The past few months we've been reminded by the media of the struggles adolescent girls face concerning body image. Two popular roles models, Lindsey Lohan and Mary-Kate Olsen, became the latest casualties in the war on females and the body images our culture holds up before teenage girls as being normal.

While body image is not a girls only issue, as correctly report recently in a Newsweek cover story, it does effect girls in a way I can't relate. When my wife and I were recently discussing these issues I asked her if she would share her thoughts and struggles with you. After reading, I encourage you to sit down with your daughter, read it to her, and talk together about your own struggles with body image.

Fear and Wonder from Above   

“I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Psalm 139:14

I did not know this verse as a child, but I can remember literally chanting it to myself as I hit what should have been my body’s peak years during college. Peak? Well, yes, looking back, I suppose it was a perfectly adequate body at that point. Average build, average weight, above average health thanks to a routine meal-plan as well as 3-day-a-week aerobics classes… but I remember feeling nothing but disappointment and resign when I looked in the mirror. Certainly not the peak I had envisioned.

If you are a woman, you probably could stop reading right now, as the whole discussion of body image is not only nothing new in a woman’s world, but in fact a daily discussion that seems to be never-ending, even well into our 30s/40s/50s and beyond. In fact, we hear the same things every time we meet another woman in a grocery store, “Oh, I knew I should have put on some make-up before I came out, I always see someone I know.” And the requisite response, “Oh, I know what you mean, but don’t worry, you look fine.” Followed by a quick confirmation look in the rear-view mirror the moment you are back in the car.

Fear and Wonder - the Next Generation

At times I wonder if my daughter has these insecurities. As her mother, I see her as a healthy, active, five-year-old girl whose body and health I protectively watch over and nurture until the day she is able to do it herself. “No, sweetie, it’s not snack-time yet, let’s have lunch instead. How about a sandwich (whole grain bread) and some fruit? If you’re still hungry later, you may have some pretzels and fruit juice (100%, no added sugar).” As a special treat, we eat pizza and drink Sprite (no caffeine) on Friday nights. To me, she is absolutely beautiful—flawless complexion, great muscle tone, white teeth (maybe she’ll never drink colas or coffee?), shiny hair—all the signs of the wonderful creature God designed her to be. Some days, I just stare at her, amazed and grateful for God’s careful design… truly “fearfully and wonderfully made.”


But today I read an article in Newsweek about the younger and younger victims of anorexia, and I’m reminded that I clearly began holding my stomach in to look thinner (nothing my mother told me to do, just something I picked up on my own) when I was all of six years old, one year older than my daughter is now. I was already trading in the image God had for me with one I picked up elsewhere. And the ball was rolling. Teen magazines, MTV, movies, and cheerleading camps all worked together to reinforce my opinion that there was a perfect body to be attained, and I had not yet attained it. One day, I thought I was too fat (105 pounds?), the next day too flabby (in leotards and tights for ballet class), while my parents were convinced that I may be a borderline anorexic, so I ate a hamburger at bedtime to assure them I was not!

Why didn’t I instinctively know that I was “fearfully and wonderfully made”? Would I have believed it if I had heard God’s view of me during those teenage years of constant change and insecurity? I have no idea. All I know is that when I was in my early twenties, a roommate who had also struggled with her own body issues told me about Psalm 139:14 and how it had changed her life to know that God had made her body exactly the way it was—including what she had believed were flaws—and HE thought she was beautiful, and intended for her to take care of her body as a temple for Himself. Whoa, I thought. That’s amazing. My heart leapt, in fact, with the thought that there was a even a remote possibility that God would intentionally have made me the way that HE liked me to be, and it didn’t matter what the media or the mirror or even my own mind thought about it. So I started the chanting with her, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” To the mirror, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” To the media, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” To my own daughter, “(You are) fearfully and wonderfully made.”

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