Your Words Mean Nothing To Us

The thing about Facebook is that you cannot escape all the people posting things in your newsfeed, and reposting them. I've seen the same video pop into my newsfeed 9 times in one day. The same kind of status pop up 3 times in a row. One on top of each other.

And I have a wide variety of friends, half of whom would post an article to say, "LOOK! This is so GREAT!" while the other half was posting it saying, "I'm so DISGUSTED!" It can be very amusing.

However, today, there popped up into my newsfeed one article that has inspired quite a few debates, and I am here to post my personal concerns and opinions and ideas about it all.

It all started on this blog of some young, Christian guy, who was writing in the form of a letter to his future, unknown wife. Read here.

I found so many issues with this letter, including:

• Girls should not be just sitting, waiting around for a Prince Charming to show up...our lives shouldn't revolve around being found by and marrying some guy!...
• I want to see the day a good-looking guy who actually acts upon his words of "it doesn't matter what you look like, you're already beautiful because God made you" by not ignoring and walking past the over-weight or acne-prone girls. 
• Girls' bodies are *not* goodies. We are not objects to be compared to a treasured or favorite car. I dress the way I dress not because I'm dressing for my future husband, but for myself. Because I am a Christian young woman I serve God and as a result of that, I respect myself and I honor Him. I dress how I feel comfortable. Simple as that. My body is my own. It is not some unknown man's. If a man struggles with how I dress, it is on his shoulders to take care of his own feelings and thoughts. I am not placed on earth to meet each individual man's struggles. 

The young man ends his letter with the following, 

"I understand I might have written this a little late, but I don’t care who you were yesterday, I care who you are today and who you will be tomorrow.  Make a change if you need to.  Let us grow together.  It is not too late.  It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or how many of these items you have missed, it just matters what you are going to do now!  You are beautifully and wonderfully made by the hands of a perfect Creator, live like it!"

My question is this: if it doesn't matter, then why also say,  "I’ll say that again, your goodies are always going to be good.  But, if everyone and my mom has a look at everything you’re showing off, I’m not feeling like as much of a lucky ducky.  So please, for me, keep your goodies packaged away."

Obviously, it does matter to him.

All of this aside. Yes, yes, I mean that: all of this aside...I want to get to the main point of my post.

Guys telling us we're beautiful. It's all well and good to tell us we're beautiful and that we're made in God's image. But I'm going to tell you right now. We're not going to believe you.

The thing about beauty and telling a girl she's beautiful and a letter like this is that guys are trying to convince us we're beautiful. If you think about the One Direction song, "What Makes You Beautiful" ...movie messages, book messages...all of which there are guys singing, saying, telling us girls that we're beautiful. Guys are trying to convince us that we're beautiful and that we don't need makeup and that who we are is enough. But. We still don't believe you. 

It's not exactly your fault, guys, though I will put a tiny bit of the blame on you. Guys, you tell us we're beautiful the way we are, to not cover up in makeup, to not care about how we dress...but the thing is, there is the sting when we try to believe your words and the guys still keep walking past us. So, forgive us if we don't believe your empty words.

What I believe is the most damaging message of all in this young man's blogpost and the dozens upon dozens...hundreds, even!...of blogposts and articles that spout the exact same thing, is this: men are telling us how to be beautiful. They are telling us how to live, how to BE women that will most attract Christian, godly men. But: our worth does not come from men. No matter what men tell us, we will never be content with it. It is one thing to be told we're beautiful and another to believe it. When a guy tells us we're beautiful, it's sweet and wonderful in the moment. But that's all it is: a moment.

Girls: it is wonderful when guys tell us we're beautiful. I know that special tingly, warm feeling we get when we receive compliments. But unless we truly believe it about ourselves, we will never be content. We will always be seeking for that contentment and fighting against the emptiness of feeling inadequate and not pretty enough. It's about self-worth and self-esteem. This idea of being a princess stuck in a tower, waiting, bases our self-worth and our happiness on someone else...on a guy. But here's the catch: guys are just as human as we are. And they cannot make us happy every minute of every day. A mere guy cannot make us worthy. I've been learning exactly how much I base my self-esteem on how others esteem me. But the fact remains, that once the compliments are gone, the briefest of moments where the spotlight is on me, then I feel just as empty as I did before. This is because I don't believe in myself and I do not think of myself as worthy unless others notice me. I am learning that to embrace who I really am, to accept how I look, I have to build my self-respect. Instead of being a door-mat allowing people to walk all over me, I am learning that I am worthy of happiness and respect from others without asking for it from them, without catering toward them. Author Nathaniel Branden of Six Pillars of Self-Esteem writes, "It is the conviction that our life and well-being are worthwhile and deserving of the respect of others; and that our happiness and personal fulfillment are important enough to work for." 

I am not going to tell you how to acquire self-esteem. I can't address the issues in your lives, girls. I can only look into my own life and see where I allow a low self-esteem to drag me down. I am learning to embrace the fact that I have a tiny yet tall body which makes it difficult to dress. I am learning to love the fact that my hair is curly and has a mind of its own. I am learning that it's okay to have days where I don't like my curly hair and to tame it's wildness by straightening it to a silky smoothness. I like my hair both ways. Not because some guy told me it was pretty, not because my friends told me that I look better with my hair curly. I like it both ways because of how both ways make me feel. I wear skinny jeans that show off my butt to its best advantage, not because I want to attract guys' attention but simply because I like how it looks, how it makes me feel. I wear makeup and I love it. I like the smoother appearance of my face when I cover up blemishes. I like the way my eyes are emphasized when I throw on the tiniest bit of liner and mascara. This isn't me not accepting how I was made...it is me making the most of how I was made and feeling beautiful in who I am. I am not changing my body...I am enhancing it.  It makes me confident and happy with my body, with how I was made. It is me accepting my body shape without having anyone tell me I look good.

Self-esteem, girls, it's important. More important than sitting around, waiting for guys to come along and finally tell us we're beautiful in their eyes after having one or two or a hundred guys just walk right past us.
Every guy may not think I'm beautiful, but I am learning to be happy with who I am, and how I look because I am building my self-esteem.


Guys, I am not here to tell you to stop telling us beautiful. But I am. Confusing? Let me explain. Do, do tell us we're beautiful. But do not tell us HOW to be beautiful. Do not come to me and say, "You are beautiful as you are, with the body God gave you, you don't need to wear makeup" then proceed to swagger right past me to flirt with the prettier girls. Guys, your words mean nothing to me. It is like Eliza Doolittle of My Fair Lady says, "Show Me". Your words are empty without actions. Guys, don't tell me I'm beautiful then proceed further into your blogpost by telling me how I need to be, what I need to do, and who I should be in order to be worthy of your love and attention. I am worthy without your opinion, attention, or words.

Guys, if you want me to believe you when you say I'm beautiful, show me by respecting me, including every life decision I make, including the way I act, speak, and dress. Give me the respect I deserve as a person, by not comparing me to a car, by not treating my body as an object and labeling it as goodies. Guys, if you want me to believe you when you say I'm beautiful, don't talk down to me, don't stuff me into a box and tell me to wait for you. I am a person, not your object. I am worthy to go out into this world and do something and not make you the center of my universe. Guys, if you want me to fall for you, don't tell me that the sole purpose of my life is you. Remember this, guys, the next time you're tempted to write a letter to your future wife: your words mean nothing to us.

Living Life...

One could always come up with some perfectly adequate excuses for not having kept up with blogging...
one could say, "I've been swamped at work..."
one could say, "I've been dealing with family stuff..."
one could say, "I've been in the hospital. Dying."
one could say, "An alligator bit off my right hand..."
one could say, "I lost the password to my blog..."

Wait, let's go back to the alligator one. It's much more interesting. But if we're going to be completely honest with each other, I've simply been lazy. I really have no legitimate excuse, as I work part-time and have plenty of time to keep up with updating my blog.

Would some photos make up for the absence of newsiness? Yes? Okay, let's start with the prettiness.

In spite of the laziness of my life, I've filled my time with the little things of life that keep you occupied. Nothing particularly worth while to creating change in the world but little things that make your heart happy, boost your esteem, and fill your soul with vanilla-pudding kind of peace. (Smooth and creamy...now I'm hungry.)

Those little moments that we so often just glide by without even a second glance. Little moments of magic, moments that if we just stop long enough to capture with a capture, we'll see just how beautiful they are. This is my life at the moment...because in spite of going crazy with no school and only a part-time job to keep me occupied, I am also distracted by the little, good moments.

I'm taken back in time with the dance of a pen in my hand as it begins a letter with, "Dear Rose..." and the up and down loops of f's and g's and y's in my cursive. It's an old and well-loved motion, a piece of my life on a piece of paper. Enclosed in its envelope home, it'll fly it's merry way across waters to reach it's new destination. Magic. 

There's the moments where you come home and you hesitate over a book or a movie. But then your soul decides it needs some uplifting...no, it needs some spilling. And you let it pour out of you as music floods your soul and words drift onto the page of your journal. Sometimes it means exclamation points, italics as only a very Emily Starr soul can understand, and sometimes it means words all in caps and illustrations and word circles. Sometimes it means an EXPLOSION of words. From the comfort of your bed, from the vividness of your mind...you treat your soul to word therapy and you realize what this is. Magic. 

There are mornings when you drown yourself in cup after cup of tea, and you let yourself sink into the energy that flies from your fingertips. The snap of the shutter, the whir of the photos uploading onto your laptop. The excited breathing as you click through each photo, looking for the gem you made through a lens.
The excitement of multitasking as your fingers quickly ease over the keys, editing each photo, tweaking it just a skosh (Skosh: a form of measurement) to perfection, and figuring out your schedule. Making your photos while you cross each day that has slipped by, realizing you've not even come close to capturing enough of the moments in your life as each day goes hopping by. Magic. 

I may give in to my laziness of avoiding posting on my blog, but this doesn't mean I'm just letting my life slip by unnoticed or unappreciated. I am filled with love for these beautiful moments that I'm too lazy to always capture on my blog. Mugs of coffee, cups of tea, random photo shoots, music blaring, journal-, letter-, and novel-writing, spontaneous dance and tea parties with little sisters, movie nights with besties...I am living life and I am loving all these little moments of magic.