Marlene's Reviews > "If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?": Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times

I want to say "eh". I couldn't get into this book. The book is, however, what it promises to be. I made it 16% into the book and realized it was mostly the same thing over and over. The book is comedic, but all of it felt slightly unfunny to me. I think perhaps this is akin to how I find David Sedaris singularly unfunny.

Some quotes I liked:

p. 7 "Lately, though, I’ve realized that I’ve clung to the schematics behind the game of Duck, Duck, Goose as a guiding force for far too long. In women’s lives especially (and since I’m talking about the pre-K demographic I’ll call us girls without fear of appearing patronizing), all sorts of lessons have encouraged us to sit politely and wait to be chosen. Remember the game Duck, Duck, Goose, where you sat in a circle facing the center and waited to be recognized as the “goose,” whereupon you were tapped and permitted to run around making choices yourself? And how many fairy tales taught us essentially the same lesson? “Duck, Duck, Cinderella!” “Duck, Duck, Snow White!” Or classic books? “Duck, Duck, Madame Bovary!” “Duck, Duck, Anna Karenina!” Or popular movies? “Duck, Duck, Julia Roberts playing a hooker in Pretty Woman!” Great lesson, right? Learn to win at a game where ritual passivity is preparation for random selection?"

p. 20 "Human beings are always searching for some part of our body to blame. In the fifteenth century, you could go to a healer who used leeches, holy water, and spiders to cure you. If the patient lived, he gave the healer a pound of goat meat; if he died, the healer was burnt to death as a witch. This is why, even today, doctors prefer malpractice insurance to its alternatives."

p. 27 "13. Help the dramatically self-pitying to understand that they are not, by definition, sympathetic or interesting. Encourage them to address topics other than themselves."

p. 32 "Like most American women, I am a size 14. I am not a size 4, a size 0, or a size Sub-Zero. A Sub-Zero, for me, is a kind of refrigerator."

p. 33 "If I’m standing in line at the grocery store looking at the issue with red-carpet celebrities, what I’m thinking is: “If those are people, what am I?” The rest of us, wearing six shades of mismatched black, including a cowl-neck sweater we liked in college, don’t feel entirely human. We’re getting tired of it." [Marlene sez: I felt this was a particularly good visual image.]

p. 39 "After a certain age, you finally become the indisputable authority on the subject of yourself."