The possible and the impossible
It
strikes me that today's society is massively concerned with how they look and I
am certainly a victim of this together with many others. When I was coming out
of the train station after a day of 'vicar school' I over heard a conversation
of three young people that went a bit like this: ‘My headshot was so wonky, my
head just does not sit straight’; ‘eh, my lips are so thin I wish I could get
lips fillers’; ‘me to, I would also love boob implants’; ‘Girl, you should defo
go for it’. You can probably imagine how the rest of the conversation went. I
want to change this about my body and you should change that. I felt incredibly
sad after hearing this and desperately wanted to turn round and say, you are
beautiful as you are, you do not need to put yourselves down so much. You can't
blame people for feeling this way when the image used at the top of this page
shows the original and edited image, but the right hand image is being
advertised as reality.
I
would be lying however, if I said I have
never said I’m too fat, that I wish I could have surgery to pin my ears back
(which is something I desperately wanted when I was younger) or that I wish I
was more toned, I wish I was less toned, said my bum's too big, my bum's small.
The worst was when I honestly hated the way I looked and just stopped eating. I
was experiencing a really nasty breakup, where I had repeatedly been told you
are not good enough, no one likes you, this is wrong with your body, this is
wrong with your face, you are not good at that. I would stare at myself and
think you are horrible Steph. I remember my sister coming home from her year
abroad and shouting at me to pull myself together. It was probably the best
thing she could have done. I sat on her lap after and cried. I wanted to love
myself again and feel loved in return. Ever since then I have never really had
a great relationship with food and I am scared of it. But, it is a work in
progress, however what I want to emphasis about this is that we all get swept
into the ‘you need to change this about yourself because it is not perfect’.
NO
ONE IS PERFECT. We are not an airbrushed model in a magazine or advertisement,
we are mere humans who are created and loved by God. God chose each and
everyone of us just they way we are. He knitted us together in our mothers
womb, he planned for us to all exist. He chose us to be his children. He loves
us so much that this love outweighs any other love. It is an unconditional
love, a beautiful love that has no boundaries.
But,
we forget that we are loved just they way we are. We instead turn to the media
to idolise the manipulated beauty that is advertised to us and ignore the
un-manipulated beauty of God. So much of what we see is not natural
beauty. Victoria Secret models work out
to a special regime every day to look how they do, (the perfect body portrayed
in this photo is the reason why the media really annoyed me) many models starve
themselves, are misrepresented and endure endless pain to walk down a cat walk
(unless your a French model, because now a person has to be a healthy weight to
be a model in France). It is not easy to
be in the beauty industry. It is an industry that society has become so
obsessed with that it seems to forget about inner beauty and the beauty created
by God.
As
a consequence of this concern, I have decided to write my MA dissertation on
'Beauty and the Bible' (as opposed to 'Beauty and the Beast') in order to
research and understand what a Christian understanding of beauty really is. I
hope that I will be able to teach this perception of beauty to Christian people
who are struggling with the expectations society puts on us. Not the beauty
which the world chucks in our faces, but the true beauty which is taught by
God.
I
am not saying BTW it is wrong to work out to keep fit, nor am I saying it is
wrong to wear make-up, like clothes and fashion. What I am saying is that
because the world is so fixated on an idea of perfect beauty that is impossible
to create without Photoshop, some people begin to harm themselves, become
unhealthy obsessed and forget that they
themselves are beautiful.
I forgot I was beautifully created by God and I don’t
want another to feel this way
Be Blessed
Steph
xoxo
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