Posted on 08/04/2012 2:39:09 PM PDT by Morgana
The more I pay attention to our culture, the more I wonder if C. S. Lewis owned a crystal ball. Many of the works of this Oxford don who died almost fifty years ago seem more accurate today than when he wrote them. And this is especially true of The Screwtape Letters.
In an especially prophetic chapter, Uncle Screwtape explains to his demon nephew Hells strategy for using imagery to derail human sexuality: We have engineered a great increase in the apparent nude (not the real nude) It is all a fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender than nature allows a full-grown woman to be. As a result we are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exist.
If theres a more perfect summary of how our culture views women, I havent found it. These images women have to compete with are always the same: flawless, impossibly slim and well-endowed. This standard is crushing for women because its not based in reality. Women are being compared to women who dont actually exist.
And thats where the real damage happens and not only to young women, but to men. As Timothy Dalrymple argues in a recent blog post at Patheos.com, pornography is devastating the next generations sexuality not only because its addictive, but because its wildly inaccurate. Just like Screwtape, porn directs young mens desires toward things and people that dont really exist. It alters guys expectations of women. Where nature offers real women, porn offers edited actresses. Where God creates daughters in His image, porn creates fantasies in our image free pleasure without any requirements.
Meanwhile under all that paint, porn stars are still broken, little girls. Someone rocked them to sleep, writes Dalrymple. Someone comforted them when they were afraid of the monster or the spider or the thunder. They have histories, dreams, they have souls.
Mark Regnerus makes this even clearer in a groundbreaking piece from last year in Slate magazine. In it, he describes todays sexual economics where the availability of fake women who look perfect and are interested only in sex has created a sort of market competition that distorts both genders ideas of what real women are actually like. In order to live up, many women start to act like their fake competitors. Meanwhile, men, says Regnerus, are only too happy to oblige. Thus, the vicious cycle of illusion keeps producing more brokenness.
So how do we break this cycle?
Well, for starters, we could imitate Julia Bluhm. Julia, a 14-year-old ballet dancer from Waterville, Maine, recently started a campaign thats already changing the way her generation views women. Partnering with media activist organization SPARK Summit, Julia started a petition to Seventeen magazine to drop the heavily-doctored images of young women, and instead use real photographs. Seventeen agreed, and now, thanks to Julia and the 84,000 signees who joined her effort, the nations most influential teen magazine is promoting true beauty, without the airbrush.
We can learn volumes from Julias victory in our cultures very real war on women. Shes making a difference because she rejects the illusions and weve got to do the same
“I sometimes wonder if an EMP wouldnt be the best thing for our culture.”
The best thing for our culture would be to accept Jesus Christ and His values.
“I sometimes wonder if an EMP wouldnt be the best thing for our culture.”
I hear you. We’ll probably get one whether we like it or not - the ONLY hope is that we prepare for it. Newt talked about it - the rest of the field didn’t want to get labeled as a kook (just like they would have in 1943/44 if they claimed one bomb could blow the crap out of a city).
At least since I started using Calvin Klein MAN.
Interesting lighting.
Do you find you’re having more luck attracting men with your new scent?
About 15 years ago I watched a TV magazine (20/20 or 60 minutes or...) segment on this topic. Young men in college were talking about their increasing struggles with dating because there weren’t many women who were attractive according to the media view (extremely slender, excellent complexion, full mane of hair, body in elegant proportion). They seemed to see past and through the women attending classes with them who were too ordinary to matter.
One very handsome young man perceptively said “I don’t know how it happened but somehow it seems like, to be pretty, a woman has to be skinny. If she’s not skinny, I’m not attracted to her...” He said he knew and enjoyed many of his female classmates but basically wasn’t attracted to them and he kind of wondered how the girls felt about that. And so these men felt that competition for ‘interesting’ women was overwhelming because there were so very few women who made the grade.
The women, when interviewed, were of mixed opinion. Some were resigned to it and hoped to have a fuller dating life upon graduation (i.e., more fish in the sea) and some reported being invisible. Some girls talked about walking down the hall and hearing congregated groups of men assign numeric ratings to their backsides, busts etc. and how terrible it was to hear daily ratings telling them how far they were from being attractive (i.e., per the cosmetic promise of the media).
You don't have to be skeletal, but you do have to have the rest, otherwise you're dating a pig and perpetuating their inferior genetic traits, or worse, rewarding the slovenly behavior that caused them to be so unhealthy.
Some women are ‘short-waisted’ which may or may not be in style (results in nice long legs but compresses the torso in dresses and blouses). Some are long-waisted which creates an elegant long torso but, unlike Michele Pfiefer, often results in shorter legs that may not look good in skirts. Some ladies have very narrow shoulders, some have broad. Flat chested or pendulous breasts. Problem skin (even with dermatology) or porcelain skin. Some have an “athletic build” and therefore a low waist to hip ratio like Jane Fonda had until she had ribs removed to get more of an hour glass look. We’re talking bone structure and genetics and hopefully stopping short of having ribs removed and not pigs or slobs. And note that the men who sought these model women were often not model men. Unfortunately, like the impossible advertisement above, men are being bombarded with impossible cosmetics standards for the male physique too but the women are way out ahead of them.
You’re really catching it for that comment I see, but your point is well made.
Leviticus 19.29
Fashions for women today favor a specific type: one with a concave belly and slight hips. Even my 5'7" 127 lb daughter doesn't look good in those ridiculous low-rise jeans (originally designed for men). Women shouldn't be so concerned with trends, but wear what looks good on them,, so idiot men can see that various feminine body types are attractive with clothes on as well as without.
What happened to the days when a man appreciated all beautiful, nude female forms: slightly plump yet firm, curvy, athletic, petite, tall, or naturally thin?
If a man is only attracted to plasticized, hairless, orange-fleshed women with silicone butts and boobs, who have tattooed makeup & hair extensions, and have plastic surgery to remove their ribs & make their vulvas "pretty," those men might as well go full-hog and date a transexual, not a real woman.
And the Asians are getting closer to creating realistic sexbots... ;-)
But, Morgana, since you're an MST3K fan, you're cool with me! That clip you linked to happened to come from one of their funniest episodes, where they ripped on one of John Norman's Gor movies (can you believe they made a sequel to that junk?) The books weren't as bad as the movies, but that's not saying much.
What I like best about MST3K?
They question things and answer the great mysteries of the universe...
Sort of like shock therapy?
You've never had any pre-teen boys without driver's licenses living in your home and messing with computers, have you?
The best thing for our culture would be to accept Jesus Christ and His values.
I used to know “Mrs” Calvin Klein. Went to art school with him.
“You’ve never had any pre-teen boys without driver’s licenses living in your home and messing with computers, have you?”
Sure
But my point is, you would not believe what teenagers are getting up to - entirely on their own. They produce and distribute stuff among themselves that most people would have a hard time believing. (Before my wife’s job, I most certainly would have lost a bet on the subject.)
If all the outside porn produced on the planet suddenly disappeared, it wouldn’t stop the stuff going on right under our noses.
I would believe it, having had teenagers in the house. That's where the hard parenting comes in. I was in shock after calling a number of other parents to discuss what our pre-teens and teens were up to. Most either dismissed any concerns or actually "supported" their kids doing anything they wanted. We took the risk of making our offspring pariahs by insisting that other parents did not have the right to inflict their values on ours by encouraging them to have sex at the other parents' house. We had to make legal threats to back us up. But it was worth it; and 15 years on, ours are succeeding where theirs are ready for the Betty Ford clinic.
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