THE LIPSTICK PROVISO: Women, Sex & Power in the Real World
By Karen Lehrman. Anchor Books. 240 pp. $23.95
Lehrman, a journalist and former editor at The New Republic, calls herself a feminist but disagrees with many of orthodox feminism’s central tenets. Doctrinaire feminists, she believes, often fail to appreciate women’s individual choices, especially when those choices place women in traditional roles such as "pink ghetto" worker, nurturing wife, stay-at-home mother, or even sex object. In Lehrman’s view, these choices reflect the genuine needs and desires of many women, and champions of true liberation should respect them just as much they respect high-pressure careers. "You may not like my choices (and I may not like yours), but aside from warning me about the possible pitfalls, my choices are really none of your business," she declares. How does Lehrman reconcile this defense of traditional womanhood with her complaint that "the feminist revolution" is not yet complete? She does so by making biology a factor in private life but not in the public sphere. Sexually and emotionally, she ventures to argue, "biology will to some extent be destiny for women—just as it has been for men." But in the workplace, all that should matter are the human abilities that women share with men. This is a tidy resolution. But as Lehrman’s forays into the scientific literature on sexual difference demonstrate, biology is no clear or univocal arbiter of how men and women differ— or how they do not. And where science dares not tread, politics is certain to rush in. —Martha BaylesTHE LIPSTICK PROVISO: Women, Sex & Power in the Real World. By Karen Lehrman. Anchor Books. 240 pp. $23.95