“For no one ever hated his own body, but [instead] he nourishes and protects and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church” (Ephesians 5:29).
Growing up, I loved imagining what I would look like when I was a woman.
I imagined how beautiful I would be, maybe even like the movie stars on magazine covers — my curves perfectly formed and my face shining with blushed cheekbones and pink glossed lips.
I look back at my teenage years and wonder what it would have taken to believe that I was beautiful, right where I was.
What about our teenage girls today?
Our girls don’t stand a chance at believing they are beautiful if we don’t stand beside them, smack dab between their bodies and their social media.
On Snapchat, girls of all sizes and builds are lambasting each other for being too skinny or too fat, for being a hoe or for being prude. Loud girls and quiet girls are lurking in corners, imagining what they might do to gain more likes, hoping the Instagram approval will translate to self approval. As girls increasingly compare themselves to edited images of celebrities they see online, the requests for this increases — plastic surgery. For birthday and graduation gifts, more and more girls between 12-18 years old are asking for plastic surgery to fix their still growing noses, derrieres, lips, and breasts.
I don’t know if my awkward, silver-braced smile had a chance to feel pretty back in 1991, but I think I would have crumbled underneath what our young women battle in 2019. Don’t most of you mammas feel the same way?
All the more reason to teach them to love their God-given bodies by nourishing, protecting, and cherishing them, exactly as they are. And maybe teach ourselves to do the same.
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