Purity Culture, Lena Dunham, and Me

Last updated on: September 9, 2016 at 8:19 am by Anne Kennedy

Purity Culture, Lena Dunham, and Me 2016-09-09T08:19:07-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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I tried to suffer through a thirty second Google search of Purity Culture yesterday, after so publicly admitting that I don’t really know what it is. I read a little bit, and then wandered away into the imaginations of my own heart. Christians, as I might have sometimes said, are so weird. And I think we often fall into the foolish pit of thinking that we can fool God–either from the scary right, or the angry left. When really we are only confusing and fooling ourselves.

The trouble is, God doesn’t say, “Wear This,” any more than he says, “Move to Alaska,” or Dubai (seriously, Bertie’s Guide to Live and Mothers was so funny, finished it last night, going to listen to it again). In the absence of God’s clear, direct, and personal word about what to wear and what to do, instead of reading the bible and being transformed by the renewing of the mind–which is what is demanded of the Christian, to read and think and reason–evangelicals conflated the apparent whispering of the Holy Spirit with the feelings of the tummy and then went in and made some laws to spare the individual from having to think. Well, not all evangelicals did this, but I think the rise of so much heresy so quickly can be traced back to ordinary people in the pew not being taught how to reason through the scripture. When you don’t know how to read the bible you get Ms. Held-Evans on one side, and Purity Culture on the other. In between you have the great wide tepid pool of people looking for signs and feelings to know which way to go.

What should I wear? When should I go to the store? Who should I marry? How am I feeling right now? All of this is jumbled together in a confused morass. Just give me ten “biblical” principles and then promise me that the Holy Spirit is cool with my feelings.

Into this toxic brew introduce the ordinary female’s body issues and you might understand why nobody feels comfortable in their own skin. Too fat, too thin, too covered up, not covered up enough, too hairy, not hairy enough, wrong hair, no jeans that fit, shouldn’t wear jeans, should only wear long skirts. If you’re just an ordinary Christian woman, you’re probably going to spend some time in front of your closet hating everything you have to wear and your own size and perimeters to boot. And the boots, you’re going to be mad that you don’t have all the boots.

The Lena Dunham way to deal is to demand that you unapologetically accept yourself as you are, admitting no dissatisfaction whatsoever, taking dumpy photos in granny underpants and demanding to be called “sexy”. Look at me! I’m beautiful! Except that the taunting rebellious gaze and slouched figure prevents the eye from seeing beauty. She might be very pretty, but who would know. Certainly she herself doesn’t. When she sat next to Odell Beckham in her tuxedo, angry that he wouldn’t notice her, she should have paused and wondered to herself why she wanted his attention if she is so apparently beautiful without having to try. Shouldn’t her own sense of her own beauty been satisfying enough? Why the need for approval from others? Apparently she doesn’t know that if you put on something ugly, you probably won’t feel happy while you’re wearing it. And forcing other people to say that it’s pretty, when clearly it’s not, isn’t going to make the whole experience better.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the Let’s Cover Up and Say It Doesn’t Matter. Aesthetically I don’t see how this is any different from a woman wearing a tuxedo. In this scenario, the beauty, I guess, is supposed to so shine from the inside that all humanity will be awed. Total self acceptance isn’t in view, it’s just that we’re choosing not to admit that there is a body anywhere. Two spirits will unite, and a baby will appear, when the couple holds hands at their wedding. The woman’s body has to clunk along in boxy clothes, and her love of Jesus will radiate forth.

As someone whose bread and butter is self hatred–I look at myself in the mirror every morning and Self Talk, yesterday I called myself a Yeti, which must be true given my astounding height of 5 feet and the vast and hideous 107 lbs that the scale announced this morning, because it doesn’t read 103 I cannot possibly be happy, and to mitigate against my own unhappiness, I will later console myself with a large breakfast muffin, but I will hate myself while eating it, which will somehow pay back the gods of the universe who are conspiring to make me fat, see, it’s not my fault, except that it is–I propose a middle way. Couldn’t Christians admit that the body is a thing and that it’s ok to care about aesthetics? Couldn’t we admit that we are not purely spiritual and that sometimes men want their wives to look beautiful? Not in a lusty pornographic way but in an It’s ok to wear a pretty dress and gorgeous shoes way. And rather than making laws about the lengths of skirts and the cut of the blouse, maybe we could all stand in front of our own mirrors and reason it out. What is charitable? What is beautiful? What makes me confident enough about how I look to go out into the world so that I’m not hating myself, nor indeed even thinking about myself at all?

Wouldn’t it perhaps be ok if we didn’t all land at the same point? What one might decide to wear might not be what another felt comfortable with. The weaker brother might agree not to be tyrannical, and the stronger sister might agree to charity and kindness. She might decide not to wear yoga pants to bible study, out of kindness. But he might agree to look elsewhere, understanding that it’s not sexy because all of her children threw up on it that morning.

And I might try to grope towards a middle way between self acceptance and self hatred. It’s ok that I don’t look perfect, whatever that even is, and it’s ok to try to look beautiful, whatever that might be. Perhaps in charity, faithfulness, humility, and brokenness, the love of Jesus might actually shine through, and there might also be a really nicely shaped brow.

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