@ 2022-09-28: NOBODY "OWES" BEAUTY TO ANYONE

 Come on—seriously? 

“You don't have to be pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend / spouse / partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space named 'female'.” 

Erin McKean

(Cited by Robin Clark, Facebook meme) 

And yet women are pretty, as a rule, without even trying to be. That includes Erin McKean, if she's the lexicographer listed on Wikipedia. How ironic is that? Now maybe, some men (or some others) with a preconceived notion of what “beauty” is—and such notions change from age to age and from society to society—might not think Ms. McKean “pretty”. But look at her eyes especially. Of course, she’s pretty! Modesty, intelligence, emotionality, self-actualization—there are all kinds of things that make a woman “pretty”, or a man “handsome”, apart from any arbitrary societal standard.

Here is a basic truth of the human condition: If people think they are attractive, then they are attractive. Ms. McKean obviously does (as her photograph shows). Nobody “owes” anything to anybody in that arena of life. It's a natural and mutual expectation between the sexes. It's how humans are designed by a loving God.

Among my fellow men, in my personal experience, only those coming from a perverse or abusive background would ever imagine women “owe” them attractiveness. Otherwise, they choose what they like, and that is that. The same goes for women. But the existence of arbitrary standards of attractiveness—and so many societies have had them, all over the world, in every era of history—shows that something beyond natural expectations, and beyond natural spiritual, mental, emotional, and bodily health, is driving such arbitrariness. But it is not a sense of anyone “owing” anyone anything—not at its root, to be sure.

I personally am more concerned about women using their beauty to manipulate men. To paraphrase the late Dr. James Dobsen, the typical worldly woman pays more attention to her looks than to her brains because she knows that the typical worldly man can see better than he can think! Nothing good can come from that dynamic. I, at least, don't hear nearly enough from feminists about that aspect of the human condition. But then, maybe that would demand too much change on the part of too many women—just as it would from too many men.

If feminists (as I would like to believe) really are concerned about the oversexualization of Western society by both men and women (and they should be), then they should put the blame where it belongs. They should start by taking a hard look at the following: 

(1Jn 2:15 NKJV) Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

(1Jn 2:16 NKJV) For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.

(1Jn 2:17 NKJV) And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. 

(יוחנן רכב)