppression rather than opportunities. Such women believe existing social structures must be overthrown rather than reformed, and consider men enemies rather than valuable allies. Lehrman says this skewed perspective needs to be challenged because it is tainting the lives of young women and having a profound impact on public policy.

Disputing the conspiratorial - and ultimately condescending - arguments of popular feminists such as Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi, Lehrman says "Rationality begins at home: if we want society to stop equating our worth with our beauty, we need to make sure that we stop it ourselves." Until individual women begin demanding more from their relationships with men, she says, there is little others can do to improve matters. "Yes, this is blaming the victim," she writes. "But sometimes the victim needs to be blamed so she'll stop being the victim."

Emphasizing that feminism, like the liberalism it sprang from, is properly interested only in equality of opportunity (as opposed to equality of results), Lehrman argues that "[c]ounting women like beans or, worse, setting quotas for them" misses the point. Women may never hold fifty percent of the most influential positions in corporate America, she says. They may never earn a full dollar for every dollar earned by men. But this may have more to do with the choices individual women are making than with systemic discrimination. Only 14 percent of women in middle management say they'd like to be CEO someday, compared to 45 percent of men. Many women deliberately pursue career paths that pay less but are more satisfying in other ways (for example, family versus corporate law). To Lehrman, it's important that women have options. How they exercise those options is no one else's concern. She says a women's movement that continues to insist women are "oppressed" because they don't fill 50 percent of the seats in Congress is doing the female half of the population no favors. "If feminist theorists can't learn to respect women's choices - from wearing sensuous Galliano gowns to staying at home to raise their children - how will society?" she asks.

Lehrman, bless her, also has little patience with those who believe women are inherently morally superior to men, and that it is the job of the women's movement to make the corporate world a kinder, gentler place. "A law firm is not a day care center," she writes, "and there's no feminist reason to try to make it into one." She views competition as a force that can build self-respect and encourage women to exceed expectations, and notes that the non-hierarchical collective structures many feminists favor are often less productive in practice than in theory. Like Camille Paglia, Lehrman believes feminism has paid too little attention to the evolutionary roots of much of our social behavior. While circumspect about acknowledging that early human history merely predisposes women and men to act in certain ways, Lehrman believes it provides insight into current gender conflicts. For her, "nurture" (as opposed to "nature") cannot explain everything. Observing wryly that "[i]deological feminists may be the only other group besides creationists who refuse to believe in evolution," she refers frequently to primate research that suggests males and females developed different approaches to courtship, sex and child-rearing as a result of their different reproductive roles.

Lehrman says contemporary women are now able to "deliberately choose" husbands who not only display the virility and confidence our female ancestors found attractive, but who demonstrate "sensitivity, support and sweetness" as well. It's unfortunate she passes up the opportunity to urge women to reconsider their overwhelming tendency to select husbands who earn more money than they do. American families increasingly contain either two high-powered salaries or two rather modest ones, with a yawning chasm in between. While male doctors used to marry lower-paid nurses and secretaries, for example, they now marry other doctors. You don't need to be a Marxist to be troubled by the growing disparity between these two groups, or to wonder whether the divorce rate might be lower if women placed more emphasis on men's character and less on their paychecks.

Admitting that sex is an enormous source of power for women, Lehrman suggests it's okay for females to strategically "hold back on sex" in intimate relationships, since "this is the real world, where indirect power pervades every situation and interaction." Why she would condemn women who use the "power" of female tears to accomplish their goals, and yet defend equally manipulative behavior in the bedroom is unclear.

Lehrman's most compellingly original thinking appears in the chapter titled "Love," in which she explores motherhood and argues that feminism needs to acknowledge that "many women have children for the wrong reasons," and that "not all women make good mothers." Lehrman is alarmed by the feminist tendency to celebrate single-motherhood, and to dismiss any criticism of this phenomenon as "an attack on women, especially poor, black women." She writes that children yearn for both a father and a mother, and cites data indicating that those from single-parent families experience significantly higher rates of mental illness and behavioral problems, and are far more likely to grow up in poverty. Insisting that female autonomy and self-indulgence are not the same thing, Lehrman reminds us that responsibility and accountability go hand-in-hand with rights. She makes a particularly important point when she says that abusive or incompetent mothering (which spans all socio-economic brackets and all familial configurations) is a heart-breakingly serious matter. "Nothing else that happens to these kids for the rest of their lives - sexism, racism, whatever - will ever affect them as much as bad mothering," she says.

Insisting on women's right to be individuals, to make their own decisions about whether to wear make-up or miniskirts, to read pornography or participate in rough sex, Lehrman sees feminism as "not a set of commands, but a set of challenges." She views feminism as a guide to rational decision-making and self-affirming behavior, rather than a dreary list of pre-ordained beliefs.

Urging the abolition of organizations that claim to speak for all women, Lehrman declares: "There are no correct feminist behaviors, opinions, values; there is no consolidated sisterhood; no one liberated woman. There is, in the end, only liberation."

Donna Laframboise is the author of "The Princess at the Window" (1996). Her articles have appeared in "The Toronto Star" and "The Globe and Mail". She lives in Montreal.