Men, Women and That Whole Body Image Thing

Women spend an inordinate amount of time pontificating and fretting over what men think of their physical appearance.  We spend a lot of time fretting over what other women think of our physical appearance.  We spend a lot of time thinking about what we think about our physical appearance.  It’s really rather ridiculous when you consider that men have only one requirement for women, summed up in a single adjective: naked.

Years ago, in one of the  Charleston, WV newspapers, there was a segment about older people re-discovering sex.  I am not sure where sex had gone in the interim period, but apparently, it was relatively elusive until someone over the age of 50 rounded a hedge and stumbled upon sex.  “Good heavens!” this discoverer doubtless cried.  “I knew I should have trimmed that hedge.”  Anyway, the newspaper segment quoted a geriatric participant in the rediscovery of sex, and her quote summed up the entire male/female dynamic nicely: “When you’re the only naked woman in the room, you’re worth a million bucks.”

Men may have physical preferences, such as hair color, but nudity trumps them all.  Say a guy likes blonds.  A dressed blond is attractive, but a naked brunette is irresistible.  So we ladies need to stop worrying about what men think about our bodies.  Honestly, I don’t believe there is a whole lot of thinking going on on their part.

Now, if we could just find a way to get our Christian character unclothed, we’d be all set.

A note on the human experience

It borders on the realm of the pathetic that I have not come to this conclusion until the age of 34. Then again, I know plenty of people for whom this observation will never penetrate. I suppose it is the softness of our life here, in this time, in this place (by which I mean modern America) that gives birth to such blindness…steeped in prosperity, we assume that this state is indeed a state common to man. Even more inaccurately, we may begin to assume that it is not only common to man right now, but has been common to man throughout human history. Somehow, it is difficult for us to grasp that man has not always lived with the modern luxuries we enjoy.

Most of us are willing to concede that there was in fact a time in human history without electricity, but we seldom take it any farther back. Do we realize that humanity shared space with all manner of tiny vermin for most of human history? Does it occur to us that eras of lawlessness, war, and violence have dominated history? Our insulation allows us to hear cases on the news of “other people” and their sufferings, and we sigh, and we proclaim our society “so violent and corrupt.”

We know nothing of the vast numbers of humans around the world who have suffered, en masse, dreadful atrocities, inescapable atrocities. The more I observe the world and history (and I am not even up to the status of amateur on this venture), I have come to the conclusion that most of human history has, in fact, been a horror. Man’s existence has been a study in sordid crime and slavering empiricism, oppressive cultural practices and intimate violence practiced on a populace largely unarmed – both intellectually and with regards to defensive weapons.

Ignorance is indeed the stuff of enslavement, and defenseless ignorance needs no other means by which to destroy its believers.