Over the next while, I will be posting excerpts from the booklet. If you would like a free copy of the ebook, email your request to jewela40@gmail.com and I will send you one. feel free to share it with family and friends:-)
Excerpt
Perception: To become aware of
directly through any of the senses, especially sight or hearing. The
way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted.
“The beauty of a woman is not in
the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she
combs her hair. The beauty of a woman is seen in her eyes, because
that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides. True
beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It's the caring that she
lovingly gives, the passion that she shows & the beauty of a
woman only grows with passing years.”
― Audrey Hepburn
― Audrey Hepburn
How many of us truly know who we are?
How many of us love ourselves? How many of us stand in front of the
mirror once a day and say, “Man, I'm beautiful? I'm amazing! I'm
smart, funny, and a good person. I'm the total package, baby!
I have two daughters and two sons who
do this everyday. I call it the Gaston complex. And you know what?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, because they know who
they are. We should all take the time to do this. It does amazing
things for your self-esteem.
Too many of us don't understand our
worth–not the world's superficial idea of worth, but God's. The key
to truly understanding our worth encompasses different things, and
none of them can be left out.
One of my favorite movie quotes is
from The Princess Diaries. When Mia has to deal with her neurotic
friend's opinion of the changes in her appearance, Joe shares with
her a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt:
No one can make you inferior
without your consent.
Brilliant, isn't it? Completely
brilliant! Because never has there been a truer statement. If the
opinions of others bring us down, it is because we allow it to. The
only opinion that matters should be God's.
So why do we let the world determine
our worth? Why do we allow our value to be deemed by an
increasingly-growing Godless society? Why do we value and try to
conform to the masses instead of recognizing our worth in God's eyes
and placing importance on his opinion?
The world doesn't know us . . . but
God does. The world doesn't care what is inside us, or what we deal
with daily. The world doesn't know our hopes, dreams, fears, or what
touches us deep . . . but Heavenly Father and His Son do. The world
has no clue what is important to me or you. It couldn't care less.
However, the world does try to dictate what beauty is. We are made to
believe we have to be a certain size and dress a certain way to be
beautiful. The world brainwashes women, and then counsels us to
conform and do whatever it takes to sell that worldly image, in which
case the world then sells us out. Then it abandons us, and
what happens to our real selves then? We become so lost, we can't
even find our real selves anymore, because we lose sight and have no
clue what is real.
Store magazine racks are full of
perfect photos of women that are not real. We know this, yet we still
fall into the money trap, and believe me it is all about
money. The more women these advertisers can get to believe their
product can make them beautiful, the more money they pocket. They
don't want us to be confident. They try to convince us our looks are
more important than anything, so they bombard us with photos of
perfect-looking women. With a little air-brushing and retouching,
anyone can look perfect. The keyword is look perfect. These
advertising companies use Photoshop on a regular basis and they are
pros at the art of deception.
Many of us have daughters, and we
don't realize that when we obsess over weight and looks, these
impressionable young women will follow our example. They will never
be content with themselves.
Actress, Kate Winslet has always been
outspoken about Hollywood dictating the perfect weight and she
refuses to conform. When a British magazine digitally enhanced her
photo to make her look thinner, she issued an official statement
saying: “I don't look like that, and more importantly, I don't
desire to look like that. I can tell you they reduced the size of my
legs by a third.”
The world has conditioned us to hate
our bodies. How many of us are actually satisfied and happy with our
looks? Not many. Once a woman gets in a mindset where she is
disgusted with her body, eating disorders are just around the corner.
There are even websites now that teach people how to become anorexic.
They teach you how to binge and purge, and offer ideas on how to keep
losing weight. It is sick and wrong.
Every woman's body shape and features
are different, especially when it comes to ethnicity. When I was
younger, I dreamed of one day looking like Wonder Woman because she
was my idea of what the perfect woman looked like. Well, guess what?
No matter what I did, it never happened. Do you know why? Because a
Black woman is built completely different from a woman of another
ethnicity. When I finally figured that out, I stopped trying.
In magazine ads and commercials, we
are nothing but objects. The last thing these companies want is for
us to love ourselves. We are meant to look at these ads featuring
so-called perfect-looking people, and feel inferior and not good
enough. They want us to think if we could just lose weight, use their
cosmetics or wear their clothes, we will be better women. It is
really degrading how the world demoralizes women, getting us so
wrapped up in becoming the world's ideal when we should be
concentrating our efforts on being an ideal daughter of God.
Look at how women are treated in some
other countries. They are beneath the men and treated like they are
worth even less. The worth of women in the US has been lowered as
well, only it has been gone about differently.
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