Women. We all want to be the best: The best wife, the best mother, the best on the job, the best friend, the best thinker, the best decorator-the best looking. Life is hard enough so why are we so competitive? We all think that the other has it better, that life isn’t fair. All of us want it all. We might as well wear green everyday because that is how we feel. From time to time this feeling can overwhelm a friendship or a co-working relationship. It can bring families to ruin, garnering hate and rage: Sister against sister, cousin against cousin, mother against daughter, aunt against friend. Why do we assume that we should have it all and be able to do it all? Why do we hate the skinnier woman who passes us on the street or the friend with the “perfect clothes?” I do mean the word ‘hate.’ If we aren’t “the best” we wonder why there is something wrong with us.
The pang of inadequacy is never far from our hearts. Daily, we hear criminally convincing voices shout,
“You are not as good as her. No man will ever look at you next to her. Your husband/fiancé/ boyfriend wants her, not you. If you were skinny like her you would have everything. Everyone likes her, no one likes you. She is better than you in everything. You will never measure up. Just give up now because she is perfect. Look how beautiful she is, you are so fat. You are worthless compared to her. She is rich and pretty because she deserves it, you don’t. Isn’t that so unfair? Don’t you wish you could be her or that she would disappear? If she is your friend everyone will look down on you. She has no problems, you have so many because you aren’t as good as her.”
How can we love our sister or our friend and at the same time hate them for how they look or what they have? Why do we compare ourselves? Why don’t men seem to have the same problem? We either gossip about people we are jealous of and try to tear them down so that we will feel better or we suffer in silence, pretending, revering the other as a saint, and we the sinner. Why do we make lives harder for ourselves?
Did we learn it from our mothers, and they from theirs? Was it genetic? Was it culture? Was it the curse of Eve (I will greatly increase your pain in conception and childbirth and your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. Gen. 3:16) implying that we will all fight over mans’ affection and both the ways of conceiving and birthing will be a trial for us?
We buy fashion magazines that objectify women just as much as pornography does. We buy clothes that feed money into a system that is exploitive. We take the hair off of our legs, armpits, and pubic areas for goodness’ sake! What is more degrading than that? Are women so gross that we must remove parts of ourselves in order to be accepted? And yet, women perpetuate this obsession with looks much more than men do. Why? Why do women undergo life threatening procedures for image?
With all of the makeup and glossy ads out today you would think that women would have much more fuel for creative self-esteem building, and yet we feel worse than ever. Underneath the guise of self expression lies a hidden beast that lives to bring about the untimely deaths of women’s souls. We are all so jealous, bitter, and defeated that you would think we would give up this superwoman saga, but the war rages on, literally, under the surface. Society likes to keep women’s anger, hatred, and rage under control but all these years of playing nice have created road raging child beaters. Sexless at home yet loose on the street, modern women are in trouble.
Let’s focus on self-image for a moment. Being feminine is very complex today. If someone dares to write their own rules they are exploited or rejected. Rarely will you find a happy woman. There is always something we are told is wrong with us. The biggest attack on our selfhood comes in the form of “health awareness.” We are told over and over again that thin is healthy and fat is not. That thin is attractive and fat is not. That thin is youthful and fat is aged. A new, more subtle, form of eugenics has even arisen in the last two decades. We are taught from a young age to hate our bodies-and therefore-ourselves. We are told that we can regain the worth we lost by being imperfect by becoming thin/beautiful. If we can only attain that then we can be loved and worth it. As women we do not even know how to love self anymore for self’s sake. We do not know who we are as individuals; we only know what “the mold” is.
With no one to teach us and no one to fight, we fall by the thousands under the scythe of belittlement. Who are we? Why are we women and not precious and unique souls with the will to live and the creative expression of work and love? Why is our weight, house, car, job, husband’s job, children’s behavior, and social status the litmus test? Must we be so helpless just because we are helpless?
I believe that this whole horrible mess is caused by Satan’s whisperings. He chose to belittle us long ago and has carved us into deformed creatures indeed. While men are now slaves to their physical lusts we are slaves to approval. He separated us in the beginning so that we would think we were different and not as good as men. Throughout the centuries he has stunted us in every way he could, even causing men to hate us and us to hate ourselves. We have become cursed due to his powerful persuasions.
It seems as if now we are no longer able to withstand the onslaught of lies and we see them as the undeniable truth. It seems totally natural to fear the thinness of another or her Bentley. It seems totally natural to fear utter rejection at the mention of your friend’s name at the awards ceremony and not yours. There is no way we can stop or change.
No way except through the Word. Our emotions and thoughts can be a throbbing mess of clouded pain but the Word stands firm against the storm. Satan wants us to put off reading it because he knows how powerful it is. In Ephesians 5 it is called the “sword of truth” with a double edged blade. It is the only way we can defeat the enemy. Our lives are so twisted and green that we cannot see the forest for the trees, let alone life knowledge. We need the answers outside of ourselves and our pain, confusion, and emotional ups and downs. Once we start memorizing scripture we will be able to fight the thoughts as they come with the very words of truth.
This will be hard, but it is so much easier than living in this filth of jealousy, hate, and self-loathing. Over time, we will automatically start to think like the Bible and the Spirit will bring passages to mind just when we need them most. There are many parts of the Bible that seem to demean and subjugate women by emphasizing their cattle-like status, but that is what Satan wants you to think. We must know that God is good and he loves us just as much as he loves men. If you ask, the Spirit will reveal the meanings to you. You will eventually be lifted up, not torn down. Each time you read you will have another arrow in your arsenal. See-God designed us to be soldiers too!
Life is hard, but living without the Word is harder.
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