Respecting Your Body

     We live in a world with ridiculous expectations for beauty. Once, I was watching this video on how people edit photos of models, and it probably took them 30 minutes. Making them taller, thinner, their eyes bigger, hair longer, skin shinier, etc. And that is what beauty is perceived to be. Super thin, tall, tanned skin, no wrinkles, perfect teeth, no scars, no facial acne, and large curves (but not too large). And it's not wrong to want to look pretty. There's nothing wrong with a little makeup, just as long as you're not wearing it because you think you're not beautiful without it. Girls who are pretty are pretty on the outside, while girls who are beautiful are pretty on the inside, and it shows through on the outside. But I am so tired of seeing or hearing about these girls who are starving themselves just to look pretty. 

     If you are starving yourself to please society, then who are you living for? I mean, when you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, whose body do you see? Probably yours. And who created that body? God. So who do you think you should be trying to please? The world is a very critical place. The world tells you, "You will never have a perfect body, you cannot be beautiful without being able to see your ribs through your skin, you cannot be beautiful without starving yourself, you cannot be beautiful without tons of makeup, you cannot be beautiful unless you have perfect skin, you cannot be perfect unless you are a model or are famous or follow all the social standards." That is the society we live in. But you know what God says about being pretty? Literally NOTHING. God doesn't care if you have a thousand zits on your face, a unibrow, or aren't a size 0. I mean, yes He wants you to take care of your body because it's the temple of God. And there's nothing wrong with makeup, or fixing your hair, or trying to eat a healthy diet in order to help you lose needed weight, or gain muscle, stay healthy, or even gain needed weight. In fact, in 1 Timothy 2:9, it says not only to dress modestly, but if you look right before that, it says that we should dress in respectable apparel. I mean, some days you just want to stay home in your sweatpants and fuzzy hoodie and watch movies and eat tons of chocolate. Nothing wrong with that (as long as that's not every day ;) ). But what this is saying is that when you go out in public, change out of your pj's and throw on a pair of pants, brush your hair, put on a shirt that doesn't look like it hasn't been washed in 100 years because of all the stains, and don't look like a zombie. Look respectable, but don't care so much about how you look that that becomes what your whole life becomes about. Life isn't about pleasing everyone else with your body, it's about pleasing God with your actions.