Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification

For millions of women, shame is a vicious predator. It tells us we are less than, that we are unworthy. We try everything to escape shame--ignoring it, intellectualizing it, and even, ironically, shaming ourselves for feeling it. The reality is that women experience shame more frequently and more intensely than men--a direct result, as acclaimed journalist Melissa Petro explains, of a patriarchal culture that "urges women to feel bad about themselves, and then punishes them when they do." Why can't we figure out how to break the shame cycle once and for all?

In Shame on You, Petro takes on the issue of women's shame directly with an unflinching look at the social systems that encourage women to believe we are deeply inadequate. From shame's beginnings ( Maybe she's born with it? Nope, it's misogyny.) to its effect on our lives as adults (How the humiliation of "bad women" affects us all.), shame poisons our friendships, romantic relationships, and work lives. But it doesn't have to be that way. Blending investigative reporting, science, literature, and hundreds of women's personal stories--including her own shameful account of winding up as an unwitting New York Post cover girl--Petro offers us a new way forward. No matter what you do, she explains, there is no escaping being judged. And yet, the women we can become--sometimes as a consequence of shame, rather than in spite of it--are powerful indeed. And maybe that's what others are afraid of.