Lovingly pouring ourselves out for others may not always be glamorous, but it is always beautiful.
Dante and Beatrice
There is a well-known Dostoevsky trope that says, “beauty will save the world.” The famous Russian is usually taken to mean the beauty found in the material arts. Music, architecture, and sculpture are rightfully being plumbed for their world-saving abilities, particularly how they lead a soul back to God. But there is one stone that has yet to be unturned when considering the role beauty plays in saving the world: women.
The desire to be beautiful is deeply embedded in a woman’s soul. Each year, American women spend roughly $11 billion on cosmetic surgery, $24 billion on skin care, $18 billion on makeup, $38 billion on hair care, $15 billion on perfume, and somewhere between $20-45 billion on weight loss. The average woman spends 17 years of her life on a diet. While we can scoff at all of this with Qoheleth and say, “Vanity of vanities!” (Ecc 1:2), perhaps there is something to this that goes deeper than vanity. What if God has put that desire into our hearts for a reason? For even the smallest girl will tell you she wants to be as beautiful as a princess. This isn’t just cultural conditioning, but something universal that sits squarely in the feminine heart.
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