Teens
When I first came to America, it was paradise. For the first time I experienced freedom like never before. I am talking about the freedom to be myself, to roam the streets without being self conscious that my arms weren't stick thin like the fashion models on runways. In Asia, women are petite and extremely conscious of being even a little overweight. You might have heard a famous TV personality say on his talk shows that there is no reality but only perception. When I first heard this statement, I thought that it could not true. After all, if it is raining then it really is and whatever else you perceive is not going to bring the sun out or stop the rain. But of course what the guy on TV was really trying to establish is the power of the human mind. How we think about ourselves, others and other things can be very powerful to build or destroy ourselves. I first realised this when I came to this country and I wanted to become a volunteer at a popular weight loss center. I soon discovered that I was rejected because they were only interested in people who were at least a little plump to help out their clients through a program of mutual encouragement. I will have to admit that was the best reason anyone gave me in a rejection. Here is why.
I have been told since I was little that I was overweight. I grew up thinking I was fat and needed to lose weight. Down through the years I became successful but somehow the barometer of what is slim changed through the years. When Cindy Crawford became big internationally, she was the standard for a beautiful body and face but in less than five years, Kate Moss came along and raised the bar! Moss was and is practically stick thin. For some strange reason, many of the young women around me had arms as slim as my wrists. So I started to feel inadequate and very self conscious. I was told women often looked at other women's breasts when they compare themselves against their peers but where I was concerned, I am an expert when it comes to looking at arms. This has little to do with the size of my chest but everything to do with the fact that I had been criticised one too many times for my weight. I became ever so conscious of my arms because I felt my waists and thighs did not give me as much problems. Whenever I looked at women, I would see their arms second to their faces, if they had nice arms then and only then do they make it to my list of beautiful women. I can even tell you at which stage of Jennifer Anniston's career in Friends did her arms look nicely round, then muscular and then less so in the later seasons. Was I obsessed? Let's just say I did all of that in auto pilot mode!
I guess women tend to be most conscious of the areas they feel they fall short. Not only do we compare ourselves with women in the media who are air brushed, we are also set up to think less of ourselves by the world at large. I can easily recall ballet auditions where you got to be stick thin, modelling go sees where you wait to meet with a certain someone whose first name is all you get to know and then are told that your pores are too large for photography or that you do not meet the height requirement. I can imagine how devastating it must be if our first love fell apart because a certain guy we were seeing commented that our arms were flabby.
Now that I am in my 30s and very blessed to know that I am loved independent of how I look or who I am, I wonder what my life would have been if someone told me earlier that I was beautiful regardless of the size of my pores on my face or how my arms looked, or which circle of friends I hang out with. The messages from fashion and entertainment, advertising and also just from our interaction with both men and women will or can always cause us to believe that we are never settled and there is something else we need to fix and improve. The truth is I have realised that the power to keep slim is to know that you do not have to be slim to be what you want to be.
A friend told me that she had become a Christian and since that time I saw for myself that she lost a whole lot of weight. She confessed that her success had very little to do with what she ate but a whole lot to do with how she felt about herself. She mentioned feelings of having found love and acceptance by Jesus and the gentle guidance of His Spirit teaching her what to eat.
Oprah Winfrey often says on her shows that we all know what we should or should not eat. I know that a certain meal replacement in the US does work wonderfully, that is with discipline of course. So I totally agree that many of us who are well read, reasonably knowledgeable or talk shows savvy etc. know what foods not to take. However, we may not apply that knowledge. Some women are stuck in a rut known as that all familiar vicious cycle of defeat- we do not like how we look in the mirror and so we get upset, then because of that we eat to comfort ourselves.
It seems that fat women are fat very likely because of unhappiness and being fat is also the reason why they are unhappy. Yet, how true is the opposite so much so that many of us beat ourselves up in strife to be trimmer? As someone who has been both fat and slim, I can vouch that happiness is a state that is quite independent of one's size. Happiness has every thing to do with love. However, we know that love may 'die' when we lose a spouse or a loved one to death, or it may fade and go away. If losing weight has much to do with happy feelings of self assurance, protection, unconditional acceptance filled with a great sense of hope and a bright future, then the source from which we experience love has got to be unfailing.
I remember when I used to watch beauty pageants in the 80s, the standard of beauty across the globe seem different in the African continent. Today, the preferences are somehow more streamlined. This might have a lot to do with the success of the western media penetrating to different parts of the world. The result is that today's standard of beauty the world over dictates that you got to be slim, strong yet feminine and well-toned. The fact that this standard does change is very interesting. However, it only seems to change to make it more challenging for us to obtain premium form. I wonder what it might be like to live in a different time where women were large and considered very beautiful, so beautiful they became works of art! If you have not got a chance to visit Rome or the musees in Europe, it might be a liberating experience just to take a moment to contemplate on what our Creator meant for us. I may be a top candidate for diet programs in certain parts of the world but I am not allowed to volunteer in slimming centers in other parts because I am considered not overweight but slim.
As a Christian practically all my life, I did not use to think that my values had anything much to do with what society expects except in the cases of the moral hard line issues such as murder and stealing. In these situations, good values are important but I rarely understood how my Christian values can help me live in a modern world which seems to demand much from women. Do I strive to cope in a rat race just as I did in my 20s, or have I truly come to understand that happiness has much to do with wisdom that comes with age? I can easily say that I believe there are two kinds of wisdom; worldly wisdom like that discussed in Ecclesiastes, and the Godly sort of wisdom found in Proverbs. Of course most Christian women are not ignorant of the perfect woman in Proverbs 31, and from elsewhere in the Bible they are taught not to be preoccupied with themselves or their outward appearances. There really is so little light shed on the issue of weight loss, yet this is the issue which might well be the number one best selling subject in women's magazines.
If you are like me and you believe in a Creator God, I hope you know that He has all the answers to getting that perfect heaven on earth life. I do not think any woman's magazine article can teach me about love, marriage and sex, finances, health and weight loss etc., the author of life cannot teach any better. Yet ever so often, like Martha, we are too busy to do that one thing needful. Mary, Martha's sister chose that one thing to receive teaching from the Lord. I believe that if the perfect woman in Prov 31 exists, she is full of Godly wisdom. I do not think anyone can be a perfect woman for herself, her family and loved ones if she is not loved and does not know that she is loved.
Now if there are so few verses in the Bible which talk about our appearances, then we need revelation to understand God's will for women. The power to be happy is to experience happiness and so sadly but truly, this is not a chicken and egg situation. Such is the power of unconditional love and acceptance, and of no condemnation! It is a shame that Christianity today handles the subject of our love for God with equal or greater weightage than His love for us, when the Bible is so full of the gracious truths about God's love for us and not the other way around.
What a relief it is to know that we can overcome defeat when we know that success in all things is not based on our undependable, wavering and inconsistent love. What honour we will bestow to our Saviour who saves us when we recognise His love unlike ours never fails and He willingly does for us when we admit that we cannot do it on our own. Judging ourselves is not something we are worthy enough to do and putting each other on guilt trips can only bring forth impermanent change.
If we remember, feelings of romantic love made us come alive, brave bad weather conditions and even lose sleep to spend time with our loved one! Now if we tie this powerful truth to who we want to be, then we will realise that being slim is merely one of the many results that comes with being happy. Down through the years, with so much help from the school of psychology, we have come to know that greed has little to do with weight gain. An inactive lifestyle is not the primary reason why we choose to stay indoors or not climb the stair master that is gathering dust in the basement either. We can also have the world dictate to us how we want to look or feel, or what we need to do to be. Or we can realise who we already are.
If you care, read the Bible to find out the amazing truths about ourselves. However, I highly recommend a code to understand what I did when I read it myself- the code is Jesus loves you with such a personal love, that while you were unlovable He hung on the Cross for you, so that He may impute to you His perfection with His resurrection. If the one true and worthy judge does not condemn you but love you, and is able to restore you to the perfection that He had created you to be when you accept Jesus, then you must be a priceless master piece!! If spiritual things are eternal while earthly things are temporal, then knowing your eternal identity is where you need to put your time. Is slimming important? Honestly, weight loss like so many things in life can come with strife and a lot of commitment. The truth is for so many women, trying hard to look like the celebrities in the media can only give us a false sense of fulfilment. The standards will be raised to generate businesses and profit margins, and the truth is our real quest is happiness and unfailing love. I have found peace and weight maintenance just knowing I am loved by Christ and without an ounce of work by me, and I look good too! The standards of this world may come and go, but His love for you and me will never change.
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