When every girl can see her beauty, we will be an army.

You may know that I'm in an Anthropology of Gender class this semester. I don't remember if I've written anything about it yet or not. Anyways, today I started reading our last book for the semester, called The Beauty Myth. It talks about how American society keeps women obsessed with their looks to keep them powerless...at least that's what I understand it to say. There are a lot of good things in it...a lot of really true things. It talks about work - that women, historically and statistically, work twice as hard as men. In a lot of tribal societies, women do 4/5 of the work. Here and now, women are often better and harder workers too. We also tend to have longer work weeks and more than half of married, working women are still fully responsible for any and all household chores and whatnot. Another chapter was talking about women's magazines and that it's advertisers that control what goes in them. Magazines are dependent on the revenue from ads so writing about how we don't need to diet, how we don't need to dye out gray hair or use make-up to hide everything we think is imperfect isn't going to happen. The advertisers marketing these products need women to be dependent on them. Thy need us to think that we need make-up, that we need unhealthy crash diets, and that we need to stay looking young at all costs.

Earlier today, the book was making me really angry. But now...I just feel completely and utterly powerless. A lot of gender related things are really deep rooted in our culture. So although someone may say they're not sexist, they probably are. I get upset sometimes at people tone of voice, nuances and implications in what they say, and throwaway comments, like" oh, that's just how boys are," because they reveal our true, deep cultural beliefs about men and women. The book was talking about something that we just can't quite put our finger on, it's too deep beneath the surface and influences so subtly that we don't really see it. Maybe I'm just depressed now because I'm tired. That's definitely a factor...but something this deeply rooted and this destructive feels like it can't be changed. Or change is too slow to help the junior high and high school girls that I know now. Girls I know who believe that they're ugly and that if they have sex with a boy then he'll love her, girls who have had had eating disorders, girls who say that they can't stand to hang around with other girls...so many things, so many problems.

I...don't have any solutions, any ideas. I know I should say something about how God is always working and God is sovereign, but I don't feel like He is. hy have women and the oppression of women seemed to be on His 'back burner' for all of human history? How is David a 'man after God's own heart' when he had multiple wives and stole another man's wife? How is Solomon the wisest man ever when he had multiple hundreds of concubines? The book Captivating talks about satan having a 'special hatred' for women, for targeting women specifically throughout history. But why, God? Why women? I'm still not sure of my views on women in ministry and whatnot, but why allow the church to be patriarchal and oppressive throughout its history? Why has the church been used as a force to keep women in their 'proper place,' teaching us that we're intrinsically less valuable, less intelligent, less able to lead? I could keep writing, but then it'd probably never end. I'm going to read Harry Potter instead. She writes excellent female characters.

Vaya con Dios.