Any married man, or any single man who is paying attention, ought to know that many (most?) women in 21st century Australia struggle with self-esteem, especially when it comes to their appearance. This came home to me anew recently while watching a news story about cosmetic surgery. People – in the main, women – will take huge risks in order to reduce wrinkles, enlarge certain body parts, reduce others, and generally make changes to how they appear.

Clearly, the safety controls around these procedures can leave a lot to be desired. But for most of the people interviewed in the story, the risks were considered worth it because they felt so bad about themselves. When you’re in pain, the painkiller is very welcome. I am not against cosmetics in general, as some Christians have occasionally been. Looking good, feeling good, and spending time on your appearance seem to me a very enjoyable part of living in God’s good creation. Even some of the more radical forms of cosmetic change don’t seem automatically unethical to me. Creation is malleable, and science and medicine have given us incredible ability to reshape it.

Furthermore, what is often called ‘natural’ can in fact be the consequence of disease, illness, accident. From Genesis onwards, we have been encouraged to ‘tame the wilderness’ and ‘tend the fields’, and that is a wonderful power that human beings have been granted by their Creator. But if such things become more about stopping yourself from feeling bad, rather than enjoying yourself, something is out of whack.

The famous quote says that most men live lives of quiet desperation, but I suspect this may be the inner reality for many Australian women (men have their own issues, but that’s for another time). As a fairly robust and no doubt insensitive male, I have come reluctantly to this view. I wanted it to be simpler. I wanted pretty women to know they are pretty and be happy about it. I wanted all women to realize that they are lovely and attractive, and just enjoy the enhancing activities available to us (hair, clothes, makeup, etc) as part of an overall good sense of self-worth. But that simply isn’t reality.

Reality is that women feel terrible about themselves. And so much of our social fabric compounds and worsens this feeling. Pornography makes women feel sexually inadequate, advertising keeps suggesting that no woman has enough of anything, there is pressure to be the perfect homemaker, the fabulous but feminine high-powered executive, the madonna/whore in the right proportions and contexts, and to collect children like Angelina Jolie. The pressure is immense.

I think Christians are going to have to take this problem more seriously than we currently do. The back page of a newspaper won’t do much. We are going to need to build an alternative culture for women, without retreating into a ghetto or pretending it’s easy. It’s partly about opposing the negative views that are so prevalent, but it’s also about cherishing the good.

How can we, men and women, ensure that this sense of worthwhileness is a large and consistent part of a girl and woman’s experience?

Greg Clarke is CEO of Bible Society Australia.

Image: vassiliki koutsothanasi