You have probably seen
the ad. A bunch of women come to your house, ostensibly to visit your
newborn baby, but with the secret mission to find out how you are
coping via the cleanliness of your toilet. And they are scoring you,
so you better use our product because it will ensure that you are
acceptable! Really???
Over a period of time,
but especially the last few days, I have been impacted by a number of
truths about the lies we believe. One is a recurring thought, which
clarified today as I cleaned the tiles in my bathroom. It is about
the idea that a certain product will bring your tiles and grout back
to perfection with just one spray and a wipe over. I have tried this
product. It doesn’t work. Friends have agreed. I have wondered a
number of times, how these products keep making sales, keep
advertising, keep people coming back. This morning I realised that a
large part of the problem comes from our beliefs. Because the
advertisement on tv says something, we give it authority in and over
our lives. We believe that it must be true because it is so public.
So, rather than acknowledging that the advertisers lie, or at minimum
stretch the truth, we take the blame ourselves. We must be defective
in our cleaning prowess, we must not be using it right, or often
enough and so on.
Another insight came
from a clip that my husband was watching on the internet the other
night. It was a presentation by Jean Kilbourne, who has been
highlighting the issue of the way in which women are both portrayed
and used in advertising over a number of decades. Amongst many other
points (check it out at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ujySz-_NFQ&feature=related),
she showed just how much of a lie the pictures are that advertisers
present us with, making the point that even the models don’t look
like their pictures in reality (the images are so doctored). My
daughter made the statement that she doesn’t believe the stuff she
is told by advertising. However, the absolute insidiousness of the
lie is that it is not the message we are given explicitly, but the
images that are stored away in our brains. Although we don’t do it
overtly or even consciously, every time we look in the mirror (or at
our photo) our brain is comparing our looks, shape, and so on with
those images stored away in our brains. This is what is takes to look
good, if you don’t look like this, then you don’t look good. The
problem is that looking like that is an impossibility because it is
not real. The advertisers want us to stay in that place, though,
because we will never be satisfied with ourselves so will keep buying
products to try to feel good about ourselves, even though there is a
part of us that knows we will never succeed. (An interesting side
note here is about a mascara ad we noticed a while back, which
actually carried the disclaimer that the model was wearing false
lashes – it was not the product that gave her those gloriously long
and voluptuous lashes!)
Added into this mix was
an article I came across in the Herald Sun asking what type of
“schoolgate mum” you were. Just to make sure you really couldn’t
compete, they used celebrities as the ‘models’ for each ‘yummy
mummy’ category, with tags such as “high end glamour”,
“sporty”, “earth mother”, “casual chic” and even “homely
classic”. Where was the “depressed, haven’t had a shower, but
got my kid here on time, fed and clean anyway” (that was me for a
period of time), or “slept in, so still in my pyjamas and late for
the third time this week”? Again, we are given an impossible image
to live up to. In reality, how many of us have nannies and other paid
employees to help with child-raising and housework so we have time,
let alone money to spend working out and so on to look like that? And
even more importantly, who gave the mandate that we are not good
enough if we don’t look like that? The reality of the lives of most
of us are ignored, and another burden is added as we are given the
message that there is only one way to be. I ask the question again,
who made the decision that the only look that is acceptable is “sexy”
or “hot”? And why do we accept it?
So where does that
leave me? It has been a long journey. Going through the pain of
divorce meant I had to dig deep to find the resources to deal with my
issues of rejection and low self-esteem. But it didn’t take divorce
for me to struggle with these issues, they were there long before.
And I don’t think I am alone. I have a feeling many of us put on
the face of pretending we feel good about ourselves, all the while
dying a little more inside each day.
A huge question comes
back to what we put our trust in. I don’t think the world’s
opinion in general has been a conscious issue for me, but I know I
have struggled for many years with a desire for acceptance by
individuals. However, I came to a place of realising that other
people were not the answer. While I am looking for their approval or
acceptance, trying to find my worth from what others say about me (or
I think they think!), I will always struggle. The reality is that no
matter what they promise, other people will always let you down. They
can’t not, as no one is perfect, no one has it all together, no
matter how well they present. When we put them in that position, we
are also setting them up for failure, not to mention the fact that we
have no right to expect them to perform to our tune!
I had a friend at uni
who suggested that she could find her strength inside herself. The
problem with this is that we start to make ourselves ‘God’ – we
become the beginning and end in ourselves. Asides from the
self-centredness this breeds in us (it is all about me), it doesn’t
work. We always come to a place where I am not enough on my own.
Sometimes (lots of times!) I need more than just ‘faith in myself’.
In the end, the answer
came in genuinely putting my reliance in God. As much as I had
believed in His love for me theoretically, I have to experience it
and accept it and receive it for myself, not just once, but by living
in that place of knowing that my worth, my value must come from what
my Creator thinks of me, the value and worth He places on me. The
verses in the Bible that tell me about this are innumerable, but one
that I was reminded of again more recently is 1 Peter 1:18,19, “You
were rescued from
the useless way of life that you learned from your ancestors [Getting
your worth from what others think about you, or from what you think
they think!]. But you know that you were not rescued by such things
as silver or gold [or looking “hot” or having a clean toilet or
2000+ facebook friends] that don't last forever. You
were rescued by [bought with] the precious blood of Christ…”
(CEV+my additions) As was pointed out to me sometime back, “How much are you
worth to God? The blood of His only Son.”
Every
time I feel the weight of condemnation over my life, whether it be in
reality or in my mind, I remind myself that condemnation does not
come from God (conviction, yes, but that is a whole different
matter). My acceptability and value to Him does not come from what I
do, how I look or who I am friends with or even how many facebook
‘friends’ I have! It comes from the fact that He created me and
loves me. I am His beloved. When I find myself comparing myself to
others in any of these areas and using this to judge how I am going,
I realise it is time to go back to the bathroom. Not to clean the
toilet, but to look myself in the eyes and remind myself that I am
His beloved, which says far more than any loo ever could!