Showing It Off
22 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
in Beauty, eyes, guys and girls, lust, media, Modesty, Needs
My family rarely watches TV. We don’t even have cable. When we do watch TV, it’s usually only during football season. During those times, as we flip back and forth between games on our few channels there is always – let me repeat- always, at least one channel with a person ‘showing off’ their body. Whether it’s a commercial, show or even a music video, it’s not hard to find an eyeful of skin. In fact, it’s inescapable.
I’m a very visual person, I’ll be honest. Seeing a large amount of skin catches my attention immediately. And most people would look. It’s not necessarily wrong to get your head turned by something like that. What’s wrong is keeping your gaze there. We’re supposed to flee temptation, not feed our minds with more. But more on that in another post.
Our culture today has greatly deceived both men and women. It appears to be a common belief that the more you ‘show off’ the more you get noticed and the more you get noticed the more important you are. Women especially buy into this lie. Believe me. I struggle with this. I know other girls and women do too. As we buy into this lie we start believing that our only worth comes from how much we get noticed. Everyone wants to have worth. Women seem to desire this a great deal. We want to know we’re important. That we’re special. And the world tells us that the only way to know that we have worth is by getting noticed for our bodies.
This lie is degrading. When we really think about it, what the world is telling us as women is that our worth is only determined by our bodies and whether we are beautiful or sexy enough to get noticed. It’s telling us that nothing else about us is of worth. Only our bodies. Forget who we are. Forget our individual personalities. All we are worth is what we look like. That is what our society tells us.
How terrible for the girls who don’t get noticed by guys. According to society’s standards, those girls have little or no worth. According to God’s standards however, each of those girls is precious. They are made in His image and have immeasurable worth. We need to tear away the lies that society forces on us and see those girls for who they are. Beautiful, important people who have worth.
And now,what about the girls who do get noticed? My mom often says, ‘Beauty is a curse.’ ‘Yeah, right,’ you might say. ‘Only people without beauty say that.’ Beauty isn’t evil but it can be used the wrong way. I want to ask the women who make guys turn their heads by showing off as much as they can, ‘At the end of the day, do you feel worth more because of all the stares and cat-calls? Do you feel important because you can make a man turn and stare? Do you really want a man to rate your worth according to how you look?” Some of them might say they do feel important and worth more. I can even understand this. There have been times that guys have paid extra attention to me instead of to the other girls in the room. I felt that I had somehow won. That I was better that the others. But these feelings only lasted a little while. I realized that those guys were only interested in the superficial part of me. Then I was angry. “I am so much more than a ‘cute face’ or ‘well-shaped body’,” I thought. “I am a person. A special person. Someone who God made and who is defined by more than my outward looks.” You see, when a guy who doesn’t know me starts paying attention to me, it’s actually offensive to me. Don’t get me wrong, I still battle with wanting to be noticed for the superficial – it’s hard to break a mindset that has been force-fed you your entire life. But when I really think about it, I want to be admired and noticed for who I am. And I don’t need to look like a model and turn heads to feel worth more. My identity is in Christ.
Women who show off their bodies are really only degrading themselves. Sure, it might get guys’ attention, but is that really a worthy goal? Is it really worth all the time, all the lost modesty, to gain mens’ stares so that we can feel better than the other girls? We are worth more than just our superficial outward looks. We are special individuals. Our identity is in Christ.
nataliecorder
