Lip service

Women aren't the best of friends, models of sisterly support, or paragons of emotional honesty. From the woman who sleeps with the boss, to the woman who tells her friend she looks fine when she doesn't, to the woman who pressures a male friend to have sex, no woman is immune to the impulses of envy, competitiveness, aggression, and coercion. None of this should come as a surprise women are human beings after all. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, the myth of women's moral superiority persists. And although gender roles are now more fluid than ever before, especially among the generations born after 1960, the rhetoric of polarization continues. In Lip Service, journalist Kate Fillion challenges our cherished convictions about women's natural instincts and shows how our most ingrained beliefs about gender differences actually blind us to the complexities and contradictions in women's and men's behavior. More important, she demonstrates in powerful terms how confining and self-destructive this skewed perspective is for women in all aspects of their lives - including office politics, their intimate relationships with men, their friendships with women, and their own self-images. Based on extensive academic research and in-depth interviews with North American women and men, Lip Service paints a startling and ultimately very human portrait of the widening divide between women's actions and how we choose to interpret them. Acknowledging this is not antiwoman. In fact, Kate Fillion so convincingly argues, confronting the darker side of women's behavior frees us from the unequal moral standards and restrictive typecasting of the currently accepted codes of conduct, and allows women to be honest about who they are and what they want.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Mental Health. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.