'Feminist Housewife' Writer Lisa Miller Is Trying to Make 'Lean Out' Happen
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New York Magazine writer Lisa Miller is doing some TV appearances to promote her bogus trend piece about the “legions” of “feminist housewives” who are choosing to stay home because “mothers instinctively want to devote themselves to home more than fathers do.” Yesterday, she appeared on CBS This Morning, where she participated in a roundtable discussion about feminism, arguing the case for “leaning out,” a term she has coined to serve as opposition to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. Groan.
That said, how cool is it that 10 minutes of network TV time was devoted to a debate about feminism? Miller was joined by Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Joanna Coles, Barnard president Debora Spar, as well as the show’s anchors Gayle King, Charlie Rose, and Norah O’Donnell. Miller claims that feminist housewives are an “antidote to this recommendation by Sandberg that what women have to do to further the feminist movement is to be more competative more ambitious, more wily, more strategic.” (They’re not.) She’s calling it “leaning out.” (But if Miller really understood the concept and message of Lean In, then technically, leaning out would mean that you are actually still working, but shying away from leadership positions.) And fanning the flames of the “mommy wars,” Miller tried to frame the debate as being about how people judge women as not being feminists because they choose to stay home and be moms. Thankfully, Norah O’Donnell stepped in to stop her nonsense, saying, “I don’t think that’s what the book is about. I don’t think that’s what Sheryl Sandberg’s message was.”