Recently, I watched a survey on men expressing what they loved most in women. The answers caught my attention.
They didn’t say they loved when women tried to be equal, or prove they could do everything a man can do. They didn’t express love for manly behavior or strength. They didn’t say they loved a woman who could bring in good income for the family or square her shoulders to prove herself equal.
From one random man to the next, their eyes lit up with tenderness when the question came from a random stranger holding a microphone on a beach. And without exception, with happy smiles on their faces, this is what they said:
“I like that women are soft and nurturing.”
“I like that they have good intuition and can see things I need to change that I can’t see about myself.”
“I like that women are beautiful.”
“Women are amazing. They’re like Goddesses.”
It didn’t take just watching the survey to get me thinking once again on the importance of femininity in today’s world.
Watching the gleam in my 12 year old boy’s eyes as his picked me up and threw me over the couch made me laugh, then think deeper.
Why did he feel so great when I told him how strong he was, how I couldn’t believe he could do that, and how tall he was growing? And in no time I was listening as he said, “Mom, when I’m fourteen I’ll need to get some cologne.”
“Why?” I asked, wondering what conversations would happen next in my kitchen. “You already have deodorant.”
“Well, my body odor will get worse and worse by then,” he said proudly. “I’ll need both cologne and deodorant.”
Good grief. How can a boy be proud of smelling badly? But he is—and when I fuss over his smell he laughs and tries to smell worse. The bathroom smells badly after he uses it, and he’s more than proud. The same scenario would make my girls run the fan and close the door, hoping no one notices.
At this point all a mother can do is smile, promise a trip to the store for cologne at fourteen years old, and keep cooking food for that lanky frame shooting upwards at a frightening speed.
It only takes being a mother or an honest evaluator of humanity to realize that men and women are different—very different.
My daughters are strong little women but they definitely don’t get a kick out of smelling badly like my boys do.
My daughters are capable, yet want a brother or father to show care and support.
My daughters are intelligent and able to go out into the world for work and school, and yet, what makes my son beam with pride would make them cringe in distress.
My past culture showed obvious oppression of women, and still, I cannot and will not embrace modern day feminism.
Here’s why:
1. Men and women need each other’s strengths.
I’m quite certain that even most of the world’s most liberal women wish for a man to lift or carry something every once in awhile. In general, God created men strong and women less strong.
A man’s desire for strength and a woman’s desire for care shows itself in obscure ways at times. Over and over I hear a woman happily telling of her husband’s daily morning ritual of waking her up with coffee in bed. Her joy has far more to do with feeling cared for than it does with getting to drink coffee in bed. Her husband knows the tricks to his trade, makes it his morning habit—and they both thrive as a result.
A woman knows the tricks to her trade when she nurtures her baby at night, decorates the house, and feeds her family. If she works outside the home, there are still differences by nature and nurture.
A man’s strength has far more to do with character than with body size. I’ve seen some of the greatest men have less-large frames. Less body and more heart is far more masculine than more body and less heart. So watch your choices carefully, teen girls who look for strength in Hollywood fashion.
2. Men and women both need beauty.
A man is designed to crave beauty, not by being beautiful but by observing and appreciating beauty. When femininity is no longer beautiful, but becomes brash, there is little for a real man to be attracted to.
Girls love feeling pretty. And who do they love feeling beautiful for, more than a man they love and care about? The answer is obvious in creation itself—girls spend time in front of the mirror and men spend time admiring the beauty they see. Both are happy because both are living out what God put in.
We are designed by the divine.
Beauty means taking care of our bodies, yes. But even more, it means cultivating our souls. Men need women who are victorious rather than victims.
They need women who are disciplined more than disastrous.
And they need women who are not afraid of their femininity but who understand their greatest power lies in it.
Remove feminine beauty from this world and you’ll have increasing problems with gay and lesbian lifestyles. Women need to keep giving real men something to appreciate.
3. Men want to protect and women need protection.
Feminists may bristle at this line, but before any estrogen laden responses are given (even a feminist’s fighting manner suggests she’s utterly woman) I want to ask one question:
If war were to break out, most on the front lines would be men, not women. Here again, our society has given equal opportunity yet gender differences are clearly obvious in that, even though women are given equal opportunity to engage in warfare, the outcome is different.
There are still far more men in the military than women, even though there is equal opportunity.
Would we see modern day feminists pick up the sword on a first day of front-line grueling battle, proving with their death that they are “equal” to men?
I dare say we’d see men still willingly give their lives for women and children even though our society emasculates them on every turn. While it would be hard for women to enter battle, it would be difficult for good men not to protect their loved ones.
I know there are exceptions to the rule, such as Joan of Arc or other soldier women. But even with Joan, the most exemplary things I read about her are her encouragement to soldiers rather than her fighting.
Divine design created men to protect because women need protection. This means a man is called to protect a woman’s heart as well as her body. This is why cheating on a woman is so cowardly of a man. Rather than protect her, he wounds her.
Men would do well to understand that protection and leadership is not just physical. Most importantly, it is emotional and spiritual. Girls, when you choose a man, choose one who knows how to protect your heart by guarding it from devastation. Never choose a boy in a man’s body; choose a man’s man who is also leader in righteousness.
4. Woman was created from man’s rib.
“Then the Lord said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.
Now out of the ground the Lord had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not a helper fit for him.
So the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
And the rib the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.’
Therefor a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife.
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2: 18-24, ESV)
God chose dust to create Adam while He chose a rib, close to man’s heart, to create woman. Why would we think to prove ourselves when God shows us in the very act of creation how valuable and loved we are?
Feminine women always remember that they have equal value, yet different roles.
Feminine women have no need to compete with men because they are deeply aware that they complement men.
In short, I am against modern day feminism because it devalues womanhood when its goal is to elevate it. When we understand that we are to complement men, we no longer compete with men. When we start competing with men, we step outside of our element and become brash, controlling, and miserable. Again, we are not designed to prove ourselves, but to be ourselves.
The psychological makeup of human beings flows with the Biblical design for our homes. Women loving womanhood means healthy men have something to be attracted and drawn to, something to protect and provide for, and someone to compliment them in all the ways they need it most.
Here’s to faith-filled femininity!
Women of Purpose 