The Attack on the Natural Woman

There is general trend that's been in the air for a few years now,one that calls for a return to what is "natural:" natural foods, natural materials, natural cleaning products, you name it.  Although advertisers have, as usual, taken great advantage of the trend and made some laughable "natural' products, it seems to me a not an unhealthy thing.  After all, it’s probably time we remembered God is better at engineering what is healthy and good than we are.  This tendency toward what is natural, however, has not extended to embracing how God has made us as women.  Our culture, through the mass media, is waging a constant warfare on natural womanhood.  As a woman and as someone who hopes to have daughters some day, this is extremely disturbing to me.

There are three figures common in folktales, representative of the best of women in their natural stages, which we seem to have lost respect for in this modern culture: the maiden, the mother, and the wise old woman.  Now I am no neo-pagan, but I still feel like these stereotypical figures were a valuable reflection of womanhood and I want to know why I do not see them in my culture. Instead, I am constantly barraged with images of women as objects: a depository for lust, a heartless machine, or a valueless shell.

  There was once great respect for the rare beauty of a maiden, a girl in the first blush of innocence. The purity of mind, body, and spirit was the maiden's strength.  It drew others to her and won their devotion.  No longer do we see maidenhood as something to be treasured or purity as something to be retained. We have traded in the maiden for the fashion model. Girls begin dieting, dressing like teenagers, and becoming "educated" about sexuality at a younger and younger age every year.  Models and pop singers, the new idols, teach them to flaunt their sexuality. Confusing innocence with naivety, the modern girl refuses to cling to her valuable purity and discards it as childish.  Their bodies are not precious, to be taken care of and protected.  Instead, they are seen as never , tall enough, skinny enough, voluptuous enough, ultimately they will never be "good enough."  From television to magazines, the message is clear: if you want to be loved, you have to have the perfect body and you have to be willing to give that body away.  This is not the message I want young girls to have.  I want to tell them that their purity, not their sexiness is their power.  Their natural innocence is a gift from God and their young bodies are beautiful the way they are, without unnatural preening, prodding, and starving.  To change themselves is to steal the blush from the rose.

Women have an amazing natural gift: they can bear life.  They also are given the emotional and physical ability to take care of that life afterwards, as mothers.  Yet the natural way a woman's body is made, to accommodate bearing children, is scorned. Women's natural curves are seen as a hurdle to overcome, a personal handicap, rather than the best way to healthily have children.  After you do have children, you are urged to exercise and diet right away and get back your "pre-baby body," often by means of plastic surgery. Modern women are told to hide not only the physical attributes having to do with motherhood, but also their natural feminine qualities which make them such good mothers.  Patience, gentleness, compassion, self-sacrifice, and the desire to nurture are seen as weakness in a world where women are supposed to "get ahead," that is, seek wealth and power for their fulfillment.  These traits are valuable not only in mothers, but in all people, single and married, male and female.  Finally, women who do choose to dedicate their lives to motherhood are not respected, but looked down upon.  They are seen as either stupid, spoiled, or unfulfilled.  Women seem to have two options before them: powerful career woman or "desperate housewife."   Whether they bear children or not, women should not be ashamed of their ability to do so or their desire for motherhood, physical or spiritual.

When a people values its traditions and its ancestors, it recognizes the wisdom women acquire over a long lifetime.  Grey hairs and wrinkles are a sign of strength to endure and the experience of many years.  The grandmother of folklore is often the source of guidance to the young hero or heroine, setting them off on their journey with secrets garnered over time or the matriarch of a great family, ruling with knowledge.  The love of the elderly shows a true respect for life.   Yet if I look around at my culture, I see one which has little use for grandmothers and old maiden aunts.  Is it any wonder women are afraid to age gracefully?  They artificially cling to their youth through any means possible, because they see how little respect there is for older women. They are seen, at best, as comedic relief and often just as tragically lonely.  So many old women have their nursing home paid for, but no company to hear the story of a life well lived.  While we are in some ways enamored with death, quick to deal out mercy killings, we are also terrified of death; so, as a culture, we marginalize those close to death.  We have lost the natural closeness of death and so fear the natural aging process, especially the loss of physical beauty.  This is a great loss for the aging and for ourselves.  We lose all that older women remember, the weaving stories of generations, the skills of time gone past.  Women do not lose their value or their true beauty when they lose their youth, though our culture tells them this lie.

Often natural products from shampoo to produce warn their customers not to be alarmed by differences in each individual product, because nature does not make identical carbon copies.  Two heirloom tomatoes, for example, can look wildly different, but still be both tomatoes and delicious.  This is the truth women have to accept about their nature: they are different. They are different from men, different from each other, different at different stages of their life, and different from the stereotypes the media feeds them.  I know I cannot live in a world of folklore, but I can pray for one that recognizes natural beauty in all its shades, textures, ages, and stages.