A couple of weeks ago, I read an article about a Syrian woman who had been pushed from her home along with her seven children due to terrorism. She had no husband as he had gone out into their town to fight and never came back. She described the "tent city" in which she was now living, and told the harrowing tale of many mothers who were marrying their young daughters off (some as young as 9) to wealthy older men from foreign lands so they would be taken care of and not raped by strangers passing by the tents. They were all terrified to bathe and definitely could not bathe alone. The details of the lurking male eyes gave me the chills.
I cannot imagine living in her reality. That is not a reality here for us in the United States. Girls are not married off in their preteen years so that the family does not have the burden of raising them anymore or the burden of watching them like a hawk to prevent rape and violence. These girls on the other side of the world are enslaved to men and their own sexuality. They are seen merely as sexual objects of a man's desires and the one who will bear children, clean the house, and cook the meals. If they are single into their teen years, they will most likely be raped and/or murdered. It is the genuine hope of the parents that their daughters will be married at a young age in order to "protect" them. This mother in the article went on to include her fears for her daughters as they marry. What will the nights be like with the new husband? Will he treat her well? Will she be cared for? Will she be forced to move to another country and never seen again? Very real fears …and a very harrowing tale.
Her story would not leave my mind. Day after day, I thought of all the middle eastern women - millions of women - who are enslaved by men and valued only for their sexuality. I thought how these women might act given true freedom from their brutal environment. I surmised that so many of them must be bright and creative - yearning for the opportunity to share their God-given talents with the world. …Then I opened up Facebook, and my teenage son's page popped up (since we all share the same computer in our house). I was going to log out and log back into my page, but the top story on his newsfeed was a picture of three girls with whom he grew up. They had taken a "selfie" of their group dressed in stripper-worthy bikinis and jacked-up high heals. It was like a bomb exploding before my eyes. Truly. I could not take my eyes off the photo in disbelief. I kept saying to myself, "I can't believe that's so-and-so", and "I can't believe their mothers don't know or don't care this photo of their daughters is on the internet!" The photo was so disgusting that I thought to myself, "they are enslaving themselves. No one is doing it for them."
Why, you say, are they enslaving themselves? Most women are, and we don't even know it. In our attempt at "freedom", we have adopted the attitude of, "I can dress however I like and men had better keep their eyes in their heads and their mouths shut." Looks good on paper. Doesn't translate to reality very well. If we as modern free women have a desire to be truly free, we must begin with the way we present ourselves to the world. What are my son's friends really saying by dressing like that and advertising it on Facebook? Are they saying, "Look at how smart I am? Look at what a very accomplished young lady I am about to embark on my higher studies at the University?" When we dress in revealing ways, we are saying the complete opposite. We are not celebrating our freedoms, we are enslaving ourselves to continue to be merely sexual objects.
I have been saying for YEARS that we women dress too scantily and we bring all kinds of negative attention on ourselves. If teens and young women were to dress more modestly, don't you think others around them would concentrate on their faces and the words coming out of their mouths? We mothers have allowed society to dictate to our daughters how they can/should look in public. Recent role models have included: Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, JLo, The Kardashians, Beyonce, Miley Cyrus, and Hugh Hefner's many girlfriends including Kendra Wilkinson, Holly Madison, and Bridget Marquardt. Great list! And that list could go on and on. Women across America are also tuning in to The Housewives of Beverly Hills, New Jersey, Atlanta, etc. These are the women we hold in esteem??? I think most would agree we don't (I hope). Many "keep up" with these people just to watch the train wrecks. But seriously ask yourself how much you HONESTLY want to dress and look like many of them? HONESTLY. Our malls are filled to capacity every weekend with girls, teens, and women looking for clothing, shoes, and accessories that help them emulate all these women they see on tv and in the tabloids.
Turn those shows off! Stop buying the tabloids! Stop buying clothes that barely cover your bodies and scream to the world that you're available for abuse! That's right. I said it. You are asking to be abused by dressing in a provocative way. I would dare anyone to tell me something really great and virtuous that came from wearing a skin tight dress, too short skirt, shorts smaller than a bathing suit bottom, jeans like a second skin, blouse open below the breast line, tank top showing everything, or a teeny tiny bikini to the pool or on the beach. Seriously. Tell me! You can't because that scenario does not exist.
Women half way around the world are dying because they are Christian, and they are enslaved to their sexuality because of where they were simply born. They would give anything to be here in a free country to advance themselves intellectually, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. I am sure many of them go to sleep at night wishing for their chains of imprisonment to be broken. We women in the West are free, and yet we are choosing to make our statement to the world be a sexual one. Through our simple daily choice in clothing, we are choosing to promote ourselves sexually and give ourselves away to numerous men - and asking to be abused. We - OURSELVES - are willingly perpetuating a lack of respect for our daughters, friends, mothers, sisters, and ourselves. We can change that ...because we are free. We must begin respecting ourselves as the truly intelligent, creative, loving, nurturing, sentient beings who were intricately crafted by God.
P.S. This is not the original article I referenced as I cannot find it; however, this is a good article on the Syrian woman's plight.
Syrian Women's Plight
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