Beautiful

We stood as a small group in a parking garage outside of the lecture hall, getting ready to head off for discussion groups.  14 teenagers, a close female friend as an adult sponsor and myself.  In moments, I was going to have my heart broken in a way I could never have anticipated, but I didn’t know it yet.

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. 

War Stories

I take my own life in my hands to write this blog entry, but there are times when you have to stand up and share the truth though it endangers your very life. I risk upsetting the most dangerous and unpredictable of human beings…

The pregnant woman.

There is no more deadly beast.

Pregnancy seems to be a right-of-passage for women, without which, other women who have been through it don’t consider you “woman-enough.” As a man, I watch as a disinterested, uninvolved party; I am the narrator on the Discovery channel watching another species, trying to understand the unusual behavior that they are observing.

It is interesting to watch the herd behavior when a young woman becomes pregnant. She shares, with excitement, the amazing news that she will now be involved in the miracle of life. The matriarchs of the herd begin to gather around this new pregnant woman shaking their heads, moving into place as part of an amazing and unusual instinct.

Each woman takes her turn in a carefully orchestrated ritual, as old as time itself: the telling of war stories. First, one woman tells her story of pain and horror, speaking of hours of labor, blood, sweat, and pain. She is usually the youngest, the most recently pregnant, and the one who has little experience in telling her story.

Then, the next woman goes, telling a slightly worse tale, each woman topping the previous story. Somehow, by instinct, they know where there story fits among the others so that each has a turn increasing the terror of the poor new mother. They put Navy Seals to shame as they recount their tales of tearing of flesh, muscles cramping, screams of pain, and blood gushing.

Finally, the last woman, the one with the most gruesome story takes her turn. Any men who may have stayed for a story or two have long since run away in squeamish shock and revulsion. We just aren’t strong enough to take this kind of pain. The new mother is beginning to look green and is reconsidering whether she wants to be part of this awful experience. This final story will be the worst of all, a tale of woe that would terrify the stoutest of hearts. With relish and a careful use of all of the dramatic storytelling tools, this final Queen of the Matriarch shares her account of struggle in the trenches of the birthing room. Nothing is left hidden, all is fair game. Bodies are torn apart, deep scars are left, death is approached. Listeners are left bereft of hope, shell-shocked with fear and emotional exhaustion.

You have to wonder why anyone would go through this, and yet most of these women have more than one child.

As a man, I have observed this behavior time and time again. I have to wonder why they don’t encourage each other. “It’s hard, and it will hurt, but you’ll make it through, we did.” It’s no wonder that so many women have epidurals despite the potential for harm to both mother and baby.

Maybe someone could suggest to these women that there is a better way.

Of course the narrator on the discovery channel never sits down with a group of lionesses to suggest a better way of finding food.

I’m not brave enough or stupid enough to challenge a group of moms. I know they can smell fear.

I think I’ll just stick to observation from the jeep.

The 'h' word.

This blog originally posted Monday, April 16, 2007

Current mood: cranky Category: News and Politics

Up to this point, I have avoided the issue of Don Imus and his ignorant comments about the Rutgers team being 'nappy-headed ho's'. It should be self-evident that what he said was wrong (along with many other racist and sexist comments that he has made over the past years).

The biggest problem that I have with this whole issue is the deceitful, hypocritical stance taken by so many in the black community. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are quick to jump on his comments and call for censorship solely because he is a white guy proclaiming his ignorance. Yet, at the same time, they say nothing over the entire hip-hop industry's treatment of women. Further, when Bill Cosby spoke out against these things, he was vilified for speaking out against his black brothers!!!

Russel Simmons and Dr. Benjamin Chavis even issued a statement:

"Hip-Hop is a worldwide cultural phenomena that transcends race and doesn't engage in racial slurs. Don Imus' racially-motivated diatribe toward the Rutgers' women's basketball team was in no way connected to hip-hop culture. As Chairman and President of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), respectively, we are concerned by the false comparisons some in the media are making between Don Imus and hip-hop. We want to clarify what we feel very strongly is an obvious difference between the two.

"HSAN believes in freedom of artistic expression. We also believe, with that freedom, comes responsibility. Don Imus is not a hip-hop artist or a poet. Hip-hip artists rap about what they see, hear and feel around them, their experience of the world. Like the artists throughout history, their messages are a mirror of what is right and wrong with society. Sometimes their observations or the way in which they choose to express their art may be uncomfortable for some to hear, but our job is not to silence or censor that expression. Our job is to be an inclusive voice for the hip-hop community and to help create an environment that encourages the positive growth of hip-hop. Language can be a powerful tool. That is why one's intention, when using the power of language, should be made clear. Comparing Don Imus' language with hip-hop artists' poetic expression is misguided and inaccurate and feeds into a mindset that can be a catalyst for unwarranted, rampant censorship."
What kind of ignorance is that!!!! I almost don't even know where to begin. First, he is saying that censorship is OK as long as it is racially motivated. A black man can say the 'n' word and degrade women all he wants because that is what he sees around him!!! Who is the racist here? Who is putting down black culture? Secondly, he is saying that art shouldn't be censored, but public speech should be. Thirdly, I would say that most rap and hip-hop lyrics (as with most other song lyrics) are shallow and have little 'artistic message' to them. Yes, some are well done commentary such as 'Gangsta's Paradise' by Coolio in the mid 90's, that really captured the hopelessness felt by someone in the ghetto.

But, for the most part, there is little or no redeeming value to any of this style of music because it glorifies a lifestyle of ignorance while simultaneously denigrating women. (I would say the same of most country music, but that's another blog). Simmons/Chavis are right, Language has Power, and when abused, it can be dangerous.

The duplicitousness of Russel Simmons and Dr. Chavis puts them in the same category with Don Imus, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson.

I don't respect any of them. They are all racists in their own way. They all help to perpetuate negative views of black women.

I do respect Bill Cosby. I do respect C. Dolores Tucker. There are very few who stand up against the thugs who use shock, hate, and evil as a tool for money or political gain, who stand up for what is right, who stand up for honesty.

Oh, That explains it.

This blog originally posted Thursday, September 28, 2006

Current mood: silly Category: Life

From an Article on CNN.com:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Too much testosterone can kill brain cells, researchers say, in a finding that may help explain why steroid abuse can cause behavior changes such as aggressiveness and suicidal tendencies.
Tests on brain cells in lab dishes showed that while a little of the male hormone is good, too much of it causes cells to self-destruct in a process similar to that seen in brain illnesses such as Alzheimer's.
"Too little testosterone is bad, too much is bad but the right amount is perfect," said Barbara Ehrlich of Yale University in Connecticut, who led the study.

Speaking as a guy, now I understand why Jr. High boys are that way. This also explains mid-life crisis, Pamela Anderson, sports cars, Baywatch, and the WWE wrestling. Girls have been telling us this all along, we were just too stupid to believe it.