Turns Out I'm Sexy After All

In all cultures of all times "sexy" has changed dramatically.  Fat used to be sexy, to have super pale skin used to be sexy--was so desired that women would attach leaches to their bodies to look pale--what a drain.  Having a ridiculously tiny waste used to be sexy, so they would squish themselves into a tiny corset until they passed out, or permanently damaged their internal organs--sounds like freedom.  I remember how women used to wear shoulder pads when I was a kid.  After football practice I would go to church and sometimes flinch as women walked by.

C.S. Lewis calls this "sexual taste".  He says speaking of demons,

 "It is the business of these great masters to produce in every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual taste. They do this by working through the small circle of popular artists, dressmakers, acctresses and advertisers, who determine the fashionable type.  The aim is to guide each sex away from those members of the other with who spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely."

I pull this quote out every winter and remind my wife when I want to grow a big beard!

Lewis also points out that even in their day all of the advertising was "messed with". He says,

"It is all fake, of course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits are actually pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slender......as a result we are more and more directing the desires of men to something that does not exist--making the role of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible." 

Of course it is the same today, models are airbrushed on every part of their bodies.  Even with photoshop we can airbrush our teeth whiter and touch up our humanity.


1John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 

1John 2:17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. 

If our affections are ruled by our eyes, not admiring beauty but lusting after man-made ideas of sexy we are far too easily satisfied.