John Dickson toured Australia and the world with his band In the Silence for many years. He now works with Matthias Media editing a new Christian youth magazine called Zed.
A few years ago, I was touring in Adelaide with the band. After one of our shows, I was walking through the almost empty concert hall when I passed a girl in a wheelchair.
'Excuse me, can we talk please?' she said in very slurred speech.
For the next half an hour or so, she explained her story. She had been in a serious car accident with some friends and had been severely injured. For the first 11 weeks, she was in a coma and it was not clear what her situation would be. When she eventually came out of the coma, the doctors realised that she had lost her ability to walk, talk and write. She was just 18.
As she told me this story, I was really quite disturbed. I've heard some pretty heavy things while on the road, but this really moved me. I eventually asked her if I could have her address and keep in touch. She reached into her handbag, pulled out a couple of photos of herself and began scribbling her name and address on the back of one of them. I took the photos, looked at them and couldn't believe my eyes. They were shots taken just before the accident. They were modelling shots. She looked absolutely beautiful.
As I said goodbye, I couldn't help thinking of all that she had lost - her modelling ambitions, many friends and her fair share of guys, as you might imagine. Strangely, in many ways she doesn't see her situation as a loss. Instead, she considers it a gain. She has discovered that the most valuable things in life are 'inside qualities', not 'outside images'.
I wanted to tell you her story because meeting her has caused me to think about what has recently been described as 'the beauty myth'.
As I'm writing this, about ten copies of various teenage and fashion magazines lie at my feet. Browsing at the front covers, one topic steals the limelight - image.
Here are some front cover headlines: 'Keep it off! How not to be fat at thirty'; '20 essentials for dressing like a model'; 'Hair cuts that could change your life'; 'Fashion with passion'.
You don't have to be a social psychologist to work out that the quest for 'the look' is an obsession.
Of course, there is nothing at all wrong with wanting to look good. All of us appreciate beauty. I love the way my wife looks when she wakes up in the morning, but when she dresses to go out - WOW! However, in my opinion something very dangerous is happening right across female (and male) society.
Role models
I really am quite worried at the number of people I meet in schools and universities for whom looking good is the same as being good. It's possible to have such an unhealthy emphasis on our outside appearance that the 'inside' wastes away.
The problem is that we are left with a strong impression of 'the essential look' and we attempt to imitate it. Unfortunately, for most of us, 'the look' is often so far out of reach that we live in constant frustration, never quite making it. In Naomi Wolf's book, The Beauty Myth, she says that in the 1990s 'the weight of models plummeted to 23 percent below that of ordinary women'. That means, for example, that if the average woman weighed a healthy 65 kilograms, the average 1990s model would be an unhealthy 14.95 kilograms less.
Try an exercise next time you're on a bus. Look through a magazine, choose ten pictures at random and see how many of them you would consider to have 'the look.' Then glance up and down the bus, count ten people at random and see how they compare. This may sound like a silly thing to do, but I'm trying to show that the fashion world has very little in common with reality. And what's worse, these fashion models have become our role models.
What happens when a 16 year-old girl pores over her magazines, watches the babes on MTV and then peers in the mirror? What happens when she wants to look like her favourite model (now her role model) but simply can't? Well, for most people, it's no major drama. For others though, it becomes a driving, even desperate obsession. Moods swing up and down. Attractive friends turn into 'cows' and envy, jealousy and back-stabbing take over.
According to one survey, every day 67% of women feel guilty about eating, 73% envy another woman's body, and 58% feel depressed about their weight. One slim teenage girl even said this: 'I don't know how long I can go on living like this. Even when friends go on diets, I become very insecure, hoping that they won't lose weight or become thinner than me.'
The look that kills
In some ways, mood swings and bitchiness are the less harmful side of the quest for beauty. There is a far more frightening aspect.
Recently, there has been a fair bit of media coverage about what are called eating disorders. Anorexia and bulimia are two 'diseases' that are literally enslaving and destroying thousands of young women's and even some guys' lives - 10% of anorexics are male!
Recent studies indicate that about one in every ten women aged 14-20 have some form of eating disorder. For some, it is their death. This is no joke. What begins as a pursuit for the 'body beautiful' can end up destroying the body altogether.
There are, of course, less severe consequences of these two diseases. Physical and mental fitness can be dramatically reduced, periods can be missed and some women so mess up their internals that they are unable to bear children. This is not to mention the psychological impact. The quest for the right look can become an all-consuming paranoia that fills almost every thought and motivates almost every action.
It's important to note that blokes are not immune to the Beauty Myth either (although I guess we should call it the 'Hunk Myth'). Recent reports reveal an extensive black market for steroids in gyms and high schools. Apparently, 'the drugs are being used for cosmetic, not competitive, purposes'.
Whether with girls or blokes, the fashion industry has set such an unhealthy standard that those who try to imitate virtually any popular model of today are bound for trouble.
Blame
Let me emphasise again that wanting to look your best is very normal and healthy. I hope that nothing I have said seems to condemn girls who try to look good. That is not my intention or opinion. A couple of my own friends have been victims of both anorexia and bulimia and I do not blame them. So, who is to blame? Is anyone?
Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth, argues that men are to blame. She believes that the unhealthy standards in the fashion industry are created by men to make the average woman feel bad about herself and never up to scratch. Wolf calls it a form of 'social control'.
One problem with Wolf's theory is the question, if men started the Beauty Myth, who started the Hunk Myth? Besides, studies show that what most men consider to be the perfect body is quite a bit 'fatter' than the body envied by most women. One study asked a group of men and women to observe photos of different sized girls and to judge whether the girls were overweight, underweight or perfect. The result was very interesting. The girl judged as 'perfect' by 80% of women was judged as 'underweight' by 80% of men. The girl judged as 'perfect' by more than 60% of men was judged as 'overweight' by 85% of women.
Other factors
It seems to me there are two other factors which contribute to our obsession with having the right look.
The first factor is an obvious one- the fashion and media industries.
A popular fashion magazine recently published an article on dieting and eating disorders. In it were a couple of very interesting remarks: 'By 1990s standards, Marilyn Monroe's perfect 1950s body now looks like the 'before' picture in a weight-loss story'.
Interestingly, even this article had the honesty to admit that 'Fashion has something to answer for here'. When I read this I thought 'Hang on, aren't you one of the fashion leaders of this country?'. On the one hand, they preach that fashion can be held to blame, and yet in the same issue their pages are filled with pictures of incredibly thin models.
But there is a negative side, because if the models we try to imitate are always one or two steps ahead of us where will it lead?
The fashion industry may not have begun the beauty myth, but it certainly promotes it. Having said this about the fashion industry I still think there is another, more powerful factor contributing to our obsession with the look. That is, many of us have been tricked into thinking small. Or as a recent Commission For The Future report put it: 'Robbed of a broader meaning to our lives, we appear to have entered an era of mass obsession, usually with ourselves: our appearance, our health and fitness'.
Let me try and illustrate what I mean. Imagine if somehow I tricked you into thinking that the room you are now in is all there is to reality. Nothing else exists. What do you think would happen? After the initial shock you would undoubtedly begin to focus only on those things in the room - the painting, the clock, the carpet or whatever. Eventually, your whole life would revolve around the things in the room because you believe nothing else exists.
What if a similar thing happened in society at large? What if the media, fashion industry, education, family and friend somehow convinced us that there was nothing more to life than being popular, owning the right clothes and having the right body shape. What do you think might happen? It seems to me that what might happen is exactly what has happened. We've lost sight of the big things in life and become obsessed with the small. Maybe our constant desire to have 'the look' is one example of thinking small.
The question is, then, is there something more?
Now there was no £17 billion-a-year diet industry in first century Palestine. There wasn't even a £10 billion-a-year cosmetic industry. But the following wise words of Jesus show his timeless significance: 'Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes... But seek his (God's) kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom' (Luke 12.22-32).
According to Jesus, there is 'something more' to life than meets the eye. That 'something' he calls God's kingdom. It's not so much a place but a particular relationship with God and his human family - a relationship where God is Father or King, and you and I are his children.
It is this 'kingdom' that brought a new dimension to life for my friend in the wheelchair whose modelling dreams were cut short by a severe accident.
I was amazed to discover that while she was in hospital, she became convinced that there was indeed a God who cared for her and valued her life. She became a Christian. No, things did not get better overnight and she still has many difficulties. She occasionally gets depressed and from time to time she really misses her old life. What she did gain though, was valuable beyond description. She gained perspective, a larger view of life. Once, she thought looking beautiful was the same as being fulfilled. She now sees how hollow that was. She now knows there are far richer things to live for.
Here is part of a letter she wrote to me a while ago. Notice what it is that motivates and enriches her life. 'I couldn't possibly be angry at God. God gave me another go at life, to make a better person of myself. I feel privileged to be chosen to tell young kids about God and let them know of the great and marvellous things he has done in my life'.
This is a shortened chapter from an evangelistic book by John Dickson called A Sneaking Suspicion, designed for teenagers and young adults. Available from St. Matthias Press (0181 947 5686) or good booksellers. The book will be reviewed in EN next month.
Home
Archives
Subscriptions
Adverts
Find a church
About us
Contact us
Site Map
Printable