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

Why are women so susceptible to debilitating feelings of shame? Why do millions of women allow shame to poison their friendships, professional lives, romantic relationships and their own self-image? For author Melissa Petro, the subject is deeply personal. After it was discovered that she did sex work in college to help pay for her tuition, she wound up an unwitting New York Post cover girl, a public denigration that ultimately cost her a teaching career. That story — and how she recovered from the humiliation and turned her life around — is revealed in her new book, Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification. Drawing from hundreds of women’s stories, her own investigative reporting, science, and literature, Petro shines a light on the patriarchal culture that “urges women to feel bad about themselves and then punishes them when they do” and positions female shame as an inherently political issue – one never more urgent than in an election year, given its intersections with gender, race, healthcare and bodily autonomy, economic consumption, media representation and internet privacy, sex work and the post-#MeToo era. Join her for an inspiring and empowering conversation about how we can shift the shame off our plates and live our best lives in an over-exposed, image-obsessed world. There’s no escaping being judged, Petro explains. And yet, the women we can become – sometimes as a consequence of shame, rather than in spite of it — are powerful indeed.