I had the kids stand in a circle while I was trying to
gather my thoughts on what to say. We
had just come out of a summer camp session for high schoolers that talked about
the cultural and personal issues of sexuality by Craig and Jason of XXX Church and had been instructed to meet
briefly to talk as a group and then to split by gender and have a more personal
discussion on these issues. It had been a powerful session that had
taught me something. I had always
thought that pornography was predominantly a male issue. Though it is the subject of jokes and
lighthearted acceptance in our culture at large, the truth is, it consumes the
lives of many men, breaks their marriages, and is very destructive in a
multitude of ways.
But, here was something I hadn’t realized. What Craig and Jason pointed out was that the
overall culture of pornography also is destructive to the women in our lives. They asked the question, “Why is it that when
you look at almost any men’s magazine, there is a beautiful half-naked woman on
the front? And, why is it that when you
look at almost any women’s magazine, you see the same thing?” Not even discussing magazines such as
Penthouse or Hustler, but Swimsuit Issues, FHM, Maxim, and the like. And women’s magazines such as 17, Vogue. There is a message of perfect beauty that
pervades our culture and it affects the self esteem of our young girls.
Back in the parking garage, I recognized the truth of their
message, or at least I thought I did.
But, it was about to be brought home in a powerful and painful way.
I asked the kids to look around at each other and then I
said, “These are your brothers and sisters.
Girls, look at these guys. Every
single one of them struggles with these issues.
They deal with lust and temptation on a daily basis and it affects how
they look at women and how they look at themselves, and it’s a very real
struggle in each of their lives.” The
kids looked at each other with some discomfort, but the moment passed and they
waited for what else I had to say.
Then, I said, “Guys, look around you at these girls. Each and every one of them struggles with
their self-value in some way. They
wonder if they are pretty enough, smart enough, or valuable enough to be
loved. They envy other girls for their
beauty while they secretly doubt themselves.”
That’s when it happened.
I thought I had understood the issue.
I had worked with teens for almost a decade and had a young daughter of
my own, but I didn’t really understand.
When I had finished my statement I saw every single one of
those girls, including the adult sponsor get the most heartbreaking look on
their faces and look quickly down at the ground. Tears ran down several of their faces.
My words had struck home in a deeply personal way that was
shattering.
My own eyes teared up as I looked upon these girls who I
cared so much about. I had known most of
them since they were small children, including the adult sponsor. Now, every single one of these girls was
beautiful and every single one didn’t believe it. I don’t say they were beautiful, “just
because I was their youth minister and I was supposed to say that kind of thing;” it’s true, every one of those
young women were physically beautiful.
There wasn’t one who wasn’t pretty.
Very pretty. What’s more, I knew
every single one of them, and each was a beautiful person inside too. They were my friends, they were my students,
and I loved them as if they were my own daughters.
Yet, here they were broken to their very core by the message
of value that our culture had put on them.
These lovely young ladies, each and every one, wondered if they were
loveable. It’s not enough to say that my
heart was broken for them… It was torn with grief that they would have to fight
this battle.
As instructed, we broke into two separate groups, male and
female, to have our discussions. I
walked quickly ahead of the guys to the room where we were going to talk, so
they wouldn’t see how much this had shaken me.
I needed time to gather my thoughts before I spoke again.
I have often discussed the issue of pornography with guys. I truly believe that puberty is a much worse
experience for guys than girls. Everything that happens to guys is in secret
and it is culturally surrounded with shame.
Every guy at some point feels like a dirty little pervert and wonders if
there is something wrong with him, because other guys don’t seem to have these
issues. Even in a culture that is now seems
accepting of pornography, there is still an underlying message that you are
sick if you look at it.
But, the pictures and advertising that pervades our media,
magazines, movies, and music are destructive to our young women. Airbrushing, makeup, special lighting and Photoshop,
along with the selection of only a certain female models who meet a narrow set
of criteria, leads us to a standard of beauty that is all but impossible to
meet in the real world. I once heard a
quote from a supermodel where she said, “We are freaks of nature.” Years ago, we had a young girl in our youth
group who was a model. She did runway
shows and fashion modeling. Let me tell
you, she was gorgeous even as a teen.
Tall, thin, long hair, and perfect skin… Amazing physical beauty. When I saw here again a few years later, I
found out she was no longer modeling.
Why? They told her that she was too fat!!!!!!! She looked no different to me, most women
would envy her figure, yet she wasn’t ‘perfect’ enough for the modeling
world.
Dove (the soap company) has a drive to change this. In their Campaign for Real Beauty, they have
created videos that show the reality of women in
advertising and the painful
truth of how this affects our girls. (Fair warning, the second video is
very sad)
There is a cartoon
that I have seen several times posted on the internet. The caption says, “The difference between men
and women.” It shows two panels. One
shows a girl looking in a mirror and the other shows a guy looking in the
mirror. The guy is overweight and bald,
but looks in the mirror and sees himself like Charles Atlas. The girl is curvy and attractive, but in the
mirror, sees this dumpy ugly woman. There
is so much truth here, it hurts.
What saddens me the most is that I see this message being
eaten up by my own preteen daughter and her young friends. I hear them talk about diets and exercise,
not because they want to be healthy, but because they think they are fat. It makes me want to go have an angry and
quite violent encounter with the editors of every fashion magazine in
existence.
It’s time to dump these ideas as a culture. They don’t work, and they are spiritually and
emotionally (and sometimes physically) destructive to our daughters….
And our wives and mothers too. Our culture values youth and discards the
aged. I love the scene in the movie, “A
Family Thing” where Robert Duvall is looking at old family pictures and says to
the Grandma, “You were very pretty back then,” and Grandma replies, “There ain’t
nothing wrong with the way I look now.”
But, even our adult women are sucked into this twisted culture of youth
and beauty. Liposuction, plastic
surgery, and fad diets are the way of life for many of our adult women.
Let’s never spend another dime on one of these
magazines. Let’s turn the channel when
shows like Top Model come on. Let’s send
the message to our girls that it’s good to be healthy and fit, but it’s not
healthy to obsess about appearance.
The cultural idea of beauty has changed over time. Sometimes it has been healthy, other times destructive. The 1911 Swimsuit Issue would have looked VERY different from the 2011 one! Let's change this culture's idea of beauty. Let’s send the message to the girls in our lives that they
ARE beautiful as they are.
Let’s work for the day when another youth minister is
standing in a parking garage looking at his group of kids, saying, “You won’t
believe this, but many years ago, our society used to believe that a woman’s
value was in her physical beauty.” I
hope he never has to see the looks on his girls faces that I saw.
Tall or short.
Curvy or thin.
Black, White, Brown, Yellow, or Red.
Long straight hair or kinky afro.
Blonde, brunette, or redhead.
Young or old.
You are beautiful, just as God created you.
---------
P.S. To all of you girls that were there in the parking garage that day, you were beautiful then and you are still beautiful today.
