Participants:
Series Code: IC
Program Code: IC180105A
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00:01 The following program discusses sensitive issues
00:03 related to sexuality. 00:05 Parents are cautioned 00:06 this presentation may be too candid 00:08 for younger audiences. 00:30 Welcome to Intimate Clarity. 00:31 I'm Jason Bradley and with me is Jennifer Jill Schwirzer. 00:35 She is a licensed professional counselor, 00:37 and today we're going to be discussing a sensitive topic 00:40 but it's a conversation we need to have. 00:42 Jen, what is body shaming? No, body shaming. 00:46 Well, it's a little bit of a nuanced issue. 00:47 Okay. 00:49 We can see, 00:50 a certain amount of body shame is actually normal, like, 00:53 people don't walk around naked. 00:55 In fact, that's considered a pathology. 00:57 It's called exhibitionistic disorder 01:00 and it's in the diagnostic manual. 01:01 So if we were just to run around naked 01:03 that would be an illness, really. 01:05 Yeah, I am pretty sure you get arrested for that too. 01:07 Yeah, I'm pretty sure too. 01:08 But it would be a problem on multiple levels. 01:11 But let's go scroll back to Eden 01:13 and kind of get our biblical bearings 01:15 on this body shame issue. 01:17 There was a time when humanity didn't feel 01:20 any sense of body shame at all, 01:22 and I would argue they didn't feel 01:23 any sense of self-consciousness at all. 01:26 And we see that before the fall, 01:28 they were naked and not ashamed. 01:31 Okay. 01:32 Then the fall comes into human experience 01:34 and what's the first thing they do? 01:35 They run and hide. While they... 01:37 Before they even ran and hid, they created fig leaf garments, 01:42 so I imagine like they made kind of like bathing suits 01:44 out of fig leaves, you know, to try to cover themselves 01:47 and particularly cover themselves 01:49 in the private areas. 01:51 So we see like body shame come into human experience 01:54 at that point and like I said before, 01:56 a certain amount of that is really normal for human beings. 02:01 But what the enemy does 02:03 is he tries to take advantage of that body shame 02:06 and take it way beyond where it needs to go. 02:08 How so? 02:10 Well, for instance, 02:11 the incredible self-consciousness 02:13 that we feel about how we look, 02:16 I think that's a big issue particularly for women 02:19 because there's more pressure on women to look 02:22 just so than I would argue than there is on men, 02:24 although it's there too. 02:26 Yeah, I'd agree with that. Yeah. 02:28 So let me give you some statistics here 02:31 that help illustrate this. 02:33 Seventy percent of women, 02:35 18 to 30 years old don't like the way they look. 02:39 Seventy percent? A vast majority of women. 02:42 Eighteen to thirty years old 02:44 which is the best looking you'll ever be, 18 to 30. 02:48 And they're still not happy 02:49 with how they look, you know, like their bodies. 02:50 That's a high percentage. That's a high percentage. 02:53 The same thing is true of men but not quite as high. 02:55 So 43% of men don't like the way they look. 02:57 Same age? Same age range, yes. 02:59 Okay. 03:00 Only 20% of men 03:03 and 11% of women are body positive, 03:06 so there's a little margin in there 03:07 that people are kind of neutral or apathetic. 03:10 But there's only 20% of men and 11% of women 03:12 that are actually happy with the way they look. 03:15 So let me give you some idea how that comes about, 03:18 and I think that part of it is just innate, you know, 03:20 in us to be ashamed now that we're fallen. 03:25 But I think the media and the world 03:29 really accentuates it through various means. 03:32 So let me give you an example of one of the ways. 03:35 A human G.I. Joe, if you were to take the G.I. Joe doll 03:38 and make it into a human being, 03:40 it would have a 44-inch chest and a 29-inch waist... 03:43 Twenty nine-inch waist? 03:45 Which is the rare man that has those measurements. 03:46 Yeah. That is so unreal. 03:49 'Cause the average man is basically 03:51 is a 39-inch chest and a 40-inch waist. 03:55 Okay. So it's just totally different. 03:57 But it gets even worse, okay? 03:58 So for women, a Barbie, 04:02 it's measurements would be 36-18-33. 04:08 If you've ever taken your measurements 04:09 as a woman, you know 04:11 that is like way off of what any normal woman 04:14 would be shaped like 04:15 and she would have a 9-inch inch neck. 04:19 So basically her neck would be nonexistent, 04:21 that's what you are saying. 04:22 Exactly, like the neck of an average woman 04:24 is about 15 inches and a Barbie would have... 04:26 I think mine, I have a really skinny neck, 04:29 but my neck is way bigger than 9 inches. 04:32 You know, I remember sitting on a... 04:33 I was putting on a shirt 04:35 and my husband was sitting on the bed 04:37 and the collar of the shirt kept falling down and I said, 04:41 "I should put something in the collar of the shirt 04:42 to make it stand up," and he said, 04:44 "How about a neck." 04:45 Because I have a skinny neck. 04:47 But a 9 inch neck is like almost 04:49 a non-existent neck like you said. 04:51 So that's what a Barbie would look like, 04:52 if it was a real person. 04:54 Obviously, we're putting an image 04:55 in front of our young girls of an ideal of female beauty 05:01 which is really not beautiful, 05:03 it's odd if you see it in human form. 05:05 It's highly unrealistic and I think that accentuates 05:09 what I'm calling body shame. 05:11 Yeah, and so the media uses body shame 05:14 to commercial advantage. 05:15 So let me flesh something out for you here. 05:17 Okay. 05:19 Basically a lot of women 05:21 are getting breast implants these days. 05:24 If you look at television from 20-25 years ago, 05:29 the women were overall much smaller 05:31 in that department, if I could say it that way. 05:33 Yeah. 05:34 But today you see a lot more of the ideal female body 05:38 being at large breasted. 05:39 Well, that's because right at the time 05:41 when breasts became fashionable, 05:43 they also became more available, 05:46 they became a commodity, so to speak. 05:49 So breast implants became safer, 05:53 they became more affordable for the average women, 05:55 and lo and behold the media starts to promote them 05:57 by promoting this really unrealistic ideal 06:01 or this ideal that isn't really ideal 06:03 for every body type, 06:04 and now every woman feels like they need that 06:07 or many women feel like they need that. 06:09 Not to mention the back problems 06:10 that are probably associated 06:12 with women getting breast implants. 06:13 That's right. 06:15 One in 26 women 06:16 or 4% of women get breast augmentation. 06:21 The breast implant industry makes over 06:23 a billion dollars a year. 06:25 So there's a huge commercial advantage. 06:28 A billion dollars? That's right. That's right. 06:30 A lot of money, a lot of money. 06:31 In fashion, there's a lot of money. 06:33 In media, in general, 06:36 if you look at the anchor women from 20-25 years ago, 06:40 they looked like normal women 06:41 but now they look like supermodels. 06:44 They're, you know, they're... 06:45 Everything, the way they dress, 06:46 very, very some of the provocatively dressed 06:50 because the ante is being upped. 06:53 You know, you also see that at a lot of conventions, 06:56 you know, how we are talking about 06:57 body shaming and all of that. 06:59 You see that in a lot of conventions, 07:00 you go to these big cable conventions 07:03 or whatever the convention may be 07:05 and people know that 07:07 there might be a lot of men there, 07:08 so they specifically position these ladies 07:13 to be dressed in something that's tight and provocative. 07:17 That's right. 07:18 And so you see that at these conventions 07:20 where decision makers are going to be, 07:22 they are trying to appeal to a man's sexual nature, 07:26 a perverted sexual nature. 07:29 Yeah, yeah. 07:30 I've heard that this thing that people put 07:33 on any kind of visuals at a booth 07:35 is a woman in a red dress because that will... 07:38 That's the most universally appealing visual 07:40 that will draw people to a given booth. 07:41 Wow. 07:43 So I haven't worn a red dress since then. 07:47 But another area where body shaming comes in 07:50 is in the area of thinness, an ideal of thinness 07:53 that is unrealistic 07:55 and doesn't fit every body type. 07:57 So what we have in the fashion industry 07:59 is a lot of women 08:01 that are extremely, extremely thin 08:03 and the reason that they choose these thin models 08:06 is because you can focus on the clothes more. 08:09 They say that the model is almost like a coat hanger. 08:11 She really has no shape of her own. 08:13 So the clothes just fall on her body 08:15 and you focus on the clothes 08:17 instead of the body that's under the clothes. 08:19 So there's this unrealistic ideal of thinness 08:21 and I went through that as a young person, 08:23 I developed anorexia and it was pretty severe. 08:28 I got to the point, 08:29 at one point where I weighed 85 pounds 08:32 which is basically like 20 pounds off me now. 08:36 So I was extremely thin, 08:38 really, kind of on death's doorstep. 08:40 But by the grace of God, I came out of that. 08:42 One of the things that helped me through it 08:45 was that I started to idealize the body as... 08:50 I started to see the body as something for service. 08:55 So I idealized health rather than beauty. 08:58 So my body was not an ornament to sit on a shelf. 09:02 It was an instrument 09:04 to be used in service to others. 09:05 I like that. 09:07 And then, I started to think, "Well, I want to be strong. 09:09 I don't want to be skinny. 09:10 I want to be strong so that I can serve more people 09:12 in more ways," and that really helped me cycle out of that. 09:15 Yeah. 09:16 Wow, well, praise the Lord for that deliverance. 09:18 I'm glad I got through. Yeah. 09:22 I don't know the numbers of people 09:25 that are struggling with that. 09:27 It would be interesting one day to look at the statistics 09:31 of people that are dealing with anorexia. 09:34 Anorexia and bulimia are the two most 09:36 common eating disorders and they're both characterized 09:38 by an undue amount of importance 09:41 being placed on thinness. 09:44 Anorexia is more starving 09:47 your body down to a very low weight. 09:50 Bulimia involves bingeing and purging. 09:52 But both of them, in both of them 09:54 the individual is very focused on body weight. 09:57 And I think that that's a direct result 09:59 of the media and how it holds up 10:01 this unrealistic ideal of thinness 10:03 because we don't see anorexia or bulimia in populations 10:09 that don't have as much fashion influence. 10:12 And anywhere in the world 10:14 where there's been any kind of starvation 10:16 or hunger, you don't see any kind of eating disorders 10:18 because if you've got food 10:19 you're going to eat it, you know? 10:21 So it's pretty much a phenomena that effects the Western world. 10:24 Yeah, that sounds like me. 10:25 If I have food, I'm gonna eat it. 10:27 You are gonna eat it. Yeah. 10:28 I love food. Yeah, me too. 10:29 I don't know what got into me but it was just so important 10:32 to me during that period to be just stick thin 10:34 that I didn't really think about eating anymore. 10:38 It was really crazy. 10:39 You know, it's amazing how sometimes you can see 10:44 that people will allow culture to shape their values 10:46 as opposed to the Bible, the Word of God, 10:50 and when we end up doing that, 10:51 we end up in a world of trouble 10:53 because one thing that's constant is God's Word. 10:57 And the enemy is going to try to shame us. 10:59 He likes to take that sort of natural shame 11:02 that we have as a result of our fallen condition 11:05 and really sort of enlarge it, and amplify it, and then use it 11:09 to manipulate us into all kinds of unhealthy ways 11:11 of trying to cope with that shame 11:13 or trying to numb that shame. 11:15 But if you think about it that naked 11:17 and not ashamed experience is something that in sexuality, 11:23 in the context of a committed loving marriage, 11:25 we return to that naked and not ashamed experience. 11:29 And so that's very powerful benefit 11:32 that comes to married couples, 11:33 but it can also come to people outside of a marriage 11:36 when they cultivate a relationship with God. 11:39 Because, you know, 11:41 I think when God came along in the Garden of Eden, 11:43 He cobbled together these skins. 11:46 He said, you're going to need more than them, 11:47 fig leaves, you know. 11:49 So He got these skin garments together. 11:50 So God made them and then God clothed them 11:53 in those skins and that, of course, 11:56 symbolizes the righteousness 11:57 of Jesus covering us in our sinfulness. 11:59 But I think personally, this my personal opinion, 12:02 can't prove it, that God looked at them and He said, 12:04 "You're going to have to take those fig leaves off 12:06 because I'm going to put this over the fig leaves." 12:08 Fig leaves are very scratchy by the way. 12:11 And so they hardly had that moment 12:12 where they were naked with God. 12:14 And we could have that experience with Him. 12:17 We can go to him and tell him 12:18 the deepest darkest parts of ourselves. 12:21 He knows them anyway. 12:22 But we can voluntarily reveal them, 12:24 that's called confession. 12:26 So that's what you meant outside of the confines 12:29 'cause I was waiting to see where you were going. 12:31 I was like, "Where is she going with this?" 12:32 Physical intimacy is confined to marriage, 12:35 but we can have a spiritual naked 12:36 and not ashamed experience with God, 12:38 through confessing our sin 12:40 and being honest about ourselves. 12:42 Our weaknesses, our sins, our struggles, our fears, 12:45 we can tell God, who already knows them all anyway, 12:48 but there is something in the telling. 12:49 Yes. 12:50 You know, there's a voluntary revealing 12:52 of who we are at our baseline, 12:55 who we really are in the dark so to speak. 12:58 And we can do that on a level with God 12:59 that we can't do with any other human being. 13:01 Yes. 13:02 And so I just want to remind us all, 13:04 let's take advantage of that naked 13:05 and not ashamed experience 13:07 and whether you're married or not, 13:08 you can go to God and you can have 13:10 that experience with Him. 13:11 Absolutely. 13:13 That's one of the things 13:14 that is a very intimate situation 13:17 is when you confess your sins to God. 13:19 It is. 13:20 And you are forgiven for those sins 13:22 and you're cleansed from that, 13:25 and then you go back into that relationship 13:29 stronger than before. 13:30 Than ever before. Absolutely. 13:31 It's a beautiful thing 13:33 and we can experience a little of that 13:35 unashamed intimacy in our married relationships. 13:40 That's where the sexual, you know, intimacy takes place. 13:42 But even in our friendships, you know, 13:45 as we deepen in our walk with the Lord, 13:48 we start to feel safer and more trusting 13:51 toward other people and we get better 13:53 at picking good friends too. 13:54 That's important. Yes. 13:56 You got to make sure you surround yourself 13:57 with the right people. 13:59 That's right. That's right. 14:00 So a quick unpack of what... A quick summary? 14:04 Naked and not ashamed. 14:05 The body shaming is something sort of natural to us 14:08 but the enemy takes advantage of it. 14:10 Let's learn to accept ourselves the way we are. 14:12 Wow. 14:14 I love how you covered all of that 14:16 in that short amount of time. 14:17 I am looking forward to talking to you next time. 14:19 Join us next time. |
Revised 2018-08-02