Love the skin you're in?

You may be familiar with the latest advertising campaign from Dove beauty products, the "Campaign for Natural Beauty". Amongst other things, they are encouraging women to throw off society's expectation that women should be a certain dress size and strive to look a certain way. The slogan of the campaign is "Love the skin you're in". I don't disagree with the sentiment that women should be happy with how they are and not spend an inordinate amount of time and money in an attempt to conform with how the models in magazines and on billboards look. However, I suspect that what lies behind the slogan (as well as a team of shrewd marketing experts) is a belief that self-love is the key to happiness in life.

But that is not a biblical view of love, or of our purpose in life. John Piper puts it well in his book Don't Waste Your Life:

For most people, to be loved is to be made much of. Almost everything in our Western culture serves this distortion of love. We are taught in a thousand ways that love means increasing someone's self esteem. Love is helping someone feel good about themselves. Love is giving someone a mirror and helping him like what he sees.

This is not what the bible means by the love of God. Love is doing what is best for someone. But making self the object of our highest affections is not best for us. It is, in fact, a lethal distraction. We are made to see and savour God- and savouring him, to be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth of his presence. Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not to love them. To make them feel good about themselves when they were made to feel good about seeing God is like taking someone to the Alps and locking them in a room full of mirrors.

The Modesty Survey

“How tight is too tight for tops? Are jeans with holes in the thighs immodest? Is a purse worn with the strap diagonally across the chest a stumbling block? Are shirts with messages across the front distracting?”

These are some of the questions that the guys over at The Rebelution are asking. This is an opportunity to join other Christian young men and women in their new and exciting project: The Modesty Survey. The Modesty Survey allows any girl to submit anonymous, modesty-related questions to Christian guys and to receive (multiple) anonymous replies.

So girls submit your modesty questions by December 15th and get some answers to those long awaited questions you have - and not from just one guy! For all the details of how to take part and observe the results click here.

Does Thin Equal Beautiful?

This week in the UK, a minor controversy errupted when world-renowned model, Kate Moss, was awarded Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards. At the centre of a cocaine scandal last year, eye brows were raised that Kate should therefore be singled out for such a prestigious award.

Whatever we think of this, it is undeniable that there is something about Kate Moss that the UK public finds alluring. One of those things would no doubt be her slender figure - some might say, alarmingly thin figure. In the British Press, much has been said in recent years about 'attitudes changing', as people wish to see 'ordinary women' modelling their clothes. But the continued stream of awards to 'Kate Moss types' seems to belie that fact. As far as British society is concerned, the majority still equate being beautiful with having a good figure.

But what should be the Christian's take on this issue? A most helpful talk by Dr Ed Welch can be found on the website of Capitol Hill Baptist Church. Dr Welch's talk, posing the question "Does Thin Equal Beautiful?" is well worth a listen, as is the subsequent Q & A session from their series on "A Biblical Vision of Beauty."