As we think through growing up and becoming a woman with our daughter, the deeper questions about our existence as men and women lay right below the surface. Beneath the way women are often encouraged to present themselves in our culture seems to be a question along the following lines: "Will I be noticed?" Or, put more threateningly, "What if I'm not noticed?"
To satisfy this, many women seem to do the obvious with what the culture says it takes to be noticed...using their physical appearance. But, getting 'noticed' physically is not really the noticing that is more deeply desired. What happens to the question when a woman is not able to be physically noticed, due to things like genetics, age, etc.? ...it remains doesn't it?
It's no wonder why many women in our age seek this route to get their question answered...our culture is throbbing with the extremes of what it takes to get the attention of being noticed. But, the very effort of this route, actually creates a deepening need for more and more of it because it creates dullness at the very same time...with the only solution being to being even more extreme about it. A friend of mine put it this way, "Immodesty is a terrified attempt to be 'seen'...".
Men ask the same question, but the form of it seems to be more along the lines of 'do I have what it takes to make it in this world?' And, their effort to satisfy this is just as endless.
The problem is that both men and women are using external sources to satisfy the answer they seek. The more hidden truth is that outside sources, by definition, will actually perpetuate the question, not answer it. The answer comes from who I am, not who people say I am...by the way they notice me. In other words, it comes from something inside us, not outside us. It comes from our deepest nature, not the one we have become used to (enculturated by). I am somebody first, because of who I have been created to be, not because of what I get those around me to say about me.
In the short-term, this is a hard-sell, especially against the onslaught of our culture regarding such issues. Fortunately, though often still painfully, we have a life-time to work through all of this. And, the truth is still the truth, regardless of how much it gets kicked around.
