Beauty

“Modest is hottest,” is one of those phrases that gets thrown around in Christian circles, especially in ministries for high school and college-aged women. I hate it. I find it grating, not only because it is cliché and cringy, but more importantly because being “hot” isn’t the goal, it certainly isn’t the reason we aim for modesty. Modesty is a virtue that governs our conversations, media consumption, and dress, whereas looking “hot” is simply about appearance. Regarding appearance, being hot is a synonym for being sexy, neither of which achieve the true standard of a woman of God, which is beauty.

Sexiness is fairly easy to recognize and understand. It typically involves conforming to the ever-changing beauty standards of the world. It involves dressing a certain way, emphasizing certain bodily features, in order to draw the gaze of the other and incite a certain reaction. It reduces the person to a mere object to be enjoyed by the other and in the process demeans them both.

Beauty is a bit more challenging to articulate. God created woman to manifest beauty, to radiate His beauty to the world, but our concept of beauty has been warped and redefined by the world so many times that we’ve lost sight of what is at the heart of it. The statement that beauty is in the eye of the beholder is only true if the beholder is God. There is an objective, unchanging standard of beauty. It is a standard that women were created to uphold.

While sexiness is about drawing attention to the self; beauty is about glorifying God. This is accomplished in a myriad of ways. The natural world glorifies God to so great a degree that the First Vatican Council declared it as dogma, an unerring Church teaching, that knowledge of the existence of God could be reached through contemplation of the natural world alone.

“The Heavens declare the glory of God.” The stars shine with His radiance, the oceans hint at His vastness and depth, the delicacy and uniqueness of each snowflake tells forth His infinite creativity, all of creation proclaims His goodness, and man is the pinnacle of His creation. Woman and Man together manifest God’s love, His relational, personal nature and as men show forth God’s strength, women radiate His beauty.

This does not mean that women are just pretty things to be seen any more than it means that men are simply handy tools to be used. Such a reduction is a lie concocted by the evil one to keep us from embracing the truth. If when I declare that women uniquely and most perfectly manifest God’s beauty, what others hear is a “woman’s value is only in her appearance,” the truth that woman is beautiful is stripped of its power, rejected in the name of women being more than just good looks.

But saying that a woman manifests the beauty of the living God does not reduce her to simply a visually pleasing object, such reduction is in fact exactly what is achieved by aiming for sexiness. Beauty enlarges, it does not reduce. In addition to being beautiful woman share in God’s creativity, reflect His intelligence, make manifest in the world His ability to create life outside Himself, and share in His ability to freely choose the good.

A woman’s beauty is not about conforming to the changing standards of the world, rather each woman is beautiful, and grows in beauty as she embraces who she was made to be. God created each of intentionally, intricately, precisely. His design is flawless, He is an artist, and we are His masterpieces.