21st Century Princess (Chapter One)

2010-04-12T19:36:00.001+01:00

I am a princess. It’s taken me 31 years, 3 previous long-term boyfriends, one marriage of 2 and a half years, (still going strong and talking to one another I hasten to add), countless careers and jobs, plenty of mistakes and some serious workings of God in my life, for me to reach the first conclusion. Ironically I don’t recall thinking I was a princess when I was younger, or even having a wish to be one. In fact when I first met my husband and he was very entrenched in what I at the time felt was an overly romantic and nonsensical view of women being princesses, thus him being my prince…, I was rather insulted and at times outraged. I didn’t prance around in unsuitable and garishly coloured clothes and in no shape, way, or form did I need saving and certainly not by a man! However, when I now say that I am a princess, my view of this is not of one suitably dolled up to the nines waiting for a saviour, as I am weak and unable to save myself, but of a powerful woman, as created by God, safe in the knowledge of my heritage to the King. A King who incidentally did all the saving through His son Jesus! As I start to truly understand my strength in the one who created me, I see the stark contrast between that and the role models of women we have in our society today, which are designed to undermine and destroy the beauty that God intended and intends for us to be.

First, let’s take the image of my identity in God. The fairytale view would suggest, as all good fairytales do, that I would look whimsically beautiful, a waist slimmed down to a stick, flowing hair and of course the trademark impossibly huge, brightly coloured dress. Now its not that I have hatred of large dresses, in fact in the correct time, or place they are, I consider, a must. On my wedding day I fulfilled this stereotype. As I was getting hitched to an American I needed the dress to be overly large so that it would not be mistaken for a simple prom dress, as that would never do. Hence the 10ft train, the netting that went on for miles and the pretty sparkly things all over. (And I thank the Lord daily that these things are created, but also that you can buy them second hand, as my practical side of paying the same amount as the cost of a small car for a dress, simply was not going to work. My Scottish Nana was indeed proud!) However, back to the dress; on a daily basis it’s just not practical. For example, I would not be able to drive the car we could then afford, because I got the dress second-hand. In fact going to the toilet was a chore in itself. So in my image of myself as God’s princess, I tend to view myself as in more of trousers with classy top. I am not a label person, but it is enough to know that the clothes are well made from fabulous material that sits well and of course, another of my gold rules, never needs ironing. I haven’t been airbrushed in the image, so I am still so white I reflect the sun, my waist most definitely is in view and does not disappear to the size of nothing, my hair still has the wave on one side, with the other side going completely straight and my teeth are slightly crocked on the right-hand side. I don’t have the Hollywood smile; for your information I am British! Although these may seem small details, they are what I would consider essential points, as sadly the image of beauty in this day and age is severely warped. The pictures that we see on a daily basis, our role models for our young girls, are unnatural thin and unobtainable “perfection”. I am saddened by the results of a recent study carried out for a Channel Four programme in the UK. This was trying to ascertain what girls aged 6, 9 and 12 viewed as beautiful. The girls were shown 7 pictures of themselves with less weight and more weight added to the photos, three times the sizes either way of their natural size. Even with the girls aged 6 years old, over half of them preferred the skeletal photos, up to three times skinnier then they actually were. Many were unable to correctly judge their correct size and considered themselves to be larger then they actually were and the majority viewed beauty as being skeletal thin. I could talk solely on this, about the fact that girls as young as 6 think beauty is bones poking through the skin and images of malnourishment, but this is just part of the campaign to destroy self confidence and beauty in the female form.

Secondly, you will note that in my image I am dressed. Now I am not a prude; far from it. As soon as the sun comes out I rush to grab my summer clothes - and of course my sun screen. I think we all accept that skin cancer is not glamorous, although here again many women are risking their lives to have the perfect tan, in order to reach the image of “perfection”. But anyway, as I said, I am wearing clothes. I have no issue with appropriate clothing for the situation, weather permitting, but having worked with women across generations, cultures and issues, I feel another attack on the beauty of women is the underlying myth that in order to gain “power” in our society we need to dress in as little as possible, and act sexually aggressive, as this is the new form of “girl power”. Now when I was 18 - and I can remember that far back, thank you - the Spice Girls were fresh on the music scene and the term “girl power” was coined. At the time it passed me by, but an entire generation was led to believe that as women, it was our right to dress however we wanted. Unsurprisingly this was always very provocative; dance in much the same way, shout a lot and suddenly, hey presto, gender equality was achieved. Today the trend is continued. Whether clothes are worn at all, we now have the right to gyrate and be sex objects and of course this is ensuring fulfilment of the United Nations Millennium Development no end.(Target 3: Promote gender equality and empower women.) Well, the fact that we have objectified ourselves and we see the way to gain power is through our bodies, rather then by treating ourselves with respect and using the brains and talents given by God to achieve our goals, is frightening. Now I have not always got this right and again I come back to 31 years on this earth, with plenty of mistakes. But what I see in society as a whole is gender inequality across the board. It is safer for males to let us have this type of “girl power”, as essentially it does not threaten their status in society, and we are easily dismissed. You still have unequal pay, unequal work positions, with more men in management and longer term jobs, with women picking up the slack of the lower paid, unsecured jobs. And that’s for the fortunate among us who are able to have jobs! Violence against women is still acceptable and even the norm in many walks of life and the sex trade is booming, as women and young girls are traded as commodities. The question that arises through all of this is, where is the image of beauty that God intended for us? Where are the strong role models for girls to follow? What has happened to wanting to grow up to be a lawyer? Now so many of our girls aspire to be pop stars, glamour models, WAGs, and if they really make it big, all three of these, then they will be able to undress at any given moment and have their story covered in the paper or celebrity magazine.

This leads me to the role of women in the church. How far does the church see women as princesses and how are we fighting to protect this beauty? I understand that the church is full of humans, so we have the same failings as everyone else, but it seems that we are still struggling to allow women to take up any role or position of authority within the church, unless it is in the form of a wife or mother. Granted this is an improvement on the no clothes, sex craved image the world is forwarding and these roles are precious things, so I am not going to knock these attributes. However, the problem arises in this scenario when a woman in delegated to only these things. In my image as a princess, I have certain rights, roles and responsibilities. I am multi-layered and believe that God has given me talents to achieve the tasks that He has set out for me. I do believe that God chose my husband; it was an odd choice and I am looking forward to having a full and frank discussion face to face with my maker on this choice one day, but for the time being plenty of full and frank discussion will ensue between me and my husband. However, in my relationship with my husband we are seeking to foster a relationship of support, encouragement, trust and most importantly, equality. Now the traditionalist who sees our marriage would say that it’s ‘unconventional’. The view of the man as head of the house would assume that he has the ultimate power within the relationship. However, I believe that as we are both created beings, we are on an equal footing and that the one who has the ultimate say within our marriage is in fact God. Now hearing what God is saying in said equal footing marriage, is an interesting process! This does not mean we don’t have different roles within the marriage. We share the cleaning, neither of us believes in ironing, and cooking is whoever can be bothered, or is at home, which at this stage of our married life is usually George. I am not in competition with my husband; we both have different talents which are of equal importance. Traditionalists would say that the women’s role in the church and the home is that of the one who undertakes the ‘homemaker tasks’. Many churches will still not even allow women to undertake any part in the service, or if they are allowed, they are usually confined to the children’s work.

God clearly trusted in women’s abilities as the Bible is littered with strong and courageous women of God. There are plenty of verses that many like to take out of context in order to proscribe women less important roles than men, and I do not want to go through all of these in this introduction. I am sure those last few comments will illicit enough debate in itself. However, one thing I think we need to agree on, whether you concur or not with my theological stance on us all being equal, created beings, and that is that the church as a whole is failing. We are failing to provide enough strong women role models to counter the perverse roles models that are prevalent within our societies. We need to do more. Wouldn’t it be great if we stopped seeing ourselves as competing against one another, but rather use our gifts and talents to promote the beauty of the divine within us? This starts with the process of knowing who we are in God. Now as this princess I am God’s child. On this earth, I am women. I can delight in the beauty of what would be considered ‘ordinariness’, safe and secure in the knowledge I am loved and do not need to seek approval from man. Therefore, from this position today, I am looking to make a stand for womankind. I don’t need to shout to make my message heard, I don’t need to strip, or pretend that God has not given me a brain. The challenge for us a collective whole is to raise up strong women of God, positive role models for our girls, ones that will be the peace keepers, the leaders, the doctors, the financiers, the teachers, as well as being wives and mothers. The men of the church also need to rise up and become the strong supporters and encouragers of women. It was always meant to be an equal relationship of support and companionship. Now all this does sound like a fairytale, talking of equality and people working together to achieve God’s kingdom on this earth. But I think if God was confident enough to trust that Jesus was enough to save the entire world, we can be confident of who we are in Him. Once we achieve this we can then stand strong, be a beacon to the world, providing the desperately needed guidance to stop our girls staving themselves, or giving their dignity away for false power. Men and women of the church arise, hear me say – I AM WOMAN!!!!

I am woman, woman am I.

21st Century Princess (Chapter One)