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[Guest Post] Leah Darrow: The evolution of distorted beauty.


This post is written by Leah Darrow, known in part for her appearances on cycle three of America’s Next Top Model.

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“I just knew when I saw her nose, it was going to look right on my face,” Blaier said. “She has this beautiful…I call it a bunny hill…a very feminine tip at the end and that’s what I wanted.”

The above quote is from a woman who underwent rhinoplasty to have a nose like Kate Middleton[1]. When did someone else’s nose, waist, chest, you-name-it look better than your own? Beauty has dis-evolved to a Cosmo-grade/celebrity-look-a-like/surgically reconstructed standard of beauty. This info-graph demonstrates just how prevalent plastic surgeries are in the USA[2].

Through subtle or more drastic ways to change our natural look[3], we have bought into the lie of distorted beauty. These statistics are astounding but with the current obsession with perfection, they shouldn’t come as a surprise. We ironically value the impossibility of perfection and expect it of our imperfect selves.

Why is our natural beauty in question?

What’s so wrong with laugh lines or our stomachs being softer after a miracle grew inside? Yes, there will be wrinkles, grey hair, and softer middle sections – and there are parts of us that are naturally imperfect (why is this a shock to us?).

When did we become a woman of parts? Are we not (whole people) with intrinsic value, dignity, and beauty?

When I notice my imperfections, I think about the teenager who will die in a car crash who will never see crow’s feet, the young wife who never had a chance of her belly stretching beyond imagination, or the mother who’s cancer robbed her of gray hair.

I am blessed. So far, God has given me the gift of aging, and I thank Him for that. I’m embracing my wrinkles, my pregnant belly and body that are growing week-by-week and finding humor in grey eyebrows (how did that happen?).

Age is a blessing and aging well is not the result of a great moisturizer but in accepting our limitations and depending on God’s limitless love and acceptance of us no matter the age, size, or wrinkle.

Your (aging) sister in Christ,
Leah

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leah-from-twitterLeah Darrow, who worked as a professional model in New York City after her debut on cycle three of the reality TV show America’s Next Top Model, is now a Catholic speaker. She has a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, was a full time apologist for Catholic Answers from 2010 through 2013, and is working on her master’s degree in theology at the Augustine Institute in Denver, Colorado. Follow her on Twitter: @leahdarrow. This post originally appeared on leahdarrow.com and was used with permission.

[1] CBS New York (online), Article: Copy Kate: Women Increasingly Seeking Surgery To Replicate Duchess’ Nose, January 31, 2013

[2] The American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (online); Article: Cosmetic Surgery: 15 years of facts and figures, May 3, 2012.

[3] This is not to say that all plastic surgeries are distortions of beauty. Clearly, some may be needed for serious medical/personal needs.

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[Guest Post] The lies Satan tells us.

The Father of Lies has to start somewhere. If you believed, truly believed with all of your being, with all of your heart, your strength, your mind, and your soul that the God of the Universe loved you and held you in the palm of His hand, then Satan would be utterly defeated. Satan would have no hold on our hearts if we believed that God loved us as passionately as He does.

Satan’s biggest defense, one of his greatest weapons against us, is doubt. If he can get you to start doubting that God loves you then he begins to work his way into your heart and soul. He doesn’t come at our hearts in big, obvious ways because then we would see him coming and avoid him. Satan is not the giant sink-hole in the street waiting for you to drive into it, we would simply drive around it. Satan isn’t even the giant sink-hole in the middle of the street with an asphalt-colored tarp draped over it, for even that would be too obvious.

Satan is far more like a tiny nail in the street that you drive over that pokes a tiny little hole in your tire. You don’t realize you drove over the nail, and chances are you don’t hear the air slowly leaking out of your tire. In time, though, your tire goes flat and Satan has hindered your ability to go anywhere or do anything with any amount of ease.

So, how can we avoid the nails in the road if we don’t see them? Do we have to check our tires every night and listen for the leaks before we can go into our houses? Not necessarily. We need to learn to see clearly, to prepare ourselves for the nails and recognize them for what they are. We recognize them by starting with the first lies Satan tells us as women. Just as we learned as little kids, once you tell a lie you usually have to tell another lie to cover up the first one, and another lie to cover up the second lie, and on and on we go. So does Satan. We must uncover the lies and be aware that he uses them to build even more lies because his main and only goal is to keep us away from God, locked in a pit of desolation, just as he is. …

Have you ever felt unnoticed? Unseen? Have you ever felt that no matter what you did no one would even take notice? You could put on the most beautiful dress, get your hair and make-up done, and still no heads would turn. You could dress like Julia Roberts in the opening scenes of Pretty Woman and there would be no Richard Gere there to pick you up in some fancy foreign car. We feel unseen. As women we long to be found beautiful, stunning, attractive, sexy. One of my favorite books sums up what we long for in the title: Captivating. We want to walk in a room and light it up. We want heads to turn, people to take notice that we are there and we are radiant. We possess within our very souls something magical, something mystical that shines and begs to be noticed.

That isn’t to say that every woman wants to be the center of attention when she walks in a room, many women do not. Some of my best friends would actually hate walking into a room and having everyone stare at her beauty. They would fear all the attention and wonder if they had something stuck in their teeth or that there is toilet paper stuck to their shoes. Those same women who don’t want to be the center of attention will admit that they at least want one person to take note when they enter a room.

Satan knows this about the heart of women. What is the first lie that he often tells us? We are unseen. He whispers it to us, “No one notices you. No one sees you. No one cares. There is fundamentally nothing at all that is special about you, and therefore no one bothers to take notice of you.” We hear him and we begin to believe him.

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This post is an excerpt from Amanda’s book Worthy.

About the blogger: Amanda Mortus is a woman after the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. Amanda is also a Colorado native, who graduated from Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina in 2009 with a B.A. in Theology, as well as minors in Psychology and Philosophy. Amanda is a youth minister and author of Worthy, available now on Amazon, Kindle, and CreateSpace. Signed copies can be ordered through her website. She is a Managing Editor at Ignitum Today, and an Associate Editor at Catholic Lane. She blogs at worthy of Agape.

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[Guest Post] Chastity is more than physical.

[callout]This is a guest post by blogger Stephanie Calis.[/callout]

I blame the pig roast.

When I was 19, a friend invited me to his family’s annual Labor Day party. I came with two friends and a baguette. I left with a huge crush. I’d already known my friend to be a man of deep faith, teller of cornball jokes, admirer of Emma’s Mr. Knightley, and remarkable cook. Suddenly, in the context of white lights setting the backyard aglow, seeing him with his family, and feasting on things like chocolate chess pie, all those qualities took on some kind of magic.

He left a few weeks later for a semester abroad. By that point, I was convinced I’d found my future husband (spoiler alert: nope). I’d always hoped the man I married would be a reader, a charmer with an acute sense of wit, a good dancer, and would be from a big family. Plus, he could cook. And best of all, he was a serious Catholic whom I knew any girl would be privileged to entrust her soul and her life to. I considered all the boxes checked.

He sent travelogue emails to a group of us back on campus. I responded to every one. He hinted at childhood embarrassments involving weddings and awkward attention. I clung to hope when he said to me personally, “It’s a story best told in person; I’ll regale you with it sometime.” We had a class together the following semester. I’m pretty sure I bathed myself in perfume before Philosophy 212 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Then came the Rosary.

At the weekly prayer group we were both part of, each person would state their intentions before we prayed the Rosary together. “I’d like,” he said, “to pray for my girlfriend.”

Slam. There went my heart. Somehow I made it through the next hour, then promptly left in search of a place to empty my dangerously full tear ducts. My college is over 200 years old, founded by a priest and featuring four chapels. All of them were occupied. After half a frustrated hour of trying to find somewhere empty, I settled on the back pew of the main chapel, where a grief group was meeting far away from me, up front (maybe I should’ve joined them?).

I sobbed for three hours straight, not picking my head up once (if you’re reading this, and you’re the one who left some tissues on the pew for me, thank you). The next six months felt like a breakup, though, of course, there was no relationship to be broken apart in the first place. I cried some more, at least once a day. My iTunes play count for Taylor Swift’s “Teardrops On My Guitar” surged. I wasn’t hungry often, but I remember trying to make myself eat a lot of Special K.

I like to think my feelings ran deeper than just infatuation. I wanted him to be happy, wanted to see him flourish, felt proud of his gifts. Maybe there was some raw material there for genuine love. Except it wasn’t meant, at the time, nor ever, ultimately, to become that. Heartbreak sucks, big time. And yet looking back, reining in my feelings from the start, being present instead of planning my wedding, could’ve eased the sting. My heart hadn’t just run away from me; it had, like, hopped a bullet train.

We long for love. Ache for it, in fact. And that’s such a good thing. Without prudence, though, without patience, there’s a huge risk, I’ve learned, to being vulnerable at the wrong time; there you are, eating Special K in bed and listening to Taylor Swift.

Conventions in Christian dating often communicate messages of “guard your heart” and “there’s a season for everything,” but I’m actually getting at something a little different here.

Karol Wojtyla, the man who’d become Pope John Paul II and, in my opinion, one of the wisest ever intuiters of love and human nature, wrote in Love and Responsibility that an idealized beloved “often becomes merely the occasion for an eruption in the subject’s emotional consciousness of the values which he or she longs with all his heart to find in another person.”

Yikes. Is that what I’d been doing? I knew, down to my soul, that this boy was incredibly worthy of love, yet I’d idealized him nonetheless, desperately hoping (and actually believing) he was The One and elevating all of his goodness to a level that would be impossible for anyone to match in real life. The Pope explains that an excess of sentimentality “leads to a variety of values…bestowed upon the object of love which he or she does not necessarily posses in reality. These are ideal values, not real ones.” Of course, this can lead to disillusionment upon discovering one’s beloved isn’t perfect, or, in my case, some long-term emotional brokenness.

So often, chastity is associated with the physical. True; that’s so valuable and worth it, but I’ve realized that it’s important not to overlook the role of emotions, too. If chastity is about cultivating freedom from desire, in the sense that one recognizes its good without being enslaved to it, then I can wholeheartedly say from experience that chastity is more than just physical; it involves tempering one’s emotions as much as tempering the body.

There’s hope, though: simply being aware that the tendency to idealize exists in the human heart can offer a glimpse of clarity, I think, in heavy crush mode and even in a relationship. With open eyes, there’s the potential to love another person through his or her faults and to let yourselves be perfected, slowly and humbly, by Love Himself. It puts emotions in a proper context. Edward Sri says, so rightly, “sentimentality can be a beautiful, enriching part of love, but it must be integrated with other essential ingredients.”

Five years later, blissfully, exultantly married, I’m slightly wiser, though still so in need of education in love. My husband Andrew is all kinds of things I never even knew I wanted. Never once have I compared him to anyone I used to think I’d marry. But we both understand the other is far from perfect. My tendency to laziness means I wait until our underwear and sock situation gets dire before even touching the laundry. His impatience once turned a 15-minute bake time for brownies into an hour. But by grace we aren’t disillusioned; instead, we’ve somehow been given a clear vision of who we are and how to be better.

No. You know what? I don’t blame the pig roast after all. I blame my beating heart; not because it’s bad, but because that’s how my heart is made. Should it be pure; should it be emotionally chaste? Absolutely. But knowing my heart can be pierced with the wound of love isn’t, to me, a fault at all. It’s a mercy and a beauty. One to be governed with virtue, yes, but one that is so wholly, amazingly human.

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About the blogger: Born a hop, skip, and jump from the Chesapeake Bay, Stephanie Calis now resides in Appalachia, thanks to love. Her sweet husband Andrew teaches English there. She delights in bike rides, good books, puddle jumping, The Avett Brothers, hammocks, avocados, and Andrew’s many argyle sweaters. She is thirsty. Knowing so many others are, too, she spent a missionary year with Generation Life speaking to students about human dignity and authentic love. Her passion is telling young women they possess immense worth and that pure, sacrificial love is real; she thinks a truthful understanding of sex and love is medicine for an aching culture. Stephanie blogs about love and wedding planning at Captive the Heart.

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[Guest Post] What I learned about marriage from my parents.

Guest blogger Olivia!

As a child, I knew my parents were different from other parents. They slept in separate rooms because my dad had violent nightmares. My mom worked first shift, my dad worked second shift. They rarely showed affection for one another. Their marriage was the second for each of them, and I think this gave them a little experience to build their own marriage on.

When I was a teenager, I never wanted to get married.

I was a very independent child, so I told myself that I didn’t want my independence taken away. I never went on dates in high school. I had no confidence, so I figured no one would want to be with me. I’d see the heartache and hear from my girlfriends about problems in their relationships. I assumed all relationships were like that, and I didn’t need that. More than anything, I saw the relationship my parents had, would compare it to the relationships of my friends’ parents, and realize that whatever my parents had together was not something I wanted.

But in my second year of working toward my undergraduate degree, I met a man like no other. He was hilarious, generous, and so very kind. Two weeks after our official first date, I knew I would marry this man. I told my mom this and she was shocked. She’d say to me, “You want to get married? You always said you never wanted to get married,” when I would brag about this wonderful man.

We got married in 2007 and enjoyed a brief honeymoon period (without ever taking a honeymoon) before life went back to normal and reality set in. We’d have our disagreements, calm down, and work things out. And then life threw us one curve ball after another: job loss, extended unemployment, moving in with family to keep a roof over our heads because of unemployment, health scares, no money… you get the picture.

Through all of these trials, we would lash out at each other whenever the stress levels reached a tipping point. We have had such horrid arguments that we even have uttered the d-word. I have caught myself saying something to my husband that sounds exactly like something Mom would have said to Dad in the middle of a disagreement. I have had that moment in which I realize I’m very much like Mom, and then I try to correct my behavior.

I remember the d-word being discussed lightly between my parents when I was in high school. Miraculously, when I moved out to go to college in 2004, my parents’ marriage improved. But Dad suddenly passed away in 2009, leaving my mom widowed and lost. It was hard to watch Mom begin to navigate the world without Dad. As time has gone on and we reminisce about all the wonderful times we had with Dad, Mom would echo the same sentiment about him: “Things were rough, and we had some horrible times, but I would never trade in a moment with that man.”

My parents were knocked down by difficult trials and faced many dark days in their relationship. Through the dark and the light, one thing stayed constant: They did it together. They stuck by each other through everything. I think of all my parents went through when I was child, and while I remember some of the arguments, I rejoice in now being able to comprehend how they came together to handle whatever situation they faced.

Marriage is one of the most difficult “things” I’ve ever had to do. It requires time, patience, nurturing, love, humility, respect, and humor. I’ll admit it: Marriage is hard work. It’s not for the weak. There are rough times where you just don’t have the energy to look at your spouse because of some idiot thing they’ve said. There are times you’re so embarrassed by something you said or did in anger that you can’t even look at yourself. But those beautiful times, those times you realize where you’ve come from and what you’ve gone through together, make that hard work so worth it.

My parents had a very unconventional marriage, but it was their marriage. My husband and I have a different marriage, and it’s OUR marriage. Give your marriage everything you’ve got. When things get tough, just keep fighting. It’s absolutely worth it.

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About the blogger:  Olivia Hattan-Edwards is a native Floridian who lives in the mountains of north Georgia with her love, Richard, and their two cats, Humphrey and Bogart. Olivia is the youth services coordinator for a public library and is currently working on a master’s degree in Library and Information Science. Richard works at a public high school and is involved with high school athletics. In her spare time, Olivia enjoys reading YA literature, shopping at thrift stores, and supporting Richard at whatever sport is currently in season. She recently launched a new blog, Bookmarking Life. Olivia and Richard have been married for five and a half years.

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[Guest Post] Why chastity is easy.

[callout]This is a guest post by blogger Jake Nelko.[/callout]

Anyone who has remained chaste until marriage will tell you it’s not easy.

As humans, we are constantly bombarded with the temptation to throw chastity out the window and do whatever we need to acquire the sexual pleasure we want. American society certainly puts these things on our plate daily through the media, trickling down into our day-to-day life.

In other words, there are pretty girls everywhere and they dress pretty and carry themselves pretty and talk pretty and smile pretty and there aren’t a lot of factors in society telling me to not try to have sex with them. Is that direct enough?

So, why haven’t I had sex yet? Well, there have been several factors that have made this decision not only attainable, but easy (relatively speaking).

It was described to me early on in life that maintaining my virginity for the future Mrs. Nelko would be one of the best gifts I could offer. Holding on to that special gift to give to one and only one person would be the greatest thing I could offer. Think about it, though. How many things or acts can you suggest are given to only one person? If we receive a gift that is only received by one person, this allows us to feel like the most special person in his or her life.

Also, I believe in a God who is bigger than I am. This isn’t the most “practical” reason, but it’s certainly the backbone of why I’ve made this life decision. I am a Christian and believe in loving God and others above myself. The best way for me to love God through my sexual life is by not putting sex above Him. When we choose to have sex outside marriage, we choose to selfishly fulfill our desires. I say “we” because I am certainly a twenty-something man who has deviated sexually on my own, as almost every man has. When we do this, it’s an act of choosing ourselves above God.

In the same vein, I believe in loving others above myself. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about seeking my own pleasure from relationships of any kind with females, it’s that we, as men, are called to protect the hearts of our sisters by loving them as sisters. Sex outside of marriage creates a certain confusion through selfishness. Connecting with someone on a sexual level is a connection that is not shared often (I’d hope) and, therefore, is a special connection not to be taken lightly. Sharing sex with someone outside of a committed relationship shows a lack of care for the feelings and heart of the other person through this confusion of feelings and emotions.

As a result of these things, here is my practical response: I do my best to avoid situations where I may be tempted sexually. With the guidance of a mentor at my campus ministry in college, I laid out some ground rules for myself that I follow with lady friends. I generally don’t kiss girls with whom I am not in a relationship. I don’t hold hands with girls I’m not dating. I avoid spending one-on-one time with a girl after midnight. I don’t touch girls areas normally covered by bathing suits or see them naked. I avoid the gray areas, so the temptation to progress further can be avoided.

I also keep people around who will keep me accountable. I am a pretty open book and wear my heart on my sleeve, so it’s difficult for me to hide the truth when asked. I keep strong Christian men around me who will ask difficult questions and make sure that I’m treating women with the love and respect they deserve as God’s children. If we aren’t asked challenging questions and, instead, are left to our own devices, we certainly will make decisions that benefit ourselves and no one else.

These reasons may or may not resonate with you, but they’re my reasons. Chastity has been easy because I’ve made good, selfless decisions. I’ve made plenty of little mistakes, but the Lord has provided the strength and guidance needed, as well as the support around me, to make sure this has been possible.

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About the blogger: Jake Nelko, 27, lives in Tacoma, WA, while his heart resides in Pittsburgh, PA. He makes a living as a Career Development Specialist at the University of Washington Tacoma and spends his free time covering new music for Ear to the Ground Music, writing for his own personal blog, and playing drums for the gangster folk band Michelle from the Club.