This may seem to be a strange title for spiritual warfare. Yet there is a very present war on women and that is the war of making women feel less than who they are.
Leading the siege on this warfare is most facets of the media. Women are being constantly fed the lie that they have to look perfect, we must have a perfect figure, perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect everything, we see this reflected in many women magazines and TV serials. The problem for women begins when they allow these media outlets into their psyche. This will turn a healthy woman into a neurotic and hysterical female who rather than enjoy life to its fullest instead stands in front of mirrors examining every perceived flaw.
In order to understand just how insidious this warfare is we need only look at the women who have achieved what the 'media' say will make us perfectly happy. The late Princess Diana had it all, an aristocratic background, she married into royalty and gave birth to two healthy boys. This woman's beauty captured the imagination of many as she became the icon of the age, yet beneath the glamour and the glitz she was miserable. Marilyn Monroe though not born into the wealth that Princess Diana had, also achieved her dream of becoming the most desirable woman on earth, yet she committed suicide. Barbara Hutton also a noted beauty and heiress searched her whole life for love yet died unloved and alone. These women are a living testament that what the media is seducing us with is a lie.
One of the great leaders in this de-humanizing of the uniqueness of every woman is women magazines who inundate us with pictures of how we are all supposed to look as if women were made on an assembly line. Almost like a scene from the Stepford wives we read these magazines where actresses and models are pilloried and hauled over the coals if they dare to show any cellulite, who said all women have to be perfect?
Many women read these magazines on a superficial level but the subtle message stays in the psyche of most women and that is they have to measure up to what exactly? Who decided what was perfect and what isn't?
We see this attack on women gaining momentum when actresses become skeletal in their obsession to be this perfect creature that all the magazines and media corporations demand. One need only look at the photos of some of these actresses to see where this insidious intrusion into their vulnerable minds and emotions lead them. We have all seen these stick thin actresses who look like they have just come out of a Nazi concentration camp, yet who demanded that they do this?
Many women think they are making themselves thin to please men but are they? Or is this a ruse in order to cover up what is essentially the missing element within themselves and it has nothing to do with calorie intake. What drives most women to take these drastic steps is a need to compete with other women. Lets face it most men simply want their wives and girlfriends to have confidence and to be fulfilled in who they are and not obsess over what they look like. What man wants a neurotic wife who in her attempt to be perfect becomes a living nightmare to live with, as she starves herself for whom?
We need only remember the furor over the actress Kate Winslet who refused to fall into line with the media moguls when it came to her weight she then was pilloried from magazine cover to magazine cover for daring to have CURVES! There is also immense pressure on many actresses who have become pregnant to lose their baby weight gain within weeks, and if they don't they are then lambasted once again in women magazines!
When magazines write that Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren or Jane Russell are now considered too fat for movies then there is definitely something wrong in their perception of a woman's figure. It is time for women to stop this weight dictatorship and to embrace who they are and to live a healthy lifestyle which will lead to inner fulfillment and contentment.
As I wrote above the women who supposedly 'had it all' died lonely and miserable as they chased after the illusive 'ideal' which is a figment of the media's imagination and the nightmare of those who buy into it. As this anonymous quote says, "The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves and not to twist them with our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." Women need to reclaim their own identity and to be responsible for their own bodies this is what leads to that inner happiness we all long for.
When God created Eve, He did so with perfection. Eve didn't need a set of scales to tell her different.
Peace of Christ to ALL
Copyright © 2006 Marie Smith. All rights reserved.
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