This is amazing. A hat tip to Lydia Moore, my colleague who supports the Catholic volunteers with Marion and I.
I know she’s speaking to women mostly here. But I really resonated with this, especially the “crestfallen, because not enough strangers found you suitable” part. I used to hate going out to the “meet markets” mostly because I need to communicate verbally and intimately for people to get to know me and perhaps find me amusing. Men too, worry if they are attractive enough. And male body image is becoming a bigger problem in our society. I notice this on Campus a lot. Males who feel the need to be shirtless often, so that others might be jealous of the “six pack abs” or the men who hit the spa to remove unwanted body hair. There are those of us who consider hair coloring the gray or getting hair transplants to cover up the baldness (bad move, being bald is awesome and low maintenance).
But in our visual society, I fear women have it far worse. And I know I’ve been part of the problem. We men all look for “the pretty girl” to date and we are conditioned to do that by a society that tells us we aren’t thin enough, attractive enough, smart enough, whatever enough. Many times thinking that we are not enough makes things even worse. We gain weight from feeling depressed. We feel the malaise and don’t continue healthy practices of exercise, not to look good but to feel good.
We forget that God has made us all amazingly enough just as we are. Accepting that is a confident statement of faith. God can love me just as I am. And it is more than enough. And it never settles for simply being pretty.