Thursday, 01 July 2010
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A Preoccupation with Beauty
By Sharon at SheWorshipsIn my last post I examined one of the reasons more and more women may be evacuating their marriages: the need to be independent from men. In this post I want to examine a second reason women may be leaving their marriages: a preoccupation with beauty.
Women in our culture are OBSESSED with beauty. Practically flawless models are airbrushed in magazines, and women spend millions of dollars each year on products ranging from wrinkle cream to spankx. Beauty is a highly valued commodity, and the Christian world is no exception. If you ever walk through the women’s section at a Christian bookstore you will see title after title dealing with beauty. We are just as obsessed with beauty as the culture around us. We may veil our obsession with language about “true beauty” but the fact of the matter is, we can’t get enough of it. We desperately want to feel beautiful.
Now let me be clear: beauty is not a bad thing. God created beauty. He defines beauty. He gave us beautiful people and beautiful things. However, we too often flirt with the line between good and ultimate good. C.S. Lewis described this distinction as follows:
“Every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made…You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.”
In other words, there are many partial goods, but there is only one total good: Christ. However, many Christian woman draw dangerously close to treating beauty as a total good, not a partial one. They do this by placing an inordinate emphasis on beauty, as if the Christian life is ultimately about responding to this desire of your heart. As the teaching goes, God created women to be beautiful, so we will always have a desire to be beautiful, a desire that is constantly attacked and manipulated by the Enemy. The only One who can make us feel truly, irrevocably beautiful, is God.
And all of this is true. But it’s only a small part of the picture. First and foremost, it’s not even about us. It’s about God. And second, it’s not about feeling beautiful, but being in right relationship with God. Yet it is easy for these truths to get lost when we only want to read and hear about beauty, beauty, BEAUTY! Pretty soon, Christianity is just another type of makeover.
So what does all of this have to do with marriage? Between a culture that urges us to be outwardly beautiful and a religion that tells us to be inwardly beautiful, it is easy to make beauty into an idol. And when we do, we can face great disillusionment when marriage gets ugly. While marriage can certainly have its moments of romance and bliss, it’s also hard work. You don’t always look your best, and neither does your husband. He burps and farts. He doesn’t hang up the wet towels and they sour. He doesn’t use coasters. He eats things way past their due date. Then come the kids. You lose control of your body and it’s all you can do to get through the day, let alone take care of your skin, hair and nails. And whose that crazy lady screaming at your kids to quit running around the house? Oh wait, it’s you.
What happened to that beautiful life that the world says you should have and Christianity promises to give? Where did it go? How did it escape you? If you signed up for beauty and instead got struggle and strife, it’s easy to feel short-changed. It’s easy to yearn for the days when you had time for yourself. It’s easy to miss the times when you got dressed up for a night on the town with your girlfriends. Back then you just wanted to get married, but now that freedom seems glamorous. Why didn’t you appreciate it when you had it?
While not all women may struggle with these thoughts, I suspect that many do. And when we struggle with these doubts, we are sabotaged all the more by an anemic theology that emphasizes beauty but says little about the ugliness of suffering. Yes, God heals us and restores us, pursues us and ravishes us. But the call to follow Christ is also a call to suffer. It is a call to take up your cross and follow Him. Suffering is not a possibility but a guarantee, and this aspect of discipleship is generally glossed over when it coms to conversations about beauty.
The Christian life is not all about beauty. Beauty is good, but feeling beautiful is not God’s ultimate goal for your life. His ultimate goal for you is holiness, and that may come as a result of very ugly circumstances. We must therefore be wary of making beauty, a partial good, into a total good. If you are motivated by the pursuit of the beautiful life, then you will abandon whatever hinders your pursuit, whether it be your faith, or your marriage. So be sure that beauty has been properly prioritized. Beauty is good, but the total good, the first thing, is Christ. Christ, not beauty, must drive women’s discipleship.
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About the Author
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- From: sheworships
- Name: Sharon
- About Me: Sharon Hodde Miller is a North Carolina girl, born and raised! She is originally from Charlotte, NC, and she received her undergraduate degree and Masters of Divinity from Duke University. Sharon has worked for Proverbs 31 Ministries where she was a contributing writer to the ministry’s daily devotions and radio broadcasts. She has written for Relevant Magazine’s online articles, Lifeway’s Collegiate Magazine, Ungrind Webzine, and she continues to write and minister to women all over the world about being a Christian woman in an ever-changing culture. Sharon currently lives in Durham, North Carolina with her husband, who is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity at Duke Divinity School. If you would like to contact her regarding a speaking or writing opportunity, if you have any questions, or would like to submit a blog topic, please e-mail her at sharon(at)sheworships(dot)com.
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Comments (9)
About those books you mentioned...I'm skeptical of the validity of any book, especially in the Christian genre, that has a full-length glamour shot of the author on the front cover. Regardless of the message they're preaching, it screams indulgence to me.
I have to say, you're one of my favorite Revelife authors.
I don't think that those problems have to do so much with beauty. I think it's more about wanting to escape the hard work of family life. Why would a woman who was married for a few years and popped out a couple kids leave her husband and destroy her family for BEAUTY? That's stupid. She's already had kids, so it's not for the beauty of her body. She'll have to take care of her kids and work at least one full time job to support them, so it's not for more time to get beautiful or to have a beautiful glamorous life.
I haven't glanced a cover of Cosmo in ages but I remember the women on those covers looked mean-spirited and wore waaaaay too much makeup. Same with Vogue and probably most of them. I know I'm addressing the more superficial part of your article but I wish women could understand 1) women are more beautiful without all the paint and 2) women are marketing targets and should be angered that they are systematically made to feel insecure enough to buy all that paint, get boob jobs and nose jobs, etc. It kills me.
The other day while in the supermarket I saw a rather plain looking young woman who had some difficulty walking. It was clear it was not a temporary difficulty. I saw her face and she looked so sweet I think I would have married her on the spot. She wasn't wearing any noticeable makeup. Her face was very pretty to my eye but there was something I saw in her face that was endearing. I wouldn't be surprised if I learned that she believes a man would never find her attractive and that breaks my heart. Of course all the reasons to not go up to her, me being a perfect stranger, and say hi went through my head and I didn't.
As for the other issues you mention, there's so much to say but I'll just say I hope us guys stop being such dopes someday.
@thedommediaries@xanga - That's a good point...unless there is a large alimony in the balance.
I agree with the above poster who wasn't sure beauty was actually the issue here. I think you hit on two different things in this post.
1. Women are obsessed with beauty.
2. Women want perfect lives and sometimes want to escape marriages that don't provide them.
I believe both of these things are true, but I'm not sure the second is usually very strongly connected to the first. I think women are often likely to stay in relationships rather than leaving them because they so desperately need to feel beautiful and the man they're with is their only ticket to that. Wanting to look like a model and wanting to have a perfect life are two extremely different things that would come from different places for me, but maybe they're closer together for others.
As far as the other issue, I do think women are taught to expect perfect lives and sometimes have difficulty handling it when they don't experience them.
Good ideas in here. Thanks for posting.
Pickwick12 also made good points. I'm out of my league here but something just dawned on me after reading what she said,
"I do think women are taught to expect perfect lives and sometimes have difficulty handling it when they don't experience them."
This is a generalization but there is the "daddy's little girl" syndrome wherein a daughter can do no wrong and is perhaps spoiled. It's sweet but husbands tend not to continue that type of pampering toward their wives. When a man becomes father to a daughter the "daddy's little girl" syndrome fires up anew but that kind of relationship doesn't carry over to a wife. I'm aware that a lot fathers are not that kind to their daughters to begin with so again I'm making a generalization here.Women who enjoy family and laughing and responsibility: Italian women. REAL Italian women, like this one: Lana Dora Battagello.
I think feeling beautiful is a huge part of each woman's life, it is undeniable, it is even primitive and God plant that in our hearts. However, God has a lot of ways to make a woman feel beautiful, I never believe that outside beauty was enough, but knowledge, compassion and kindness is needed to feel truly beautiful. If you are a responsible person, you would feel good about yourself and it's a part of your inner beauty. I think it's important to appreciate beauty from both outside and inside.