by Annagail Lynes
Today in most movie trailers, music videos and television programs, we see women’s bodies being exploited. Women are wearing skin-tight clothes or showing too much skin – if they are wearing anything at all.
When you shop in the department stores, the junior department is filled with short skirts, barely-there blouses and holey jeans. A girl who wants to wear clothes that cover everything is forced to buy from the women’s section.
Wearing clothes that have gaping holes in the breast or back areas is the norm when walking down the red carpet. But from the celebrities to the musicians to the television producers, few are thinking about the message this is sending to the up and coming generation.
Today people believe that you are full of self-esteem and self-confidence if you are showing your body off in public. Somehow wearing a dress that shows off your legs or a blouse that shows your stomach makes you feel better about yourself, according to popular belief. Maybe it does. But it does so for the wrong reasons.
Wearing clothes that show everything brings you attention, and that attention is what boosts your self-esteem, but when that attention fades, you are left to deal with “you” again. That boost was only temporary, and like a drug addict, you will need to get another fix – and another and another – until you are obsessed with getting attention from the opposite sex.
You are getting good feelings about yourself from the wrong people. Instead of getting them from God and yourself, you are getting them from other people. And other people’s approval is seldom lasting.
Women today seemed to be like frogs being boiled in water. In order for the frog to stay put, you must slowly turn up the heat, allowing the frog to become comfortable in his surroundings.
Oh, let’s wear off-the-shoulder blouses. Now let’s show wear shirts that don’t cover our stomachs and skirts that don’t hide our rears . Well, why not show off our chests? Then when someone like Janet Jackson appears on the Super Bowl half-time show with her “wardrobe malfunction,” the networks, the audience and the media are outraged at how a thing could happen.
These are the same networks who allow bed scenes and half-dressed woman to be shown on their prime-time television shows. The same media reporters who preach about women’s rights to dress how they want to. The same audience who has no trouble exploiting women by watching half-dressed ones on television or in the movies, but who take offense to women being assaulted or abused. Both are exploitation. Both damage women’s self-confidence and self-esteem.
Slowly the devil has turned up the heat. He has conned women … and men … into thinking that there is nothing wrong with a woman showing off her body, that there is nothing wrong with looking at women in compromising positions on the television. But there is.
Long ago, only harlots dressed like that. Now dressing like a harlot is the norm. And women wonder why instead of attracting nice, hard-working, God-fearing men, they are attracting men who only want to take them to bed? You only get what you are projecting. Let’s say you trying to sell a product and you want to attract well-respecting men, what would you do?
You should dress your product in a respectable manner. Your product and your message should reflect those whom you want to attract.
If you are dressed like Brittany Spears, you aren’t going to attract a born-again, God-fearing man. Instead you are going to attract losers who have no jobs, no ambition and don’t know God. As author Lisa Bevere would say, “If you want to attract a whoremonger, then dress like a whore.”
“But, Annagail, I’m proud of my body. Why can’t I flaunt it,” you may be thinking.
It’s because small foxes spoil the vine. Small things, such as wearing revealing clothes and looking at a movie with a half-dressed woman in it, corrupt your Christian walk with God. Those small decisions begin to blur the line between right and wrong the longer you allow them into your life.
What you allow, you accept. If you watch movies like that, you begin to wonder what is wrong with dressing like the movie stars do. The more you put that in front of your eyes, the more you wonder what is wrong with having sex before marriage. The more you allow yourself to compromise your faith in the little things, the more you will accept things that were once morally wrong to you as being okay.
“My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:20-23)
We have to watch what we put before our eyes because it is a gateway to our heart. Out of our hearts flow the issues of life. What happens in our life and how we handle the things that come up depends on what we have stored up in our hearts. If we have stored up bad things, we fold and compromise our beliefs under pressure, but if we have stored up good things, we will stand steady to what we believe. The choice is yours.
Be the first to comment