In a eye-opening examination of female duplicity, LITTLE WHITE LIES, DEEP DARK SECRETS: THE TRUTH ABOUT WHY WOMEN LIE, gender expert Susan Shapiro Barash, reveals how a woman’s “fudging” about her sexual past is just the tip of the iceberg.  “Women exhibit many styles of duplicity,” says Barash, bestselling author of Tripping the Prom Queen and a teacher in special programs at Sarah Lawrence College.  “What’s more, the broad range of areas in which women lie is both extraordinary and completely different from men.”

In her research, Barash found a startling and unexpected prevalence of societal lies and clandestine behaviors women use as a means to an end, including:

• More than 80% of women believe in beneficial lying.

• 80% of interviewees believe that women lie more cleverly and successfully than men.

• 75% of women say they have to lie in the workplace to sustain their positions.

• 50% of women have mixed emotions about mothering.

• More than 75% of women feel justified in having a secret to protect.

• 70% of women attribute “living a lie” to how they’ve been positioned in marriages, the workplace, financially, or as mothers.

• 75% of women say they lie about money to boyfriends, husbands, and family members.

• 60% of interviewees admit to an addiction secret.

Women lie about love affairs, their level of satisfaction in their marriages and other relationships, their children’s and their own accomplishments, eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, addiction problems, and more, according to Barash. One of the biggest lies though, observes the author, is a woman’s real feelings about motherhood.  “When all our maternal sacrifices don’t make us feel joyous and selfless, but lost and disillusioned,” notes Barash, “they become the dark secrets of motherhood.”

LITTLE WHITE LIES, DEEP DARK SECRETS underscores just how deeply women internalize their own mother’s patterns of deception as they mature and have their own families.  A woman’s lies may be compassionate if they save the feelings of another and yet serve to remind us of the primacy women place on relationships.  A woman who suffers a husband’s secret abuse for years to hold the family together could be said to be engaging in a survival lie, while a woman who hides the truth about an illegitimate child can be truly said to be engaging in a beneficial lie. 

“Our mothers’ example proved that secrets render us potent in a world where women have fewer auspices than do men,” says Barash.  “Using a lie to get what you cannot otherwise have is a keenly female trait.  A secret that begets a lie is shown to us by our mothers, our mentors, and our female peers as worth pursuing.”

For women, lying is both an acquired habit and an innate behavior concludes Barash.  LITTLE WHITE LIES, DEEP DARK SECRETS offers a completely non-judgmental assessment of lying and deception and their inestimable value as weapons in the female arsenal as women search for personal retribution and satisfaction.