Today I want to talk about another aspect of purity culture: Its affect on overweight girls.
I received an Instagram message recently from a woman telling her story, and it was so interesting I thought it deserved its own post so we could think about it and talk about it.
Here’s what it comes down to: In purity culture, we were told, over and over again, that boys are visual in a way that girls will never understand. That girls have a responsibility not to be a stumbling block. That God made women’s bodies to “intoxicate” their husbands, and that men were attracted to women’s figures.
Our worth so much became in that body that was designed to intoxicate, as we talk about in chapter 9 of She Deserves Better.
So what happens if your body doesn’t match the “ideal”? What happens if boys aren’t stumbling over you? I’ve had so many women write in to me saying that they felt so worthless when boys weren’t finding them a temptation, because somehow it meant they weren’t good enough (even though it may just have been that the guys knew how to respect women).
When we teach girls that their worth is in getting married and being a mom, and simultaneously teach girls that boys are sex crazed fiends, then what does that say to girls who don’t have that “ideal” body type?
I thought this woman’s story was a really interesting one, and I’d like to think about it on those lines today. So here she is!
My experience is as a plus size woman.
I am labeled as morbidly obese. I’m fat. I’m 31 years old now and not ashamed of admitting that I’m fat.
I’m also very healthy, as proven by multiple lab tests and blood draws, and the fact that I can easily keep up with my 6 little kids and part time job.
I grew up deep in purity culture. I went to a private Christian school where we had to read “I kissed dating goodbye” and write a report on it. They also used books from the Pearls and Ludys as curriculum. I also got taught this junk at youth group and at home by my parents as well. As a child, I never felt right about any of it, and it was very unsettling to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Kids are taught to believe their authorities, so I kept my thoughts to myself as much as my bold personality could handle, and I got in trouble if I did speak up. (As an adult, I now realize that feeling was the Holy Spirit shouting to me that these were false teachings.)
But as a fat girl who grew up in purity culture, wow was it was rough.
In purity culture, the ideal female is a slender, beautiful virgin who stays slender and beautiful even after childbirth.
(She HAS to stay slender and beautiful, or else her husband will be forced to watch porn or go after another woman who can actually pleasure him, right?) As a plus size girl, growing up in that light, I was trash. I was a fat, ugly virgin. I was like a second rate citizen.
The message was clear that I would never hold a husband, if I could even get married in the first place. My parents tried very hard to help me lose weight, because of their fear that no man would marry me. And the things teachers/counselors said to me! I remember as a teen, being pulled aside during a meal at a church summer camp once and being told that women need to think about their figures, for their future husbands’ sake. (Not for my own healths sake!? And not to mention I was eating no more, probably less than others at t table were.)
Stuff like this happened all the time. Being plus size in modesty cults! Ah!
They do not make plus size clothes for teens that cover up.
When you are “curvy” there is no way to hide your curves, no matter what clothes you wear. I was made to feel ashamed of my big hips and big breasts. I went to church events wearing boy clothes just so that I could stay in their dress code. That’s so humiliating as a teen girl!
Sometimes I think my parents had me in college because they truly believed their fat daughter would never get married. Most of my friends didn’t go to college. But in college, I met a wonderful man when I was 19, and we got married when I was 21. We were each other’s first kiss, as they say in the purity cult.
I was the youngest of most of my friends to get married. People would actually say to my face, “We never thought you’d be the first to get married!” I had a youth group lady counselor that I trusted from church offer to take me shopping for lingerie and specifically corset style bustiers, because in her words, “Us big girls need that extra help to catch our husband’s eye.” (I took the lingerie, because that stuff is expensive and I was broke. But I wore it on my own terms a few years later, and not because I thought my husband wouldn’t love every inch of my naked body.)
She Deserves Better!
Because we all deserve a big faith.
Your daughter deserves better than what you likely grew up with in church.
What would it look like to prepare the next generation without toxic teachings about modesty, sex, or consent, and instead set her up for a big faith?
When we started having babies, I had gained a normal amount of pregnancy weight with each pregnancy.
My body would hold onto the weight for a year while breastfeeding and then let go of it. The weight comments! And then the weight loss comments! There’s no winning!
I remember at one point my pastor’s wife noticing my normal weight loss between a pregnancy and saying, “Good for you, still trying to honor your husband with your body! We Christian women know we can’t let ourselves go.” I genuinely felt sorry for her because I realized she lived with this fear of not being good enough to hold down her husband. Her husband, the pastor, would sometimes make objectifying comments about her from the pulpit that made me want to vomit. After another one of my pregnancies, I was heavier than ever and having complications healing, so I couldn’t physically take penetrative sex for almost 2 years.
(My husband never asked for penetration, he knew I was struggling to heal. We got creative and still had a great time with sex.) But I confided in a small Bible study group about this (4 trusted people) and they gave me the horrible advice to give my husband a freebie. They agreed I had gained too much weight to be attractive to him, and it had been so long without “actual sex” (their words), so he probably should be allowed to do something about it. Again, I feel sorry for women who live like this, thinking that their husbands are like children and can’t use self control.
In the evangelical church, where we should be living with the principle that God looks at our heart, not our fat rolls, I was left to feel like plus sized trash. I’ve talked to other plus sized friends who got the same idea from their purity culture upbringing. Slender virgins are a prize, fat virgins are worthless. One of my plus sized friends even told me there were times growing up when she didn’t see the point of staying pure, because of this idea they had been taught, intentionally or not, that no godly man would marry a fat girl.
My husband and I will be celebrating 10 years this summer, and our marriage is great.
He’s always been amazing and somehow he also came out of purity culture knowing it was all crap. Our sex life is great! There is no orgasm gap in our relationship. He loves me, he is gentle and kind and considerate, and all the good things a man of God should be. I have moved past the horrible way I have been treated for being plus sized, and I embrace my body that my husband loves and that grew babies and gave birth and keeps going strong.
I wanted to share my experience with you, in honor of all the plus sized girls still growing up in that mess. It’s hard enough being plus sized in a sinful, photoshopped society, but add to that purity culture! Yikes!
How do you think purity culture affected the self-esteem of those who weren’t deemed to have the “ideal body”? I’d love to talk about this in the comments!
PLEASE NOTE: What I absolutely DO NOT want to talk about here is health and losing weight, etc. Let’s merely talk about the impact of purity culture ideals on people’s self-esteem who have different body types!
What exactly did they mean saying that the husband should be given a freebie.? 🤔
I was assuming manual stimulation while she got nothing? It sounds like they were being sexual with each other but it was mutual.
Giving someone ‘a freebie’ within marriage is generally understood to mean that the partner who is indisposed allows the partner who is ‘able’ a free pass to have sex with someone else. It can be a prostitute, but not necessarily. It can be full penetrative intercourse, but need not be, it can be anything that the partner wants to ‘get them off’.
It’s not a pass to have an emotional connection or relationship with a person outside the marriage. Some couples agree on a one off event, some agree that multiple interactions will happen (especially if the partner who is indisposed is going to be out of commission for months or even years). It’s completely the decision of the couple as to what form this extra curricular will take.
Oh that’s seriously disturbing.
I think it means one time with a prostitute, or one time to rape her even if it’s painful?
I hope your comment doesn’t mean you support spousal/marital rape? Maybe I’m reading it wrong?
That’s what I was wondering. Could this be what the “friends” were advising?
The irony is that your correspondent is likely far healthier and more attractive than all those people condemning her, because she is seeing herself as she truly is in Christ, not as some kind of walking sex toy whose only purpose in life is to keep her husband from sinning…
And this just demonstrates the totally sick twisted standards of purity culture. Got groped by a guy at church? You vile girl! What were you doing/wearing/looking/saying to make him do that? How dare you flaunt your body and make men sin?
Didn’t get groped by a guy at church? Hmmm, not very attractive are you? How are you going to keep your husband from sinning if you are so unattractive? Don’t you think you should go to the gym a little more often? Get your hair cut a bit better? Wear some more stylish clothes? How are you ever going to catch the eye of your future husband if you don’t put more effort in?
No wonder so many girls who are raised with this garbage are still trying to heal decades later.
amen! 😢
Crazy-making for sure.
It also promotes a form of idolatry. Overweight? Then you need to hyper-focus on losing weight or dressing to “look attractive.”. Got the “ideal” figure? Then you need to hyper-focus on covering yourself.
If the church (and culture) can get women so focused on their appearance like this, they are more likely to be too distracted to attend to the Spirit speaking to them; hence it is much easier to convince females that men hear from the Spirit better than they do.
I think this is it exactly; they put so much shame on women for existing and then distract women from noticing the position they’re in.
I am a 6 ft tall woman who was almost 6 feet by the time I was 13. I was naturally very thin and as a result I really stood out. Because being skinny was idealized back then I received hurtful comments from other girls who told me they hated me because I was skinny. I always had “too much”skin showing because shorts and skirts that fit my skinny waist were never long enough for my thighs. I managed somehow to accept myself and feel beautiful and even got married to a man who is a couple inches shorter than me. I’m supposedly the “ ideal” weight and height to be a runway model but that didn’t stop my husband from cheating on me. Being thin doesn’t prevent one’s life from blowing up. We are both in counselling and trying to untangle our toxic purity culture upbringings. I have experienced such repulsion and self consciousness about my body since my husbands disclosure. I wish the church would focus on promoting ideal “character” in men rather than idealizing/ objectifying women’s bodies. My core belief was that if I did everything right according to purity culture rules, my life would be good. I now believe that my voice is the most important tool I have and I’m learning to love my body again.
“My core belief was that if I did everything right according to purity culture rules, my life would be good.” And if it was not good, then that must mean that I wasn’t doing everything right enough and I had to work harder. I did that for years, and it exhausted me and alienated my children, whom I love very much. There is nothing good about making women work so danged hard to be “enough!”
” I wish the church would focus on promoting ideal “character” in men rather than idealizing/ objectifying women’s bodies. ”
Love that, and I think it would make a major difference! And I’m sorry you were hurt like that by your husband’s choice/actions. I am glad you are beginning to find beauty in yourself again.
I think this helps show that it isn’t about what wives look like- ultimately, men (and women!) need to not be taught to objectify women, and women need to be taught that men can be so much better than that!
I think this way of thinking stems beyond just the teen years, like it becomes so ingrained it can pop back into your life at anytime. I am recently 40. I’m a mom to 7 kids and my body bears reminders of that. I never really struggled with my weight as a kid or even into my teen years, so i would have never known i had a body image issue. I had my forst child at 19 and every 2 hears after that. 9 years ago my husband had an affair. He swore it had nothing to do with my looks etc., which i understand. There was alot of hurt on both sides that led to it. It still weighed on my mind though. During covid there wasnt much to do so Three years ago I finally fasted, worked out, watched calories and macros and got down to my ideal number on the scale. It became my obsession and i stayed obsessed with it for 2 years. It took time away from my relationship with God, mymarriage, my children and just about every other relationship I had. Last year I started struggling with long covid and I can no longer workout due to really bad head pressure, i also began drinking sweetened coffee again to feel better, and i stopped fasting as much, so I have felt like a failure as I watched my number increase on the scale. I’m pretty much back to where I started and feel awful about myself. My husband says he likes my body as it is and does his best to try and prove it but I have a hard time in my own head with it. My husband and I healed from the adultery and our marriage is better than its ever been, but these messages in this post are still prevalent in my own mind and I am just beginning to express it to my husband. We have 4 daughters, 3 sons, and my younger sister who moved in with us (22), so I feel like I need to set the example here but I am still very much struggling.
You’re exactly right, Angharad. It sounds like she is a lot more emotionally healthy (and she says many of her physical markers of health are good too), and we know how much emotional health affects long term physical health.
I relate to this story 100%. Add in a side of borderline anorexia and it could easily be mine. It took a long time for me to deconstruct from the toxic teachings that God was disappointed in my body and I was dishonoring his temple by being so gluttonous. Honestly it didn’t even click that this was super harmful until I had a little girl and knew deep in my gut that I wanted more for her.
I’ve found the work of Amanda Martinez Beck to be super helpful and healing.
I am crying.
Will have to read it again.
But, yes, I identify with much of her story.
Not in church as a kid, but grew up in a highly sexualized home & school system and knew where my worth was found as a female. Lots of emotional & relational neglect as well. My dad reinforced my low view of myself when he told me out of the blue that he would pay for a “nose-job” (not very helpful as one of the few times he spoke to me directly in middle school).
I married my first date at 17 & pregnant.
I embraced purity culture shortly after coming to Christ after the birth of my 2nd baby when I was 21.
So, it enforced all of my fears about my husband cheating on me with a “hottie” and piled on tons of guilt over “losing my virginity” before marriage.
Well, that’s my short response.
Thank you for bringing up all the topics that you do – I have had many layers of scales drop from my eyes as I spend time in this space.
Just leaving this here for you and every other one of us Christian women who have been judged for how she looks, or for who she was in the past, not for who she now is:
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2 v 9
That’s who you are in God’s sight, dear sisters in Christ. Don’t let anyone steal the joy of that identity from you xxx
Amen!
I’m glad you’re here, CAT! You are seen and important.
My dad also wanted me to have a nose job done. He pressured me about it from age 12 till almost 15. It was couched in this — your future husband will love you exactly how you are but… We can fix this “flaw” etc etc.. When I finally was worn down enough and felt bad enough about myself to agree he told my mom and she put her foot down. She thought I was the one that had brought it up and seemed annoyed at me and kind of treated me like a vain little kid.
All the focus on “what your future husband would like” was so much idolatry — the idol of marriage and being a wife and putting the husband as the god to please and sacrificing our bodies in ways like this. None of that was the gospel.
Yesterday I was able to listen to my all time favorite preacher Andy Stanley for the first time in months. The title of his message was I love my Church. The topic was not related to this topic but the topic category type ie SHAME is the same. Here is the summary of his message. Church should be the safest place on the planet where we can share our struggles. Church should not be a place where we shame others with scripture to get them to do what we want or even what is biblical! Church is a place where we love each other and support each other. It is a place where we lift each other up no matter our struggles. It is a place where we build relationships with people who share real struggles NOT a place where we are shamed socially by religious leaders and their congregants. Church is a place where we uphold the scripture but it is used to save lives! Purity culture simply put does not pass that litmus test. That is a SHAME.
I’m so glad she found a good guy! It is encouraging to hear women share about their husbands who behave in self-controlled, loving ways! That definitely has not been what I have experienced or witnessed. And it is so good to hear a woman come through this with a healthy sense of self intact!
When you aren’t attractive, and you see your girlfriends pairing up with guys in youth group and you are the only one not pretty enough to “catch” one (friend zone, anyone?), it can make you feel inferior. I even got a (rare) letter from my grandfather telling the story of the ugly duckling and how he thought there was a chance I might grow up to not be as ugly.
I’ve spent my lifetime trying to gain a sense of self-worth. It is an uphill battle for sure with purity culture teaching, etc. Somehow that doesn’t sound so “pure” to me.
Your grandfather wrote you a letter like that? Holy cow!
Yes. I know he meant it to be encouraging but… well, it wasn’t. Big surprise. He honestly probably thought he was doing a good thing, giving attention to a mere female grandchild.
It also helps somewhat explain how my mom’s deeply-rooted shame turned her into a narcissist.
This was heartbreaking, but also so hopeful in the end. I vaguely remember research saying that one’s looks and weight have no correlation to how much one enjoys sex or life in general. (And there are plenty of purity-perfect slender women who are having terrible sex with their “Godly” husbands.)
But I’m curious if there is research showing that women raised in purity culture struggle with disordered eating at higher rates than the general population, kind of like vaginismus. Wouldn’t surprise me.
I think I have seen some stats on that suggesting similar things, that eating disorders are worse. It is really sad.
“Purity-perfect slender women…” What a perfect way of putting it!
As an art major, every era has its’ ideal of feminine beauty. The great 19th century actress Sarah Bernhardt did not have the Galatea figure considered to be the height of fashion for her day and was thought by many to be too thin. “Bernhardt’s thinness gave rise to many witty comments and caricatures, and, according to her journal, her long skinny arms provoked laughter during her first performance in 1862.” The skinny ideal fashionable today is ephemeral. Be confident in your own beauty and don’t be confined by narrow (literally) fads!
Waiting as patiently as I can for the “When Your Husband Won’t Let go of Obligation Sex” post – but this was good stuff in the mean time. Thank you for sharing this.
It’s coming! I’m finishing up the series next week & the week after. I just had stuff going on behind the scenes and couldn’t write something big because I don’t have the emotional bandwidth right now.
I am fairly average weight but I have struggled with high functioning depression on and off for most of my life. When I was in High School and going through a bout of depression my parents were worried that I would not be able to find a husband because I had gained a little bit of weight. It was really demoralizing to have them and other relatives make comments on my body when what I really needed was to see a therapist and get on anti-depressants. Purity Culture and diet culture negatively impacted my health and made me feel like an object and not a person. No one commented on my depression or felt the need to fix that, but they were very focused on my body. Now I am happily married to a man who cares more about my emotional and physical health then how much weight I gain. The contrast is shocking. How can the church preach that women don’t have worth unless they are “beautiful” and still claim to preach the gospel? It boggles my mind. This is not the love of Jesus.
To be clear – I tend to gain weight when I am depressed and anxious. Adding a diet to the mix makes everything worse and doesn’t address the main problem.
I’m so glad you’re in a good place with a good man, but so sorry that you endured that in high school.
Yes!! I started gaining weight at true end of high school due to depression (that I now realize was a trauma response after being SAed). The first thing out of my mom’s mouth was “Are you getting fat on purpose so boys won’t notice you anymore?”
🚩🚩🚩
How come nobody ever talks about how the men look? A man who “let’s himself go” doesn’t get this kind of hate – and men don’t have to deal with the changes child birth causes. I’ve seen truly out of shape and/or ugly men dissing women, and I truly want to ask if they’ve looked in a mirror.
Now, I don’t want this horrible “standard” to be applied to anyone, but some people just can’t see the double standard until you flip the script.
It’s all so gross.
I agree. Men are always given more grace and are allowed to live in a fat body and expect his wife to be thin, and look young. You watch any sitcoms and the “funny” heavier dad who walks around with no shirt on and his belly hanging over his pants but the woman cast as his thin wife will say the show told her she was too heavy and needed to keep losing weight. The expectations for women is most things are abusive.
What is even more tragic is that the church perpetuates these cultural ideas rather than calling them out as immoral.
Ah there it is. Sheila entitled this article how purity culture impacts teen girls. Article is not even about men. But not surprising the comment thread quickly turned it into hating on men, who were created in Gods image too.
Consistent with Rebecca/Sheila’s practice of censoring and not publishing a male point of view that differed from their narrative in comments, even when presented with respect and calmness.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. What are we censoring here?
Where exactly is the censorship? Where exactly is the ‘hate on men’? I’m seeing a lot of comments from women whose husbands have enabled them to find healing by reassuring them that they are loved whatever weight they are. Yes, there are also been comments about male relatives who have made unkind or unhelpful remarks, but there have been comments about women who have behaved in the same way too. Why are you not calling out those comments for ‘hating on women’? Or do you believe that what is bad behaviour when a woman does it is acceptable behaviour from a man?
Hating bad teaching by men is not the same as hating men.
It’s hating bad teaching, and as other commenters have noted, women can also propagate bad teaching, which is, or ought to be, also rightly hated.
Hello Matilda. This sounds like an ISH YOU AND NOT AN ISH ME. I am not hated here nor have I ever felt slighted here because of my gender. In fact my point of view has been welcomed here. Whats your purpose? It certainly doesnt present itself as anything but bad news. I take issue with folks like you who show up to throw up on us. Thanks.
The only censorship here is the kind I practiced on myself by not saying exactly what I thought of this comment.
I hope you reflect on what made you post this and and why you’re so upset about pointing out the harm done to fat and faithful Christian women by toxic teachings about how God views our bodies.
Men have been harmed by these teachings as well, for sure, but we cannot deny that the brunt of the attack and ensuing consequences have been on women. It’s not problematic to start the focus there where the hurt is most severe. In fact, a lot of the work that’s been done to counteract these toxic teachings has helped men too, a fact that I am very glad about.
Purity culture still centers the male gaze, so unsurprising that it affects the self-esteem of fat/large girls
I think the comment by Matilda at 1:49 is trolling, trying to make the post about mean women who hate men. I challenge the posting person to think about who is leading the conversation about having thin, pretty daughters. Prior comments were about fathers, a grandfather, preachers, and yes, women. The women who were fat shaming in purity culture are women who are under male headship, so women who are following the rules of patriarchy.
Yes, it is worthwhile to state how there is a double standard in appropriate body size for men vs women. In purity culture, men aren’t responsible for keeping their women from straying by their body size nor for attracting a godly woman by their physical appearance – it’s not an unspoken (or spoken) rule or social group norm
Beth, Matilda’s comment sounded to me very much like something a certain female, “Christian,” hate-spewing blogger would say. I won’t use her name here because Sheila has chosen not to do so in the past, but you probably can guess whom I mean.
Wow, just wow. I’m appalled at the way this woman’s Bible study “friends” handled her situation by telling her to give her husband a “freebie.” At first, I thought “freebie” meant for her to let him have a one-night stand with a random woman so he could experience penetrative sex. These “friends” seemed more concerned about her husband’s lack of intercourse rather than the importance of her healing from childbirth.
Since I was not raised in church, I was unaware of how much the obsession with female thinness (already big in American culture) was rampant in the church. Then, reading through Love & Respect and His Needs, Her Needs (by Willard F. Harley) showed me that the church has allowed this obsession to seep into their circles. Awhile back, you had posted something about a pastor who put a divorce weight on his wife and I saw that YouTube video. There was nothing Christlike about his sermon. Of course, it was okay for this pastor to have some extra weight on him, but gosh forbid, his wife could not be over a certain weight.
On another note, in my circles, women of all sizes have found someone before average-size me has so I don’t think a lot of men seem to care as much about size. It’s sad and angers me how much emphasis is still put on women’s bodies and it needs to stop. We are all created in God’s image and God does NOT make junk; we are His precious treasures regardless of what we look like.
@Laura — What is a divorce weight? Like I wlll divorce my wife and have grounds for a divorce if my wife gains 50 lbs?
You are saying there was actually a preacher giving sermon about marriage in some way in a church saying divorce is okay if person’s appearance changes? (Or I guess, if wife’s changes???)
The pastor was saying that he had a friend who told him that he had a divorce weight on his wife. Here’s the podcast Julie Roys did with Aimee Byrd talking about it (the clip where the pastor said that is there). The pastor tried to tell a joke, and it was a joke in poor taste. I did not find it funny.
https://julieroys.com/podcast/misogyny-in-the-church/
thanks for sharing
that happened before I heard of Roy’s last year
all I can say from watching the short video clip is
why did he “let himself go”?
why isn’t he concerned that his wife will be checking out other guys?
such a double standard!
it’s disgusting
why don’t pastors teach husbands to love their wives as they love their own bodies – be like Christ to them – love them – give them what you want in return
Aaron, the “joke” about “divorce weight” reminded me of something I read on a long-defunct blog, in which the blogger said that her brother had commented that a lot of Christian women were “15 pounds away from being in a relationship.”
I did not respond, but if I had, it would have been to say that anyone that shallow doesn’t deserve to be in a relationship. Years later, I stand by that.
As a girl who was fat most my life and steeped in purity culture, I get it. And I’m glad we’re talking about this. I had acne and irregular periods so I was put on the pill at 14 but that meant I needed to try a few different ones to find the right one. So I gained about 10 pounds each time. I was used to not being the object of affection. I had a boyfriend at 17 but I was told it was always because of my non-physical attributes; I was smart, witty, and fun so of course I could land a jock.
Fast-forward to this year when I got to marry my amazing husband. (Not the high school boyfriend though they do have the same first name). And, plot twist, I’m disabled now.
Wedding planning and other health things put so much stress on my body, it essentially caused me to develop IBS. From proposal in September to wedding in February, I lost 40 pounds. My wedding dress didn’t fit me because my weight loss was too uncontrolled for dress adjustments to keep up.
Oh the compliments, though.
“Marriage suits you.”
“Oh, you didn’t put on weight in marriage like I did.”
I’ve never been thinner. I’ve never been sicker. I’ve never cried more.
But my husband. My amazing husband. He looks at me like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He’s looked at me like that since I was well enough to go hiking in Joshua Tree (what feels like a lifetime ago) to when I’m sitting in my wheelchair in Costco.
Thanks to reading The Great Sex Rescue and avoiding The Act of Marriage, it’s currently sitting dejectedly on my bookshelf, we’ve had an amazing sex life. I feel good and beautiful and so grateful we have no orgasm gap. I have a wonderful marriage not because I got thin, but because my husband is showing me the love of God in a way no one else ever has. He’s healed so many parts of me.
That is so beautiful! ❤️
And take the AoM book off your shelf! It goes in the trash!!
It’s a lovely time of year (at least in my part of the world) for bonfires. 🙂
yes!!
Emily, how blessed you are to have a husband like that! So good to know there are such quality men out there.
Ever hear of the
Trim Healthy Momma
book?
It’s written by two daughters of
Above Rubies
magazine editor.
I’ve never read the book, but I know that this ministry has a huge emphasis on women being trim & sexy, content with their husbands no matter what, and having as many babies as possible.
(Yep, another toxic influence in my life, friends)
This ministry was followed intently by many in my last “church”.
Beware
Yeah, that’s great. She has to be trim herself but content with him no matter what he looks like, and he gets to gain all the weight he wants and has the privilege of criticizing her. 🤮🤬
What is funny is reading her first book, when she was really into raw foods, and seeing how hard she was working to *make her husband understand* that “this was the way…”
And not so funny, how she was working so hard with her children to accept this raw foods diet by focusing on how it would make them look so good. Yikes.
Oh, this video clip instantly came to mind. Rebecca had removed the peanuts and pretzels from the bar and put out carrot and celery sticks. Yeah, that went over well. So at the end of the episode, this happens.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DUk431UFlG8
Eating clean for a whole 12 hours! hahahahahah!
Yeah, a friend is really into that one. The recipes aren’t even that good!
And “Above Rubies…” 😬🙄
I actually have some screen shots where they talk about sex that I may go through on the podcast someday. It’s just so slanted!
Very good post!
Just a friendly note regarding this article’s title, many fat folks find the words “overweight” and “obese” to be offensive slurs. Phrases that are more neutral are “larger-bodied” or “plus-sized.” You can read an explanation here if you like! https://withinhealth.com/learn/articles/why-using-the-word-obese-is-a-problem
Not the person this article is written about.
I was thinking… with all the artistic depictions of Mary the mother of Jesus that there have been, it would be cool to see some that didn’t depict her as exceptionally beautiful. The Bible says that Jesus had nothing in his physical appearance to attract special attention, and he must have looked something like his mom. What if she were depicted as short and stocky and dark, not with beautiful features, but still lighted up with love? Anybody know of any?