I am writing a short series on Beauty. In my last post I talked about eating and fitness. In the next two posts, I will write about two problems – my belief that I was ugly and the narrow definition of “biblical” womanhood – which created stumbling blocks to faith for me. Perhaps they will resonate with your own struggles.
As an adolescent I was convinced that I was ugly. Someone important to me had made a careless remark about my physique which reinforced my already low opinion of myself as a young woman. In part, because of this, I wore mostly men’s clothes for about three years. Coupled with the problem of my self-perceived ugliness, was the message I received of the importance of attracting boys for the eventual goal of finding a marriage partner. By the time I arrived at college I was desperately looking for validation that I was attractive. This adversely affected my faith walk and hindered my growth.
Looking back over junior high and high school, I regret that I had such a jumbled sense of my goals in life. I became a Christian when I was 14, but had almost no discipleship until my junior year in college when I began to feel God calling me into a genuine Christian walk with Him. However at 14, I was right in the midst of that struggle with my appearance, and feeling ugly did not somehow direct me toward my inner character. I needed guidance from someone older and wiser to have that focus. Now I would give the following messaging to my younger self:
‘Your outward appearance is less important than the development of character. You are too young to worry about boys. Focus on cultivating life skills including your daily communion with God, how to have friendships and show kindness, your academic growth, and practical skills of all sorts. Maybe in college you can start thinking about finding a life partner, but don’t forget to continue to focus on character Proverbs 31:30 tells you plainly that “charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”’
Well, no one gave me that advice! And maybe I wouldn’t have listened and would have gotten terribly off track anyway. But God has been gracious to me. I wish I could say I attained this clear vision in time to help my three daughters, but I cannot confidently say that. One thing Bill and I attempted with our kids before high school – we tried very hard to comment minimally on their appearance and to focus our praise on their hard work, service, and kindness to others. They were all home schooled until high school, which shielded them somewhat from brutal critics of their clothes and bodies. However, I sewed beautiful dresses for all of my girls each Easter. I remembered how happy a pretty dress and hat made me feel as a little girl, and how it made me confident in public. It felt natural to sew dresses that my girls could twirl in. They received those dresses with delight, and I believe they knew them to be expressions of my love and my deep enjoyment of them personally. Once they went to high school, we changed our strategy intentionally. We began to tell them they were beautiful, to give them that additional fortification as they faced an unkind world.
To sum up, it is a formidable life hindrance to feel ugly and to fear rejection. It was one root of my faltering faith as a teenager. But feeling ugly about oneself can have many origins. For example, I alluded to complications of the intersection of beauty and race in my earlier post. In the US it is not uncommon for a child to grow up believing their skin color is a mark against them, or that the White Barbie is more beautiful than the Black Barbie. This presents a need for careful validation. I was struck by the writing of Dr. Sarita Lyons in Urban Apologetics*. Her chapter, “Black Women and the Appeal of the Black Conscious Community and Feminism” explains how non-Christian Black community can draw Black women away from Christian faith, because of its care to affirm Black women as beautiful. I feel privileged to know Diane Bellamy who has made her career in styling Black hair as a celebration of the image of God in Black women. However this is not only a problem for Black women. An Asian student told me of similar feelings of low cultural estimation of Asian beauty. We Christian women must communicate a different message! We must affirm both the image of God in every human and the beautiful diversity of His creation.
My stumbling efforts to help my girls and now my students feel beautiful are motivated by personal and anecdotal experience that feeling ugly poses a hindrance to thriving. If I can do anything to reduce that hindrance, may the Lord help me to follow through!
*Urban Apologetics: Restoring Black Dignity With The Gospel. Edited by Eric Mason. Zondervan, 2021.