LITMIR.BIZ

       1

       Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

      Sixteen-year-old Erica is a shining star. The daughter of two prominent professors, she is the vice president of her class with an impeccable grade point average. Her report card is peppered with praise from her teachers about her diligence and what a joy she is to have in class. She volunteers twice a month at a local hospital. At the end of sophomore year, she was voted “Best Smile” by her classmates, and her friends will tell you she’s the sweetest person they know.

      Beneath that bright smile, though, things aren’t quite as sunny. If you open Erica’s journal, you’ll read about how she feels like it’s her full-time job to be perfect in order to make everyone else happy. You’ll learn that she works to the point of exhaustion every night and all weekend to get all A’s and please her parents and teachers; disappointing them is just about the worst thing she can imagine. Once, because of an accidental scheduling mistake, she had to back out of a debate competition at school because it conflicted with a volunteer trip she’d committed to go on with her church; she was so hysterical that her teacher was going to “hate her” that she literally made herself sick.

      Erica despises volunteering at the hospital (don’t even get her started on emptying the bedpans . . . ) but sticks with it because her guidance counselor said it would look good on her college applications. Even though she desperately wanted to try out for cheerleading team because she thought it looked like fun, she didn’t, because her friends told her the jumps were really hard to learn and the last thing she wanted to do was make an idiot of herself. Truth be told, she doesn’t really even like most of her friends, who can be mean and catty, but she just quietly goes along with what they say and do because it’s too scary to imagine doing otherwise.

      Like so many girls, Erica is hardwired to please everyone, play it safe, and avoid any hint of failure at all costs.

      I know this story because today, Erica is forty-two and a good friend of mine. She is still supersweet with a dazzling smile—and still a prisoner of her own perfectionism. A successful political consultant with no kids, she works until after midnight most nights to impress her colleagues and overdeliver for her clients. Every time I see her she looks fabulously put together; she’s that friend who always says just the right thing, always sends just the right gift or note, and is always on time. But just like her sixteen-year-old self, she’ll only reveal privately that she still feels strangled by the constant need to please everyone. I asked her recently what she would do if she didn’t care what anyone else thought. She immediately ticked off a list of goals and dreams she wished she had the guts to go after but wouldn’t dare, ranging from telling her biggest client that she disagrees with his strategies to moving out of the city and having a child on her own.

      Our culture has shaped generations of perfect girls like Erica who grow up to be women afraid to take a chance. Afraid of speaking their minds, of making bold choices, of owning and celebrating their achievements, and of living the life they want to live, without constantly seeking outside approval. In other words: afraid of being brave.

      From the time they are babies, girls absorb hundreds of micromessages each day telling them that they should be nice, polite, and polished. Adoring parents and caretakers dress them impeccably in color-coordinated outfits (with matching bows) and tell them how pretty they look. They are praised mightily for being A students and for being helpful, polite, and accommodating and are chided (however lovingly) for being messy, assertive, or loud.

      Well-meaning parents and educators guide girls toward activities and endeavors they are good at so they can shine, and steer them away from ones they might find frustrating, or worse, at which they could fail. It’s understandable because we see girls as vulnerable and fragile, we instinctively want to protect them from harm and judgment.

      Our boys, on the other hand, are given freedom to roam, explore, get dirty, fall down, and yes, fail—all in the name of teaching them to “man up” as early as possible. Even now, for all our social progress, people get a little uncomfortable if a boy is too hesitant, cautious, or vulnerable—let alone sheds a tear. I see this even with my own twenty-first-century feminist husband, who regularly roughhouses with my son to “toughen him up” and tells me to let him cry it out when he’s screaming at night. I once asked him if he would do the same if Shaan were a girl and he immediately responded, “Of course not.”

      Of course, these beliefs don’t vanish just because we grow up. If anything, the pressure on women to be perfect ramps up as life gets more complex. We go from trying to be perfect students and daughters to perfect professionals, perfect girlfriends, perfect wives, and perfect mommies, hitting the marks we’re supposed to and wondering why we’re overwhelmed, frustrated, and unhappy. Something is just missing. We did everything right, so what went wrong?

      When you’re writing a book about women and perfectionism, you start to see it everywhere. In airports, at coffee shops, at conferences, at the nail salon . . . pretty much anywhere I went, I’d strike up a conversation on the topic and women would invariably sigh or roll their eyes knowingly, nod or laugh in recognition, or get sad as they shared a personal story. They’d tell me how their daily lives are ruled by a relentless inner drive to do everything flawlessly, from curating their Instagram feed to pleasing their partner (or struggling to find the “perfect” partner) to raising all-star kids who are also well adjusted (and who go straight from a year of breastfeeding to eating homemade, organic meals); from staying in shape and looking “good for their age” to striving ceaselessly to be the best in the office, in their congregation or volunteer group or community, in Soul-Cycle and CrossFit classes, and everywhere else.

      So many women of all ages opened up to me about unfulfilled life dreams or ambitions they harbor because they’re too afraid to act on them. Regardless of ethnicity, profession, economic circumstances, or what town they call home, I was struck by how many of their experiences were the same. You’ll hear from many of them throughout this book.

      But first, I want to show you all the ways the drive to be perfect got ingrained in us. What follows in this chapter is a glimpse into how our perfectionism took root as girls, how it shaped

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