How Do I Look: In Which I Think a lot More about Caitlyn Jenner

Last updated on: December 15, 2015 at 8:23 am by Anne Kennedy

How Do I Look: In Which I Think a lot More about Caitlyn Jenner 2015-12-15T08:23:38-04:00 Anne Kennedy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Caitlyn Jenner, that beacon of femininity and gorgeous lips, apologized just now (that is, I am seeing it for the first time this morning) for saying some things that offended various elements of the transgender community. I won’t lie. I have a small, close knit online community myself (not that those are the same thing) and we very much enjoyed the idea that the hardest part of being a woman is figuring out what to wear. If you’ve decided to be a woman, and why wouldn’t you want to, figuring out what to look like is right there at the top of the list. And, if you find yourself already a woman, by the accident of your birth, laboring on, trying to sort out what to wear is a problem that is going to follow you always.

Ms. Jenner (I guess I’m just going to go with it) doesn’t want to look like a man in a dress, but also doesn’t want women who look like men in dresses and like it that way, or men who look like women in dresses but only because they can’t afford not to, to feel less than, or, beneath her in any way. They are all brothers and sisters. Although I’m pretty sure she just means sisters. They need to support one another and that’s what’s most important. And so you can see that the very most basic element of being a woman–cattily cutting other women down to size–is alive and well for Ms. Jenner and the trans community.

I have very mixed feelings about this whole dust up. First of all, l say, live and let live. If Ms. Jenner wants to be a woman rather than a man, good luck to her. She must take it up with God. I can only point out that God created, in the very beginning, male and female. The two genders are made in his image but they don’t, in isolation, reflect his glory. It is their relationship to one another, in marriage, that shows forth something particular about God. A single, unmarried person reflects the glory of God by reflecting Christ and his desperate and perfect sacrifice. Similarly, two people who come together under the bonds of marriage articulate something about the trinitarian nature of God. When you try to re-gender, or remarry, or in any way mess with the picture, you are saying something profound about what you think about God, and so he will have something serious to say to you. Still, my duty is to pray, and wonder about it all from a far distance.

Second, I do think, and I say this as a woman whose body has been fairly broken by the carrying of six infants, by laboring to bring them forth into the world, by sustaining them for a long while after they are born, and now by wandering around picking up after them and managing the physical nature of their lives, that figuring out what to wear is kind of a beast. The fashions of the age don’t want me to look matronly and feminine. They want me to look like a prepubescent boy. If I walk into the Gap and look for a pair of jeans, (and isn’t it shocking, my tyrannical husband allows me to wear trousers) whatever I’m going to find is going to cut in at the ankle so that my ample middle (which will never be flat because of, as I said before, all the children) is always well in view. I’ve been liberated more recently by following some high powered executive’s advice to wear a uniform. Her uniform is gorgeous. She wears it every day. My uniform is gray. I live in Binghamton. Every day, a gray sweater, gray trousers, boots, hoop earrings. So I don’t think about it any more. Except when I can’t wear my uniform, and then, just like Caitlyn Jenner, I take everything out of my closet and fling it down and weep and then call in my crack team of fashion specialists to tell me what they think. “You look fine, mom” they say, “gray totally goes with whatever that purple thing is.”

Third, what a person looks like, in a single moment, both does matter and does not matter at all. I know this because what I struggle with about my appearance is lived out more obviously in what I feel about my house. And this, incidentally, is why Ms. Jenner is wrong. The hardest part about being a woman is not figuring out what to wear, it’s trying to keep your wretched house clean. Sure, you can give birth and be sad about what happens to your lithe, young body, and then you can even sorrow over what to put on every morning. But after you stuff yourself into your clothes, you won’t have a lot of time think about yourself all day. What you’ll be doing is going around sweeping the floor four or five hundred times, picking up spoiled drawings of Darth Maul, removing puppy waste from every corner of your gracious living room, getting luncheon onto the table and then negotiating the horror of who is going to clean it up, and in every way trying to beat back the chaos of stuff that threatens to overwhelm your entire existence. Whether you are wearing a ball grown or a pair of overalls doesn’t really change the essential nature of the work you face every day. Even if you are very rich and can afford a maid, the sign of your gender is whether and how much you clean before that person gets there.

Solomon spent a really long time building the temple. And it was full of gold and cedar and beauty. And it was dedicated and the Spirit of God descended in power and great glory and it was full of his presence. God made his dwelling there and the people could come into that gracious court, that perfection of beauty, and be with him. But very soon, right away in fact, the people fell into sin. Solomon himself wandered away into the imaginations of his own heart, into idolatry and the worshiping of all his wives’ gods. And slowly the beauty of the temple was pilfered away. The gold was scraped off. Dust covered over piles of junk in back rooms. The book of the law was shoved somewhere and not bothered about for several hundred years. Like a body that ages, and decays, and is broken by wrong choices, bad living, sin, the temple reflected what necessarily happens to the human body. But God doesn’t get old, and ugly, and broken. Why would he let his temple, his dwelling place, fall into ruin?

Well, first to reflect what would happen to his Son. The Son is the place where we perfectly meet God. He comes here to be with us and we come into his gracious presence to know him. And his body was subject to the brutality and horror of death. But, and this is where all the threads tie up together, I think the temple falling into ruin, but it still being a place you could go to meet God, was a foretaste of the Christian experience of the body. God makes his home in you through the Holy Spirit. The glory and the beauty of his presence lives in your mind and your soul, and, remarkably, your body. But look at you. You’re a wreck to look at. You wake up out of bed and you’re older every moment. And you creak when you stand up. And your lips have not been shoved full of collegian. And your hair, oh ye gods, your hair. You should have repainted your nails three weeks ago and just when you managed to put something on, someone carefully applied jam to you. Your body is every moment going down to death, by degrees. Even if you try to change your gender, or your earrings, or your very sense of yourself, there’s nothing you can do to forestall the inevitable. And yet, if you are a Christian, God himself lives in you. And he is not changing or dying. But look at the wreck of your mind that he has to constantly be cleaning up. Look at all the rubble in your heart that he is constantly mending. As soon as you learn something or get something sorted out, immediately there is something just as bad in another corner.

In this way, it doesn’t really matter what you look like. It’s your inside that matters. But also, it really matters what you look like, because God made you. The healing balm for anyone who struggles with the brokenness of the flesh, of not being what you see in your mind’s eye, is to have God himself move in and make himself comfortable. The man, the woman, the confused, the ruined, can be a place where he lives. And when he lives in you, the purpose of your body is restored. Other people can shake your hand, or look in your eyes, or listen to you chatter, and can see glimpses, through the brokenness, of God himself. The relating of one person to another, through the body itself, can be mediated by God who is right there, reflecting his glory into the world. So just put on something. It’ll be fine. You look great.

culture watch

Work and the Christian

Previous Post

December 14, 2015

Jesus for the Man trying to be a Little Girl

Next Post

December 16, 2015 Wheaton Does the Right Thing

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category books Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Children in Conversation culture watch Daily Devotions Demotivations with Anne faith alone for the grandparents GAFCON In conversation with children In the News Kitchen Notes Lambeth Learning Notes Life Going On Men are Human Notes from Home Pictures Reading the Bible Saturday Links Sermons Signs of the Apocalypse The Bad Word Association The Prayer of Jonah Travel Notes Uncategorized Witless Wednesdays Work and the Christian

Select a Month June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

To whom did Jesus say, "Today you will be with me in paradise"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The repentant thief Pilate Nicodemus Peter

Books by This Author Books by Anne Kennedy

See All Titles »