Wonderful job, Sheryl Sandberg. But we have some more advice…
The new feminism is pragmatic and career-oriented.
“Having it all” is out. Setting realistic, community-oriented goals is in.
No gender is an island.
Working together, anything can happen.
In the pragmatic “Lean In,” spirit, here’s more practical advice for women:
STAY ON
We refer to the following clever scenario, but “Stay On” can mean any ‘working’ of a system to your advantage: You are commuting by train. Maybe you are taking the train to that big interview. You are dressed solidly but not flamboyantly. You are researched and prepared. You buy a ticket for the next stop, and then you pretend to miss your stop. You stay on. The result? You get a free ride (pretending sleepiness or distress) to the next stop, or even to the end of the line. This might be a small advantage, but every advantage counts. You need to always be thinking this way! Working the system (and boldly in public) like this, it must be emphasized, works as well for women as it does for men. Men tend to work this way more often, but there’s no reason why women can’t profit in ways like this, too!
MARRY UP
This is a great pile of advice: Women, there’s no shame in this! First, there’s plenty you can bring to the table, and it doesn’t have to be money! Marrying up doesn’t have to be an ‘end’ strategy; it can be the beginning of a new, independent, productive life.
DIG IN
Women, stop being weak, fat and frumpy! Women eat less fat and protein than men, but why shouldn’t women build muscle, too? The word is slowly getting out that “fat is the new fiber.” Animal fat is necessary: 30% of calories should come from fat—says the American Heart Association! Non-fat milk and non-fat yogurt and all sorts of “lean cuisine” is not healthy! Never mind the ‘baking/eating cookies syndrome,’ which is only part of this issue. Women are starving—from misinformation. If you avoid fat in your diet, your body stores it! Women who avoid fat and protein are starving themselves—and then they guiltily fix it by snacking on sugar and carbs—which leads to obesity, low energy, disease, and failure. This is real simple: Meat-eaters are winners, and meat-eaters tend to be men.
KNOW WHY
The chief reason for unhappiness and intellectual confusion of all kinds, according to a new study by Scarriet, is not looking for the why behind the what in attempting to figure out the world. The what is the essence of what your peers are saying, the accepted wisdom of the social sphere, the “best-seller” knowledge, the buzz, had for free, which most people go by. You find it in all those insightful little articles you read and the pretty pictures you look at. Dig deeper, and find out why something is the way it is—and you will have an infinite advantage over everyone else. This is especially useful advice for women, who tend to rely more on social information and fixate on the what of injustice, rather than the often nuanced, or hidden, or even missed-because-too-obvious why. Knowing the true cause of something will not only make you smarter, it will make you happier: less traumatized, less victimized/obsessed.
LEAN BACK
For every successful ‘lean in’ strategy, there are thousands of successful ‘lean back’ strategies, which really means: saving valuable time and energy. This strategy may be the most important one of all. It’s the understanding that happiness is the end of existence, and any effort is wasteful if it puts off happiness. You may not want to do all the things necessary for material success—and think of the sorrow involved if you may not need to do all those things but wasted your life doing them anyway. If you love something enough, you will do anything to get it, and you will be happy while you are going after it—and that’s OK. There’s no need to apologize for not sacrificing your life for something you don’t really want. Whenever “sacrifice” is involved, you need to stop and think: why am I doing this? Another advantage to the ‘lean back’ strategy: it permits one to look around and assess a situation before one gets embroiled in it. It would be a terrible mistake to equate the ‘lean back’ strategy to laziness and hedonism: this is to miss the whole point. Women are more likely to be guilt-tripped out of this strategy, which men, watching and learning as they lean back, do all the time. Women, don’t be guilted! You can do this, too!
Lean In may be helping women, but we guarantee Lean Back, Know Why, Dig In, Marry Up, and Stay On will help women more. (OK, maybe “Stay On” is a bit of a joke, but it reminds women to think outside the box a little, too.)
Women, this is real life, and it is your life. Lean anyway you need to lean.
