I wrote this 668 days ago ... but wanted to share it on here anyway! :)
Hope you get to read some...kind of long with statistics, but they interested me.
I want to be beautiful
I was so unique
Now I feel skin deep
I count on the make-up to cover it all
Crying myself to sleep cause I
cannot keep their attention
I thought I could be strong
But it's killing me
Does someone hear my cry?
I'm dying for new life
[Chorus]
I want to be beautiful
Make you stand in awe
Look inside my heart,
and be amazed
I want to hear you say
Who I am is quite enough
Just want to be worthy of love
And beautiful
Sometimes I wish I was someone other than me
Fighting to make the mirror happy
Trying to find whatever is missing
Won't you help me back to glory
[Chorus]
You make me beautiful
You make me stand in awe
You step inside my heart, and I am amazed
I love to hear You say
Who I am is quite enough
You make me worthy of love and beautiful
Bethany Dillon "Beautiful"
I think these verses are every girl's heart cry, at least sometime in their lives. We just want to feel beautiful, loved, appreciated for who we are, yet there is so much pressure to hide our true self. Makeup to cover up the flaws, clothes to reveal the body...comparison round every corner. And we wonder why the age of *sexual activity has lowered rapidly in the last few years?? More people **cut themselves now than ever "known of" in the past decade. ***Anorexia & Bulima has risen so high...and due to what?! It breaks my heart that society finds it "acceptable" for these things to go on, yet there will be huge political debates, family issues and social disputes about the very same issues. The things that are tearing todays generation apart, yet nowdays you are labelled "frigid" if you haven't been sexually active by 14-17.
Why must there be so much comparison? The media has urged the issue to the forefront - magazines, tv shows, movies, photoshopped images that make perfection and trying to attain that perfect body/face look like the ONLY ideal. The only way you can be sucessful - wear a mini skirt to impress the boss. There are perfectly qualified, beautiful women that exploit their own beauty without even considering it unusual. What children wear is an even more amazing "accepted" thing in todays society. People are no longer shocked to see a 5 year old walking around wearing a halter neck, mini skirt, high boots & makeup. "She wants to be just like mummy" is the popular phrase when faced with the image the child portrays. It may sound innocent, but the truth is far from it.
What a long way we have come from the days of ankle length dresses & overcoats! Change of the times it may be, but morally uplifting - certainly not.
My heart sometimes fills with the cry in the first chorus, yet I hold onto the promise in the second chorus - Jesus sees me as beautiful, He makes me feel worthy of love. Try however else you want to conform, stand out or make your own beauty guidelines, but you'll be hard pressed to find unconditional love and acceptance that goes past the shallow beauty and into your very soul. He created you - does not the creator have more pride, joy and love in his creation than anyone else ever could?
I just wanted to get this down...some thoughts for food, if you want to eat.
Before I go, just an exert from an article...
Common sense bears this out: in the last twenty-five years we have been inundated with sex education courses in schools, and the media has bombarded us with sex. Yet during this same period of time we have witnessed an unprecedented escalation of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and abortions. Even if the former is not a cause of the latter, surely the former has not prevented the latter.
Clearly, the problem is not one of lack of information. The problem is the eradication of any framework of values in which to make decisions about sex. This is the real issue which the sex educators refuse to address.
Indeed, this is the major shortcoming of most sex education programs today. They treat children as animals, divorcing sexuality from the rest of personality. We simply throw up our hands and say, “kids will be kids”. But when it comes to other behaviours, we don’t give in so easily. We don’t say, “Well, kids will smoke cigarettes, whether we like it or not, so let’s teach them how to smoke safely.”
We need to remind our sexperts that sex education has to do with how boys and girls treat each other, or, rather, should treat each other and themselves. Sex education is therefore about character and the formation of character. A sex education course in which issues of right and wrong do not occupy center stage is evasive and irresponsible. Unfortunately, that is far too often the way we deal with sex ed in Australia. And that is just not good enough.
Bill Muehlenberg
*The majority of young people in Years 10 and 12 are sexually active in some way and this has increased over the last decade. The types of sexual activity reported include deep kissing (80%); genital touching (or being touched) (67%); and giving or receiving oral sex (45.5%). Vaginal intercourse was reported by approx-imately 25% of students in Year 10 and just over half of those in Year 12.
**Cutting:
-A national (UK) survey of children and adolescents carried out in the community found that 5% of boys and 8% of girls aged 13-15 said that they had, at some time, tried to harm, hurt or kill themselves.
A study carried out in schools found that 11% of girls and 3% of boys aged 15 and 16 anonymously reported they had harmed themselves in the previous year.
***From the Academy of Eating Disorders:
· Between 0.3-1 percent of young women have anorexia nervosa, which makes anorexia as common as autism
· Around 1-3 percent of young women have bulimia nervosa
· Around 3 percent of the population has binge eating disorder
· Many more suffer from some, but not all, of the symptoms of anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Between 4 percent and 20 percent of young women practice unhealthy patterns of dieting, purging, and binge-eating.
Hope you get to read some...kind of long with statistics, but they interested me.
I want to be beautiful
I was so unique
Now I feel skin deep
I count on the make-up to cover it all
Crying myself to sleep cause I
cannot keep their attention
I thought I could be strong
But it's killing me
Does someone hear my cry?
I'm dying for new life
[Chorus]
I want to be beautiful
Make you stand in awe
Look inside my heart,
and be amazed
I want to hear you say
Who I am is quite enough
Just want to be worthy of love
And beautiful
Sometimes I wish I was someone other than me
Fighting to make the mirror happy
Trying to find whatever is missing
Won't you help me back to glory
[Chorus]
You make me beautiful
You make me stand in awe
You step inside my heart, and I am amazed
I love to hear You say
Who I am is quite enough
You make me worthy of love and beautiful
Bethany Dillon "Beautiful"
I think these verses are every girl's heart cry, at least sometime in their lives. We just want to feel beautiful, loved, appreciated for who we are, yet there is so much pressure to hide our true self. Makeup to cover up the flaws, clothes to reveal the body...comparison round every corner. And we wonder why the age of *sexual activity has lowered rapidly in the last few years?? More people **cut themselves now than ever "known of" in the past decade. ***Anorexia & Bulima has risen so high...and due to what?! It breaks my heart that society finds it "acceptable" for these things to go on, yet there will be huge political debates, family issues and social disputes about the very same issues. The things that are tearing todays generation apart, yet nowdays you are labelled "frigid" if you haven't been sexually active by 14-17.
Why must there be so much comparison? The media has urged the issue to the forefront - magazines, tv shows, movies, photoshopped images that make perfection and trying to attain that perfect body/face look like the ONLY ideal. The only way you can be sucessful - wear a mini skirt to impress the boss. There are perfectly qualified, beautiful women that exploit their own beauty without even considering it unusual. What children wear is an even more amazing "accepted" thing in todays society. People are no longer shocked to see a 5 year old walking around wearing a halter neck, mini skirt, high boots & makeup. "She wants to be just like mummy" is the popular phrase when faced with the image the child portrays. It may sound innocent, but the truth is far from it.
What a long way we have come from the days of ankle length dresses & overcoats! Change of the times it may be, but morally uplifting - certainly not.
My heart sometimes fills with the cry in the first chorus, yet I hold onto the promise in the second chorus - Jesus sees me as beautiful, He makes me feel worthy of love. Try however else you want to conform, stand out or make your own beauty guidelines, but you'll be hard pressed to find unconditional love and acceptance that goes past the shallow beauty and into your very soul. He created you - does not the creator have more pride, joy and love in his creation than anyone else ever could?
I just wanted to get this down...some thoughts for food, if you want to eat.
Before I go, just an exert from an article...
Common sense bears this out: in the last twenty-five years we have been inundated with sex education courses in schools, and the media has bombarded us with sex. Yet during this same period of time we have witnessed an unprecedented escalation of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and abortions. Even if the former is not a cause of the latter, surely the former has not prevented the latter.
Clearly, the problem is not one of lack of information. The problem is the eradication of any framework of values in which to make decisions about sex. This is the real issue which the sex educators refuse to address.
Indeed, this is the major shortcoming of most sex education programs today. They treat children as animals, divorcing sexuality from the rest of personality. We simply throw up our hands and say, “kids will be kids”. But when it comes to other behaviours, we don’t give in so easily. We don’t say, “Well, kids will smoke cigarettes, whether we like it or not, so let’s teach them how to smoke safely.”
We need to remind our sexperts that sex education has to do with how boys and girls treat each other, or, rather, should treat each other and themselves. Sex education is therefore about character and the formation of character. A sex education course in which issues of right and wrong do not occupy center stage is evasive and irresponsible. Unfortunately, that is far too often the way we deal with sex ed in Australia. And that is just not good enough.
Bill Muehlenberg
*The majority of young people in Years 10 and 12 are sexually active in some way and this has increased over the last decade. The types of sexual activity reported include deep kissing (80%); genital touching (or being touched) (67%); and giving or receiving oral sex (45.5%). Vaginal intercourse was reported by approx-imately 25% of students in Year 10 and just over half of those in Year 12.
**Cutting:
-A national (UK) survey of children and adolescents carried out in the community found that 5% of boys and 8% of girls aged 13-15 said that they had, at some time, tried to harm, hurt or kill themselves.
A study carried out in schools found that 11% of girls and 3% of boys aged 15 and 16 anonymously reported they had harmed themselves in the previous year.
***From the Academy of Eating Disorders:
· Between 0.3-1 percent of young women have anorexia nervosa, which makes anorexia as common as autism
· Around 1-3 percent of young women have bulimia nervosa
· Around 3 percent of the population has binge eating disorder
· Many more suffer from some, but not all, of the symptoms of anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Between 4 percent and 20 percent of young women practice unhealthy patterns of dieting, purging, and binge-eating.
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