Covered in the Straits Times recently was a syndicated newspaper article from NY Times about the number of Venezuelan women who undergo plastic surgery to change the way they look in order to look beautiful. And then closely following that was a syndicated AFP report on the increasing numbers of teen girls and women having genital cosmetic surgery in the UK in order to look attractive. 🙁
Of course what “beauty” is in these people’s minds is warped. No normal human woman looks the way these women look in real life. That “look” can only be achieved under a surgeon’s knife.
It is a sad state of affairs that women are willing to scrimp and save and then suffer hours of pain and awful side effects to look just like what other women look. And for what purpose? To win the approval of men who have been fed a diet of porn and who themselves look none too beautiful!
When asked who came up with the definition of beauty, Osmel Sousa, head of the Miss Venezuela pageants said that it all came from his head. That man is seriously evil personified if you have seen that particular video clip where he was interviewed. Satan couldn’t have found a better minion than him!
The Bible tells us that,
Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Prov 31:30
Despite being bombarded by the media on what is considered beautiful (bigger eyes, slimmer thighs, bigger bust, etc) let us press on to raise our daughters and sons to be people who fear the Lord and live by His standards. Despite what Mr Sousa says, inner beauty is a real thing and it is not something invented by unpretty women! Grrr!
Yes, I know cosmetic surgery is getting to be very common – look at our local actors and actresses and you’ll know that natural beauty is getting to be rarer in the days to come. It might not be a stretch to say that in time to come, we will no longer know what it means to look old! Many are currently deterred from cosmetic surgery because of the costs involved. Well, if the demand is great enough, the costs will go down, kinda like how “cheap” LASIK surgery costs today compared to 3 years ago.
Let us not let man determine if we are beautiful or not. Our value and self worth is really not in our cup size or whatever physical yardstick we are supposed to be measured by. But we also need to keep on telling our children that. The noise and volume of social media and traditional media is loud and constantly bombarding their senses. We need to teach them and remind ourselves that our physical bodies will age and die but our spiritual bodies won’t.
We need to refocus our priorities as Francis Chan said so simply and eloquently in his sermon, Living Life from the Perspective of Eternity