Not Good Enough: Our Culture's Sick Devaluation Of Women

This has been stewing around in my head since Sunday. I really hope it doesn't come across as angry, although I must admit, something made me extremely angry. I have been passionately against this worldview ever since I was old enough to have worldviews myself, and this is getting out of hand.

I was reading Time magazine at my grandpa's house, and under the quotes section was one by fashion designer Karl Lagerfield. Apparently, a German fashion magazine has declared that in the future, they are "planning on not using professional models but women with 'normal' bodies." This garnered a response from the designer, who said,

"No one wants to see a round woman."


He went on to say that people only want to see skinny models and that the only people that disagree are "fat mothers." 


I don't believe anyone asked Mr. Lagerfield what his depraved thoughts were on women. What he said is completely outrageous, not to mention shallower than a dry lake. This represents only one person out of an entire culture that has made women into objects worth nothing more than face-value. The fact is, God is the one who created all of us, and the world can't take a woman and slap their own value on her. Some would say I'm overreacting. I'm not. This isn't about something a stupid old man said. His comments stem from an underlying worldview and sick doctrine of our culture, and it has to be put to an end.

Our culture is shoving a poisonous worldview down our young women's throats, telling them that their value is determined by how they look. These girls become slaves to the pressure to always look perfect: perfect weight, perfect makeup, perfect this, perfect that. The mass media chains them down and makes then believe that if they tip the scales too far and don't fill out a shirt to their standards they will never be loved. Please excuse me while I vomit. Not only are lives taken over, but lives are taken. Between 5% and 20% that develop anorexia nervosa eventually die from it. It is classified as a mental disorder and also the most deadly of all of them. I have compassion for these people because they are victims of our culture. If you tell someone something long enough, they will start to believe it. The way our society determines the value of women has become exactly like the Kelly Blue Book. All you have to do is enter in your height, your weight, and your proportions and the world will tell you what you are worth and what you have to do to improve yourself. This is what a girl living in our modern world faces. I see it everywhere, on TV, in magazines, and in comments like Mr. Lagerfields and others.

 If you are a girl reading this right now, you have to know that this is not the truth. It is all a lie. If you have been fed this lie, read on. That makes all of you.

Your value is not based on anything you can see in a mirror. It is not based on anything anyone else can determine. It is not based on your personality, your achievements, your failures, your jewelry, or your body. No one in this world can tell you what you are worth. Jesus Christ is the one who created you, and you are made in his image. You are a human being with an eternal soul. That is what separates you from a beautiful flower in a field or an elegant animal. You are not simply an object that looks beautiful; you are a human being with a God-breathed soul inside of you. You are beautiful inside and out because God made you in his image, and he is the author of everything that is beautiful.

Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. Many of todays men have degenerated into ravenous dogs only seeking a piece of meat to satisfy their hunger. They only look at the outside. They care nothing about you and certainly don't love you. They only care about looks. That is all they ever think about. Anyone who has ever ridiculed you for how you look should be ashamed of himself. They have no idea what true beauty is all about. I am not against looking nice. I am not saying to have to neglect how you look. I am not saying that makeup, eyeliner, and time spent looking nice in the morning is wrong. I am not saying to completely neglect your body's health; it is, after all, a temple of God, and we honor Him with how we care for it. There is nothing even wrong with looking "perfect", by whoever's standards those are. I am saying this: none of that matters in the end. Don't waste your time worrying about it. It's not worth destroying your life over. The people that need help are not the ones that are content with themselves, it is those who believe that they are worth less because they don't look the same. This is the message: beauty is not an external thing. The most beautiful a girl could ever hope to be is to love the Lord her God, not conform to a twisted world standard.

Proverbs 31 states, "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised."


The ultimate anyone can achieve in life is to know the one that created us. Jesus is the author and purpose of life. Don't waste another second of your life crying in front of a mirror because you don't look like a photoshopped, starving model. Don't spend another second of your life in despair at the hands of the world that tells you that there's something wrong with you. That is not what life is all about. One hundred years from now all our bodies will be rotting in the ground and will mean nothing. You have a person, a soul that will live forever. Live for Christ, not for the world's demands of you. The world does not love you. Christ loves you.

The world feeds us all lies, telling us what we need to look like. Girls are supposed to weigh in at a certain number of pounds and be perfectly proportioned, and boys are supposed to have six pack abs and ripped arms. Says who? The ravenous dogs? I don't answer to dogs. I answer to Christ. Don't cast your pearls before swine, because the swine will criticize them. Keep them to yourself and treasure their beauty. Don't waste your time trying to get the world to love you. There is more to life. Please know there is so much more to life. Everything you see around you, including what you see in the mirror, is fleeting vanity. It means nothing. Don't let society dictate your joy and your life. When you are fed the lies, know the truth. The truth is that God made you beautiful and He loves you. 

I'm sick of sitting back and letting society call the shots. I'm tired of letting the world create an army of mindless drones with nothing to show underneath the glitz and the glamour. Men like Mr. Lagerfield need to grow up and snap out of their false reality. The normal women of planet Earth are not in danger of dropping dead of undernourishment and that is the way it is meant to be. Women of substance cannot become endangered, but the truth is they are in danger each and every day. The world is holding rulers up to them every day and telling them "not good enough", and it makes me sick because in time many start to believe it. Well having a pacifist attitude towards the culture is not good enough for me. It's time to stand up for truth and say enough is freaking enough.

Men, this falls to us. We know what the truth is. Preach it. Bring it. Be a light in a dark world. Stand up for the oppressed and shame the oppressor. Tell a downcast girl she is beautiful, inside and out, and that Christ loves her the way she is, not to make her feel good about herself, but because it is the truth. 


And the truth will set the world free.