thinking neked

i glanced down at my “perfectly round pot belly” the other day and thought, “hey, you and i should become friends.”  you can’t beat them join them and all that.  but then i got to thinking, who said i had to beat anything?  who’s making the rules around here anyways?  yeah, i’m onto you now.  you can talk all day about female body image, but until you are prepared to replace your thinly veiled apologies with an actual force to be reckoned with, don’t think it will amount to much.    you’re still playing their ball game, their rules.  “everybody is different, love your body, love who you are, we’re truly sorry you’re not smokin’ hot, that’s okay, embrace your curves, and you have a lot of them.”  meanwhile, back at the ranch, this is what a swimsuit model really looks like.  (i’m assuming those are plastic because from my experience in concentration camps, those are the first to go.)

i was chatting with a friend about my previous post on dresses.  how a christian woman’s adornment is a chaste and quiet spirit, something that i think we are capable of mirroring on our persons in the way we dress.  in our culture you can wear a dress as a public display of submission, demonstrating the beauty of it at the same time.  she pushed it further and said that as christian women we should also be redeeming and reclaiming sexuality.  “moms” should be desirable.  how?  well here goes.  fruitfulness.  the entire history of art embraced and elevated the fruitfulness of women.  as something lovely.  something amazing and glorious.  as well as quintessentially feminine.

we make people.  we are cool like that.  oddly enough this is no longer reflected in the modern ideal of beauty.  i was listening to a talk on birth control by janet smith.  she referenced a study where men found fertile, average looking women more attractive than “sexy,” infertile women.  because it’s a lie.  a flat stomach is just the badge of the foolish woman.  a woman who tears down her house with her own hands.  a woman who will not give herself up for the sake of another.  fortunately there are enough idiots to go around and she can lure them in easy enough with a push-up bra.  they only figure it out when it’s too late, and by then she’s taken them for all they’ve got.  which reminds me of what the “oracle” once said.  what all men ultimately desire is rapprochement.  being made one.  now since men are dumb they think this means that if they can have sex with it they will be happy.  but what it actually means is finding a woman who will submit to his authority and honor him, becoming one with him.  sex is the fruit of this relationship, not the cause.  to the contrary, the girls that will have sex with you on a whim will use that same sex to own you and to ruin you.  it’s called sleeping on the couch, until she eventually takes that too.  on the other hand, the girl that won’t have sex with you until you give her your whole life and every red cent you will ever earn, she’s the one who’s going to treat you right.  my favorite, “don’t you know how that happens?” retort;  “why yes i do.  and apparently i’m getting a lot more of it than you are.”  fruitfulness and submission go together and they are both beautiful.  fear and a flat stomach are ugly little friends.  “if i’m skinny, maybe they will like me.  if i wear enough make-up, maybe i will still look young.  if i don’t ever have any children i can keep doing what i want.”  yeah, paint the sepulcher all you want sister, “but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword.  her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave.”  so i say rock the gut.

  

love being a woman, love bestowing life, love being feminine.  don’t cry the next time you’re pregnant because you “just got skinny.”  rejoice.  and see if that is not what is truly attractive.  i got to thinking about this because i do exercise, and don’t get me wrong – i do believe we should maintain our bodies as opposed to letting it all go south.  i just noticed that the stomach is the last to cry uncle.  why?  because maybe it’s not supposed to.  maybe the female body has a stomach.  really?  get out.  women can be fit, trim, and healthy and still have a tummy.  because women have tummies.  instead, we have let ourselves become convinced that our belly is our arch nemesis.  because we have believed the lie that the ideal shape is a barren shape.  my husband, on the other hand, he has a six pack – because he does his job, and it doesn’t happen to be bearing children.  he works for a living.  he fights the world on my behalf and it makes him hot.  women don’t look good in their husband’s pants and they don’t look good in his body.  my body gives life, when i use it for what god intended it, that is what makes it lovely.  that is what makes me beautiful.  not when i try to force it to become something it’s not.  besides there is nothing more beautiful than a pregnant woman, truly.  so if you need a better alternative standard of beauty than “being fat is okay, some people are like that.”  try, “i make people, and i’m sorry you’re a dried up shell of a woman desperate to be loved.”  unless you don’t think that is very nice.  in which case, don’t ask me.  i’m not very good at that kind of thing.

p.s.  and back to wearing dresses.  pants are a communist ploy.  can you rock the well rounded shape when it’s hanging over your belt buckle?  no.  please don’t try.  it fails every time.  just ask my dad.  i dare ya.