A Beautiful Woman is More than her Body
Or should I say a beautiful girl because corporate greed is now marketing to five year olds padded bras, lip gloss and sexy outfits to go with them. This article is a call to be aware of such attempts to steal the innocence of and define for our young girls their identity before they have had a chance to develop it themselves, all in the name of selling more products by expanding one’s market.
Also, advertisers often base their decisions on the premise that the earlier they start introducing their products to a group of individuals, the more loyalty and dependence they create to the products. I was in marketing at one time; I know. Parents have long had to deal with the influence of marketing on their children from toys, to food items, to other children’s products, but now parents have to once again find a way to shield their young ones from the onslaught of messages that are not healthy for their children’s lives and well-being. Yes, I said it, their lives and well-being. I don’t’ need a study to prove it although there are many out there; I am a parent myself. I was a young girl and now a woman myself, and lastly, I have common sense.
This article is also a call to remind readers that marketing only works while the product is purchased. So even though as parents, we once again, have to say no to these ridiculous purchases when other parents don’t (although I hope more parents will not buy their young girls items that encourage them to be sexy, etc.), instead we can educate our girls to boycott such oddities.
We can help them be smart consumers, more aware of someone else using them through influence for their own gain and talk with them about a higher sense of womanhood. Being a mother, I also have to look at how I am being sucked into the culture trends of my day and ask myself who is defining who I am and what is right for me. I am my daughter’s and other young girls’ example.
I hope too that this opens up the market to begin communicating a more positive message to young girls about who they are. Create a clothing line that is above the white noise centered on selling sex and communicate another appealing image of womanhood. Be original. There has never been a time in history when a girl can grow up being whatever she wants to be. She can play sports, be good in math without being told that she shouldn’t try, be a mother or an astronaut or both and she has support mechanisms in place to succeed. So why the other invasive campaign to overly define her as a sex object and at the same time overly define young men as players? Because it sells, so consumers please stop buying into it and start investing in making your daughters and sons strong in their sense of who they are as productive, purposeful, emerging citizens in a country that offers such potential for them.
This article is also a call to pray about this issue. The Hebrews stepped out of the current culture trends of how women were treated during Old Testament times with a stronger sense of womanhood and protection for women. Many of their deific references were in relationship to the female pronoun such as Wisdom, etc. Then Jesus had female disciples and broke the barriers of his time in engaging with women in order to help them. St. Paul also expressed his gratitude in the Bible for many females and their amazing work for the early Christian church. It seems God is continually revealing to humanity a higher sense of womanhood. Then throughout history women from both the secular and non-secular side have made wonderful contributions to elevating the thought of womanhood which elevated society in general. Mary Baker Eddy, who in her day of the late 1800’s, lectured on religious topics which was forbidden for women to do, as well as healed and became the founder of a world-wide religion, Christian Science. She made an interesting observation ahead of its time in relation to commercialism that provides food for thought as we make decisions about our purchases, “It is the tangled barbarisms of learning…— the mere dogma, the speculative theory, the nauseous fiction.
Novels, remarkable only for their exaggerated pictures, impossible ideals, and specimens of depravity, fill our young readers with wrong tastes and sentiments. Literary commercialism is lowering the intellectual standard to accommodate the purse and to meet a frivolous demand for amusement instead of for improvement. Incorrect views lower the standard of truth. If materialistic knowledge is power, it is not wisdom. It is but a blind force.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, page 195).
We can pray to cherish the innocence of not only children but of men and women. Since innocence is innately a spiritual quality it can’t be lost; it is eternal; it is of God and we can claim it and live it through the Christly message of God’s great love for us as His good creation. This prayer will keep us awake from going along with the thoughts around us without using God-given wisdom when thinking through things. We will more naturally chose the best for ourselves with a better thought about ourselves.
So, let’s not market to girls anything that is not who they are, pure little girls who are growing up free from self-conscious thoughts about their bodies and with identities that are free to explore the range of possibilities that will make them into wonderful women someday of their own making.
Anne Cooling
Sunday School Superintendent
First Church of Christ, Scientist, Laguna Niguel
