Allright I will be honest with all of you (the 2 1/2 people that read this blog). This a rant/frustration thing with me.
Let me start off by saying this. I am all in favor of raising awareness for Breast Cancer (and any other kinds of cancer for that matter). I actually feel like one of my main frustrations with the church of America is that we too rarely support worthy causes. Finding a cure for cancer is MORE than a worthy cause, it is something we should all strive towards. So, whatever you read below this, DO NOT HEAR that I am bashing raising awareness for cancer, because I am ABSOLUTELY NOT.
That being said, the recent "Show Your Color" nonsense on Facebook frustrated me to no end. If you don't know what I am talking about here is the gist of it. Last week a campaign started where girls would post a one word status, a color, it was supposed to be the color bra they were wearing. The purpose was two-fold. First it was supposedly to raise awareness for breast cancer (more on this later), and to see how long it would take guys to figure out why the girls were posting colors as their status.
I could probably give you a hundred reasons why this frustrated me, but I will spare you and only give you a couple. First, I am amazed that so many women would participate in something where one of the main purposes was to see how dumb guys were. Really you think that you can just post a color and people are not going to start trying to figure out what in the world you were talking about? Seriously? I know that it is a big joke to say guys are dumb, but this is ridiculous. I started asking what the color thing was and the first person I asked told me. Girls, please stop generalizing men into the one big glob of idiotic-ness. I know there are dumb guys out there (I have met a few of them), but there are dumb girls too! However, this was not even close to the main reason that this whole dumb thing frustrated me.
Girls, let me drop a big heaping cup-overfloweth bucket of reality on you here...Take a deep breath, and trust me on this one, because I am not joking at all. Facebook is a social-networking site where hundreds of people can see your profile. When you post your bra color on there 99.999999999% of guys who saw your status immediately thought of you, without a shirt on, in that color bra. We as guys are extremely visual creatures (you can thank God, he is the One who made us that way), and when you put stuff like that on there most guys immediately think of you in that. I talked to some of my youth guys about it, and they absolutely agreed with me.
Can I just beg one thing of all the women on here? Please, please, oh please with a giant stinking cherry on top, help protect our young men. It is said that a majority of men will look at pornography at some point in their life. Is this their fault? Absolutely. I am not taking any blame away from them, because it needs to sit right on their head. However, we live in an extremely over-sexualized culture. It is impossible to watch a football game and not see some smutty commercial (thank the Lord for DVR). You, as Christians sisters, have to help protect our young men.
That is the main problem I had with this whole color movement. I know that the Susan G. Komen foundation came out and said that it raised awareness for breast cancer, but just because something is a good cause does not mean that we as Christians are supposed to act inappropriately. Thats like saying that as a missions fundraiser we should open a bar and only sell hard liquor so that everyone gets trashed and gives great tips (hey, it is for missions!) The end does not always justify the means, and it definitely didn't in this situation. Thousands and thousands of Christian young men lusted in a movement that, in my opinion, raised less awareness than it did seductiveness. It just didn't have to happen. You really want to raise awareness? Wear a breast cancer awareness t-shirt, put something productive on your Facebook status (such as a statistic about cancer), or (and here is a shocker), actually talk about breast cancer instead of putting the color of your bra. No one needs to know that, I promise.
Geoffrey
(For those of you that want to rebut my "No one needs to know that with", "guess what, I am married, and my husband may want to know"....I will say this as delicately as I can, as a husband....It isnt the bra that he cares about.........)
Amen.
ReplyDeleteLoved reading this! And agree completely! Hal and I had a whole conversastion about how ridiculous it was...
ReplyDeletei'm so with you on this.
ReplyDeletemy guess is that a man made this FB thing up.
ReplyDeleteJoe that is probably true...I have heard they cant figure out who started it...
ReplyDeleteWell, I will be completely honest and say that I participated. I then quickly (within the hour)retrieved my status after some thought. I honestly thought "what a fun way to get people talking about a great cause" -like playing M.A.S.H. in elementary school... That is until I really examined it and remembered how many of my viewers are not women.
ReplyDeleteThis actually was the straw that broke the camels back for me in deleting my facebook. I hate how satan can turn anything into yuck...
I'm not going to lie Geoffrey, I don't agree. Although silly, the object of the facebook movement was to "open dialogue" between both men and women about breast cancer. And it did what it was intended. It wasn't meant to make men feel dumb, but to have them ask questions. For instance, responses to questions were supposed to be formed in a "well, if I had breast cancer, my status (or answer to the question) might be very different."
ReplyDeleteTo most women, knowing the color of their bra is nothing different than knowing the color of their bathing suit (b/c most bras cover just about as much as a bathing suit top). Yes, some men may find it distracting but I highly doubt that many of them took time to individually picture each of the girls without their shirts on.
I honestly think that your generalization "globs men into one big glob of idioticness". Many of the men I know are past the junior high stage of lusting after every girl that they know wears a bra.
I believe the point of the "show your colors" movement, was more to prove that having breasts is not just a sexual thing and that dialogue between men and women about breast cancer should not always jump to a sexual conversation.
Sarah, a lot of what you said was true...However, just from my dealings with men, from the teenage years even into adulthood, 99.9% of guys deal with lust. That is why internet porn is one of the fastest growing industries in the country. Christian men still deal with lust all the time. It doesn't mean that they are constantly lusting after every girl they know wears a bra, but it does mean that it is a struggle. Just like with most women they (at some point) struggle with their appearance. It doesn't mean that every day they think they are ugly, just that they have to make sure to take captive every thought. It is the same with guys. We have to take captive our thoughts to make sure that we aren't lusting. I have a super-hot wife, whom I love with all my heart, but I am still a guy, and we are very visual creatures. So, if I don't make sure to take captive my thoughts it is easy to lust, because our culture is so super-sexualized.
ReplyDeleteThe whole point of the blog is to say that we as Christians are supposed to stay "above-reproach". We are supposed to encourage each other in our faith. AND we are supposed to try and protect the opposite sex from things that we know that most of them struggle with.
From most of what I read, very little of the movement opened any dialogue. For the most part it was people putting a color and then little smiley faces or winking faces. Some people even put nothing...And when the guys would comment on stuff it never had anything to do with breast cancer.
Hear this, I am 1000000% (yes, I know that is not an actual percentage) in favor of raising awareness for breast cancer. However, I don't think that we can just set aside our responsibilities as Christians for a good cause. Like I said in the blog, the end doesn't always justify the means.
Lastly, for most guys a bra is completely different than a bathing suit top. It's not to women, they are the same thing (like you said), but to guys it is very very different. I know that to you they seem the same, but one of the whole points of me writing this is to remind women that men and women think very differently. So, if to you it is the same, to most men in the world it is not at all.
I just feel like there has to be a better way for us to raise awareness for a cause that absolutely needs awareness raised. I just didn't feel like this was the right way, because I talked to many guys that confirmed that when a girl posted their color their thoughts were not glorifying the Lord. And I want to be a guy that doesn't make girls stumble by what I say and do, and I want women to encourage guys and not do things that could possible make them stumble.
Paul says that he is fine with eating meat, but if him eating meat makes another Christian stumble then him eating meat is wrong. It is no different in this situation. If a girl is fine with posting their bra color, but if by them doing that any man stumbles then it is wrong...
I knew when I wrote this that there would be women that didn't agree, and that is completely fine with me. I know that men and women can look at the same thing and see it completely different. My goal in writing this was to open some eyes into what a guy thinks...
Sorry the word "nothing" in the third paragraph is supposed to be in quotes...
ReplyDelete