Women By Design

For a long time I struggled with being a girl.

I had an older brother and wanted to do everything he did. I played with G.I. Joes, Legos, Micro Machines, etc. I climbed trees, played t-ball, took karate instead of tap dancing, and would have joined the Boy Scouts if they'd let me.

Don't get me wrong, I did play with my fair share of girl's toys: mini-kitchens, Barbie, and Cabbage Patch Dolls. But I always played with the Ken doll and my Cabbage Patch Doll was a boy. Truth be told, my Nana tried to give me a girl doll and I told her I didn't want it.

My parents had their hands full to say the least.

Honestly, at that age, I don't know that it was any big deal, and I don't really remember what my motivations were or where my heart was. I think it really might have been as innocent as just wanting to be like my older brother, my only sibling. There's certainly nothing wrong with girls playing with Legos and Ken dolls!

But there was always a lurking uncomfortableness with femininity all the way into my college years. It wasn't until after college that I really started to see that God made me female for a reason, and that that isn't a bad thing. In fact, it's a special blessing bestowed upon about 50% of the world's population, and it comes with its own set of strengths and weaknesses, emotions and thought-processes, victories and downfalls.

In today's culture, it's really no wonder to me that so many girls have a distorted view of their femininity. Between the TV commercials, the billboards, and the magazine covers on the racks at the grocery store, women are objectified. To be "accepted" as a female, they must look and act a certain way. They have to be tall enough, skinny enough, blonde enough, high-cheek-boned enough. More often than not, women "falling short" of these qualifications are only declared confident and powerful--a woman's woman--when they flaunt their femininity. They shove it in everyone's face like their provocativeness is the only asset they've got. Little do they know, they're feeding the machine and further objectifying women as eye-candy for the masses.

There are exceptions. We should be exceptions. We older women should be teaching the younger women (girls) that despite what the world says, there's nothing wrong with being female and it's definitely not something they should be afraid of or despair over. God made women as women for a purpose. He considers us no less worthy, no less important than He does men. He's even given men and women unique characteristics, personalities, emotions, thought-processes, etc. that perfectly complement one another.

Let's learn what those are, embrace them, and live them out as females by God's design.