Um....yeah

Writer's block...sigh.


Writer's block = bad thing, especially when it comes to a dissertation. It is getting so bad that I am having increasing difficulty expressing myself in other areas as well, including on this blog. I have started to write three different posts over the course of the past week or so, and....nothing. Maybe I need to do some quilting or something.


So, brace yourselves, and please be prepared for babbling, incoherency, and errors in spelling and grammar.


-This weekend, I think I sat through the absolute worst commencement address that I have ever had the misfortune of witnessing. It was so bad that it became funny. I was very thankful I was in the back row of faculty on the platform because I had to cover my face several times to muffle laughter. The progression from polite attention to boredom to incredulity to suppressed laughter on the faces of the audience was, however, quite entertaining.

-Carolyn McCully put into words part of what I have been thinking on for a while, with regard to physical beauty, but have been unable to coherently address, in a post last week. (yes, I think I do have too many commas in that sentence)

"What about complimenting her when she is doing beautiful things? We always hear that inner beauty is supposed to be more important than outer beauty, but it doesn't seem to get praised as often--which tempts women to doubt the veracity of that statement."Why do we women doubt the appeal of inner beauty? Well, to be candid, it's because we forget that our Creator is the ultimate arbiter of beauty. We are awash in makeover messages and as such His perspective is often silenced. From TV shows to magazines, we are drowning in Before and After images. At any given time during a day, there's a roomful of people on TV gushing and crying over the physical transformation of some reality show participant. Everybody and his neighbor shows up to applaud weight loss, a new hairstyle, or a wardrobe overhaul. But where is the applause for inner beauty? Where are the TV cameras for the Big Reveal of a renovated character"

In a culture where women are judged and valued on the basis of their attractiveness is it any wonder that inner beauty has taken a back seat? Has our culture simply received what we have asked for? Is there any cultural reinforcement of "inner beauty"?

-In a related line of thinking, lets talk about virginity.

Valued by some, but not by others? While God's call for sexual abstinence outside of marriage has not changed, the secular culture appears to have lost all regard for virginity outside of the young. Otherwise it is regarded as a quaint conviction or possibly born of immaturity or some sort of pathology. Even within the church, sexual abstinence is regarded by some as culturally irrelevant or improbable.

Valued in some, but not in others? While some young women have taken to auctioning their virginity to the highest bidder, I doubt that a 30+ year old virginal woman or a man of any age would get many bids. Clearly the value placed in "virginity" for auction is not about virginity per se. Even in less crass circumstances, I wonder how much of the value of virginity that does exist is about the value of obedience to God?

Over-valued by some? How many sins are there that change how you are defined as a person after one incidence? We are all sinners, are we not? We've all joined Jimmy Carter in lusting in our hearts, have we not? Do we rule out others as mates who have lied once in their life? When it is said that you should only marry a virgin, is that because they have been obedient to God, or for some other reason?

Okay, that is enough rambling for now. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Beauty: Nature versus Nurture- Part C (because I don’t know how to spell 3 in French)

I have been thinking about this issue more.

When someone says men are made by God to be attracted to women who are beautiful there ends up being more to that line of thinking if we follow the thought logically. It is my understanding that God designs a big part of how any individual woman looks. By this I mean that a large part of her appearance is due to her genes…facial features, body type, hair color and texture, eye color, the shade of her skin etc. (Understanding that some women work with what they were born with better than others).

So if God designs men to be attracted to women who look a certain way (remembering that I am not saying that God has not made men to be visually stimulated, I believe He has done that. But rather that God designed men to be specifically stimulated by and attracted to women who embody the current idea of what beauty is) would that not then mean by extension:

-That God designs some women to be unattractive to men?

-That God designs women to be rejected by men?

-That God puts the desire for marriage and children in a woman’s heart and then puts her together in such a way that the desire is unlikely to be met?

There is more to this idea than a person’s right to be attracted to someone else for their own reasons. When we say it is God’s design or plan then I think we are also saying something about the nature of God. In my limited understanding all of this does not seem to go with what I know of His nature.

That being said, I think it an extraordinarily bad idea to argue or insist that a man (or woman, though the men seem to be getting the worst of this kind of admonishment) should or should not be attracted to anything (outside of what God tells us in scripture). Other than that, I believe an individual can prefer what they wish though I do think it is wise to individually examine our preferences in the light of scripture and to submit to God if He directs us on the subject.

Beauty: Nature versus Nurture- Part Deux

Today I want to discuss the science and research that Anakin Niceguy (NG) referred to in his blog references in my last entry. Interpreting research can be difficult for the general public who often rely on media sound bites and the ethics of the authors of the study in honestly explaining the outcomes of the research. Unfortunately the public is often exposed to just plain false conclusions by the media and unethical researchers more interested in proving a point than being objective. As a researcher (not of sociology specifically but in a field that examines human behaviors and health) I can tell you that there is no way to carry out research that excludes the effects of the culture that the research subject is a member of. So it is extremely difficult to say what is biological drive and what is culturally determined. We can look at preferences across cultures and see if there are any similarities among all cultures and that may give us a clue about some general trends. However, we cannot scientifically prove anything based on cross cultural studies because especially in the modern technological age the world is becoming smaller so there are fewer cultures that are not influenced by other cultures. AN states that research has proven that biology determines what we find attractive. I can see how he may come to this conclusion based on the ideas circulated in popular culture, and even written by Harvard psychologists, however it is far from scientifically proven because there is no way to remove culture from the equation. At least no way that any institutional review board that governs human subjects research would ever approve. We can, however, examine what evidence we do have from science and history.

For example let’s examine a specific physical quality mentioned in the essay I quoted as well as in the links provided in AN’s response to my comment: body weight. The few large scale studies that cross cultures and study what people find attractive appear to point to several factors that are in common across cultures such as symmetry of facial features or a .70 waist to hip ratio for a woman. Obviously symmetry is not excluded for women (or men for that matter) who are not of the culturally ideal body weight and neither is the .70 waist to hip ratio as this is the ratio between my waist and hip measurements though I am not within the culturally ideal weight range.

We can get other cues by examining historical depictions of beauty or desirability. The current ideal of beauty has not always been the cultural ideal. Look at depictions of beauty and desirability represented in places such as the primitive art forms of fertility idols of both ancient Europe and ancient Africa, the art of Renoir or Rubens, (or Rembrandt, Giorgione, and Jordaens) descriptions of some desirable women by writers of the 19th and 18th centuries such as Charles Dickens, or the more contemporary (20th century) writings of playwright August Wilson which depict or describe women who would be considered as at least overweight if not obese today as attractive.

The idea that a preference for thinner women is a God established preference because men are looking for healthy women is a commonly mentioned theory as well. The idea that health is evident if a woman has an ideal body weight, however, is not entirely proven by science. Sometimes thin = good health and fat= poor health but this is not always true. Now, I know that this idea goes against current cultural ideas about health perpetuated in the media but hang with me while we examine some research on the subject.

While some research has demonstrated that a woman’s excess body weight is associated with higher risk for things such as heart disease, that increased risk of heart disease is actually less than the risk associated with being a man or being an African American. (It should also be noted that correlations and some expressions of risk cannot “prove” anything scientifically because they are statistics that report on studies that are not experimental in nature. I’ll write more on this at another time but know that there is no way to know how two correlated factors actually influence each other or if they actually influence each other at all). While being overweight increases risk factors for some diseases (though not by as much as is generally believed by the population as a whole) and certainly increases stress on joints (that’s just simple physics) being overweight and even obese also actually lowers the risk for some types of cancer and diseases such as osteoporosis.

The assumption that thin=healthy also is not reflected in mortality statistics. If one examines epidemiological research that explores the relationship between the body weight of women and mortality (as in the famous longitudinal nurses’ health study) it has been demonstrated that the group with the best mortality (least chance of dying) are those with a BMI of 25-30, also known as “overweight”. Interestingly enough once factors such as smoking, weight loss due to illness, and activity level are accounted for, mortality for “morbidly obese” women (BMI over 35) who are not sedentary is better than the mortality of women with BMIs under 20, otherwise known as your average Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, who are sedentary. Mortality is equal when both groups have the same activity level. Research demonstrates that activity level is actually a much better predictor of health than body weight is and it is not always apparent from looking at someone how active they are. For example at my gym I would estimate that at least half of the women that I see there regularly are overweight or obese yet there they are being physically active 3-4 times a week.

Does this mean men should prefer overweight women to all other women and morbidly obese women to super models when given a choice because they have better mortality stats? Nah, I’m not saying that at all. LOL I am not saying you should or should not be attracted to anyone. I am just pointing out that it would be more intellectually honest for men to stand behind their preferences as simply their preferences (or the current cultural paradigm of beauty) and not as some divine mandate, especially since it is not a Biblical mandate, historical fact or scientific certainty. I think so many of the issues being discussed are so very important and I don’t want women who need to understand this stuff to get hung up on other assertions which are based on weaker assumptions.

Beauty: Nature versus Nurture

I recently commented on the Scripturally Single blog regarding standards of beauty and want to write some on the subject here as well so that I don’t post an excessively long comment there. The author of the blog who has taken the pseudonym of Anakin Niceguy (I’ll use AN for short) has put forth the idea that what men find attractive is innate and has claimed that the basis for this is both scientific and scriptural. I find this idea problematic and more importantly I think it may create unnecessary controversy which I explained in a comment there.

I do want to make clear, however, exactly what I am NOT saying. I in no way believe that any man owes it to any woman (me included) to find her attractive (and vice versa). I also understand that men may feel insulted by church leaders who lecture them regarding these issues. I don’t think anyone should tell you who you should be attracted to. I have always said that people have a right to their preferences regarding who they are attracted to and I still believe that is true. I also think all believers should be open to what God has to say to them as an individual about their preferences, myself included (at some point I am going to write about how I have erred in this area myself ).

Back to the point: While I do agree that we know from research that men tend to be stimulated far more than women by what they see. It isn’t the fact that men are visually stimulated and that God made them that way that I would disagree with. It is the idea that what a man finds visually stimulating is biologically innate and God ordained rather than culturally defined that I disagree with. My contention is that generally speaking standards of beauty differ from culture to culture and over the course of time. So the subject of this blog entry as well as the next one will be to address this question: Are the current beauty ideals and standards biologically driven and God ordained or are they culturally determined?

I recommend you read what AN wrote on the subject both in the post I commented on and in the linked entries (1, 2 and 3) in his response to me to understand his perspective. I don’t disagree with some of what he has said, and I confess as well that I may not have quite understood all of what he said so I am open to having my mind changed in the presence of appropriate evidence. AN gives various reasons for holding the views he has about attractiveness and beauty including scripture and science so in this post I am going to discuss why I believe these reasons are weak, or at least that adequate “proof” has not been provided. First I will discuss some of the scriptures AN refers to.

AN refers to the Song of Solomon as proof that visual stimuli is important in attraction for many people and I believe that this is true. The Song of Solomon does express attraction based on how the beloved and the lover look, or as AN refers to it: their “body parts”. However, there are no specifics about what kinds of body parts are being found attractive or acceptable. For example the woman’s waist is referred to as “a mound of wheat encircled by lilies”….um, ok, that does not really tell me what body type is preferable though the term “mound” leads me to conjecture that her stomach wasn’t exactly flat and that, however it was, her lover liked it that way. The woman’s skin is also referred to as dark and lovely though it is clear that dark skin is not the cultural standard of beauty at the time as the passage refers to her being scorned because she is dark from working in the vineyard. So does scripture back up the idea that visual stimuli important? Yes, but it does not define what is beautiful in terms of appearance.

AN also argues that attractiveness is referred to in the Bible with certain persons being referred to as attractive or not and this is true. However the passages he refers to give no specifics about what makes a person attractive or not. Leah and Rachel are mentioned and the Bible does tell us that Leah was considered less attractive than her sister Rachel because she had “weak eyes” whatever that may mean. Interestingly Jacob’s marriage to both sisters produced no end of trouble for him and in the end it was Leah, the less attractive sister, who bore the child (Judah) whose descendants included King David and Jesus. What that means, I don’t know, but what I do know from this is that the Bible does not specify what features (blue, green or brown eyes?), shapes of body parts, or other physical features should be viewed as the ideal of beauty. If anyone knows of any please share that information.

I will address some of the science and research issues in my next entry.

Random Thought #7

Regarding random thought #7 (RT7)

"7. I am confused by the fact that non Christian men seem to be far more interested in me as a person, attracted to me, and less critical of my body than my brothers in Christ. I am even more confused by all of the apparent "men vs. women" discussion about and among Christian singles online."

I have been reading a lot about the feminization of the church and of society the last 7 months or so. I have found much of what I have read to be very enlightening and at the same time very depressing because it has caused me to wonder if there is any way out of the mess.

What does this have to do with RT7 you ask? Well I have had a hard time with some of the stuff I was reading and hearing, especially at first, because it was so different from much of what I have been exposed to. I am very thankful, though, for the man who first started me thinking about a lot of this stuff even though I argued with him about some of it because I didn't understand...I'll have to write about that at another time.

My point (and I do have one) is that I am eager for my sisters in Christ to understand about what has happened in our culture, the relationships between men and women, and in the church, to see what feminism has wrought. We need to grasp this ladies! For our own good, for the good of the body of Christ, for the good of society. I am convinced that this. Because I am so eager for this understanding to happen sometimes I get frustrated with some (actually very few) of the points made by those blogging about these issues. Some of the stuff that gets discussed I think is a roadblock to the ability of some women to understand. One of those issues is the concept of beauty or desirability. This seems to get discussed a good bit by those exploring the issues. Some of what is said led me in part to RT7.

Back to RT7. Today I have been thinking that RT7 may in part be a numbers thing...I mean there seem to be lots more men outside the church than in the church. If only a certain percentage of men find me attractive, lets say 10% to make the math simpler, and I have met 100 Christian men and 700 non believing men of course that would mean that there would be more non-believing men who find me attractive to the tune of 10 vs 70 (hmm.......that probably means the actual percentage is lower than 10%....lol).

I suppose I could do as some men who participate in the online discussions I have been reading do and choose to engage in romantic relationships with unbelievers. And in truth I have actually tried that in the past. Didn't work for me. Besides being unable to relate to each other about what is very important to me, faith in Christ (you know the results of the often mentioned unequal yoking), there was always pressure for premarital sex (don't get me wrong....I don't think sex is wrong or dirty at all, just that God means sex to be within marriage.....marital sex, that's the ticket!). Sex appears to be an expected part of most contemporary dating relationships. The few non believing men I was involved with lost patience with my desire to wait for marriage and did so pretty quickly. So for me this is not an option.

I hope that one day I will meet one of the minority of Christian men that are attracted to me and that I will be able to enjoy being some one's wife. I acknowledge that the likelihood that I will marry is not great, but I still have hope ;)