Drop that corset

I've just finished reading an excellent book called Unsqueezed: Springing free from skinny jeans, nose jobs, highlights and stilettos. This book is written by a friend of mine, Margot Starbuck, whom I met in Durham during our sabbatical year there. I knew she was writing a book on how women view their bodies, but I did not know exactly what to expect. After reading it, and after literally getting the chills during the Epilogue, I can easily and highly recommend it as a book that goes to great lengths to challenge our modern, self-focused and very destructive culture's ideas of beauty and self-worth.

The best part about it all is that Margot hasn't written a "how-to" book that simply turns a blind eye to issues we all face. She has linked our value and worth directly to knowing that God loves us and has already accepted us just as we are, and striving to love others both near and far as a means of reversing our tendency to navel-gaze.

The first step I've taken since finishing the book is to join the True Campaign that Margot mentions, which is a great resource for finding godly self-worth in community and has lots more ideas and resources available. Check it out--just click on the handy blue button to the right! I also haven't taken a shower in three days, but that's maybe a step beyond what most average people would attempt in their first week.

I do think this stuff is important, mostly because it goes so much farther than how much we eat or don't eat, or buy or don't buy, as Margot also discusses at length. How we view ourselves has a direct connection to how we view others. Control has become the most prized word in all Western women's vocabulary, and yet it's possibly the concept most subtly detrimental to real relationships--under the guise of being good stewards we are ultimately losing out on what it means to be with and for other people.

Trouble is, this includes our children at times. At the moment I have two boys, but I don't for the world think that my views of myself won't rub off on them in some way. And I hesitate to say it, but girls are way more dangerous and vulnerable to see themselves how their momma's see themselves. We have to be careful. I want to be careful, and that's why I want to join a community of others who also see poison in how the world has conceived beauty and worth.

I would love it if anyone else wanted to join me in this...maybe we could all read Unsqueezed again together? Maybe we could not shower together? (ok, just testing) Maybe we could just all agree to stick our tongues out together at a society that tells us we're not OK exactly as we are because it's just not true. It's not true at all.