Why do all girls spend so much time and money on shaving their legs and all other parts? It seems like they believe the images of girls which are made by beauty industry and lustful media more than God who calls everyone perfect the way they are.
I believe some of this can be boiled down to personal preferences & culture differences. Some are very healthy & should be celebrated. I just am answering this thinking mostly of beauty standards I’m around & have experience with.
I used the term “blind spot” in passing recently & have thought about it a lot since. I think it could apply here. It’s just something women don’t know how to change in themselves, so we choose to compartmentalize or glorify the distraction.
Some of us say we don’t care how we look, we don’t shave or wear makeup, yet there is a pang of guilt when we say it aloud, even humorously, or do it front of someone else who might look down on it. On the other hand, some call long, expensive, beauty routines nothing more than a creative outlet when it is very much a fixation we believe can curb insecurity. We are all curating other self, not knowing how to stop or who to talk to who won’t think us trivial.
On a more personal note, I chose to not look at myself in the mirror for the majority of my growing up because I really believed I could see the grief on me. I could see the bad things that happened to me on me. That’s another blind spot, albeit a very exaggerated example. Yet it was the same feeling: I can’t cover it, change it, or ignore it, so why not make it part of my identity? I might feel better then.
But that doesn’t work either. The obvious answer is: Be what Christ wants you to be instead.
I know for me personally that I didn’t know how do that until very recently. We keep trying to shift surface parts of ourselves, yet God wants to transform us entirely. It’s hard to let anyone see us, let alone a God who wants us to see our smallness, vapor-state, or withering-like-grass body. I think most women figure it out as they see that there is no man, no other trick up our own sleeve, no other version of ourselves that will give us esteem. For most, for me, it took just trial to see that clearly.
When we chase surface level remedies, we can run from the reality of pain or trial for a long, long time. It makes me cry thinking of my own running. God is patient, isn’t He? So patient.