The Women Who Disappeared
We might be wrong about what it means to steward our bodies well.
They danced across the rom-coms of my childhood and sang the music that kept the beat of my middle school dances. Their faces graced the covers of magazines at Walmart and covered the movie posters inside our local theater. And I couldn’t wait to be like them.
I didn’t want the red carpet, nor even their particular lives. Instead, I saw the actresses and singers of my childhood as the harbinger of my future. Someday, I, too, would push aside these awkward pre-adolescent years, and live out the period of life they projected. I’d get to go to high school and one day college. Eventually, I’d button up professional-looking clothes, pay rent in an apartment, and clock into a real job. For better or worse, they provided a window to the stages to come, and a picture of what womanhood might look like.
I turned thirty-seven this year, and I’m no longer looking ahead to dorm rooms and apartments. I’ve boxed up those experiences years ago. Now I’m squinting my eyes to catch midlife and empty nests on the horizon. Except this time, I can’t seem to find the same women ahead. While the years have raced up to me, the clock has stopped for them.
Celebrities 10, 15, and even 20 years my senior still flash the same edgy fashion of their youth. In many cases their skin looks as taut as the young. I remember watching the teaser for a reunion show of a 90s sitcom, and I saw time etch itself into every male cast member’s face. Then the female star walked in, and I received the message loud and clear: Women dare not age past a certain threshold.
As much as they speak of Peter Pan syndrome among men, I look around and wonder if women are plagued by the same. We don’t want to grow up either, or more specifically–we don’t want to look like it.
I don’t blame them. I feel the same pull to tuck away time as my mirror spits back more splinters of gray in my hair. The skin on my hands grows thinner with every birthday, and words like perimenopause whisper about the changes that sit on the other side of its precipice.
We all internalize this pressure to stay young. It’s why women in their 30’s already reach for Botox, and why we race to the shelves for metabolism boosts, firmer skin, or hair dye. We’re all aching to grip on to what we once had. Sometimes we dress it up with better words: We call it taking care of ourselves, pursuing health, or stewarding our bodies well.
But what if all of these tucks and pulls, drinks and plans steal more from us than wrinkles?
What if all that masks death ends up veiling an even greater gift of life?
Who Are We?
Before man walked across the earth, crafted tools, and built towering cities, he first had to be created. His body was fashioned and woven together by the sovereign God who then breathed life into his empty frame (Gen. 1:26). God gave life, and that moment secured the reality that all our lives belong to our Creator. Of course, mankind rejected this identity. Adam and Eve decided they’d rather belong to themselves, and the bulk of history scribbles out the same wretched story1. Man built towers for their own might, lived for their own pleasure, and worshipped the work of their own hands.
But while they built kingdoms and wielded power, one reality kept pulling them back to their creaturehood: death. The pull of the body to the grave, sagging of skin, and deterioration of muscles served as constant reminders that our lives do not wholly belong to us. For what was given, can also be taken.
In this way, though still an enemy, God employed death as a redemptive signpost for our wayward hearts. It not only brings us to a nihilistic dust to dust mentality, but can force us to look at the Creator who gathered that dust to make us. The importance of acknowledging death can be seen throughout church history as saints of old spoke of its consistent presence–exemplified in their writings, hymns, and even the cemeteries in the church yard.
A Culture Hiding Death
Except these days we’ve gotten really good at hiding death’s reminders. Like lumps of clay, we not only talk back to the Potter, but we pretend as if he hasn’t numbered our days. The siren song of our modern culture dazzles our ears and we seek after immortality over time. We long to be attractive, wanted, and relevant. In the process we bury every harbinger of death. We mask its reminders with fillers, cover it with makeup, and we view signs of change within our body as threats.
As a result we veil the very message our society needs—the one we need. In, A Time to Keep, Ephraim Radner concludes that, “Part of our Christian vocation is to proclaim the reality of death itself.2” We may go about this in many ways, but one easy way is by revealing the body’s journey toward death. Could we proclaim the gift of life through our graying hair? Could we proclaim our humility before our Maker by embracing a changing body?
This doesn’t mean all alterations to our body are wrong. I don’t mean to bind consciences over hair dyes and wrinkle creams. Yet as we move forward in age, I wonder if Christians especially could be the loudest acceptors and proclaimers of their creatureliness. Instead of bemoaning their reality, could we welcome them in some way? This attitude will be radical in a world set on self-belonging and godlike possession, but its quiet presence will speak a greater word. For as Radner concludes, “to announce our creaturehood is to proclaim God.”3
Can We Find Them?
I don’t know where the women of my youth went. I can’t seem to find them in the magazine racks or in my favorite TV shows. Instead of the picture of a full life given of the Father, I see a stunted one beneath their smooth faces. It makes me sad and honestly, lonely. For if “all the world’s a stage, and the men and women merely players,” we lose out greatly when we stop seeing every player4.
We need to see the arc of a life—in the newborn wriggling in the church pew next to us or the toddler running down the row. We need the life given and grown in the elementary class performing a skit, or the teens conglomerating together in the foyer. We need to see the young moms juggling babies, and the older dads next to their son in the driver’s seat. We need to shake hands with the empty nesters, and to sing beside the older saints. We need them to look different—with their wrinkles, their shaking hands, and their silvered hairs. And we need to join them.
For perhaps the greatest way we can steward our bodies well in this world is to allow them to change. For in our changing bodies, we proclaim a life given and held by the Creator to whom we belong.
For more on this idea of self-belonging see Alan Noble’s excellent work You Are Not Your Own.
Radner, Ephraim, A Time to Keep: Theology, Mortality, and the Shape of a Human Life, p. 152.
ibid.
This quote is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and Radner covers the shape of a life using this text in chapter four of his book.
This is SO powerful, true, and timely for our culture. Thank you for shedding light on a topic many would prefer to ignore.
Also, your writing is just beautiful.
Beautifully said. I definitely heard echos of Noble’s work in there!