Plastic

We live in a plastic society. Plastic surgery, plastic eyelashes, spray tans, acrylic fingernails, and many other beauty tricks have set a very high standard for what we call attractive. Not to mention that most of the pictures you see have been airbrushed. Just Google “airbrushed images” and you’ll see stars getting the treatment. We see thousands of images everyday, and we compare ourselves to them, pretty harshly I might add. But guess what…they are plastic, too! Ever since we were little girls many of us have allowed our body image and self-worth to be based on whether or not we looked like (you guessed it) a PLASTIC doll called Barbie.

So why does the beauty and magazine industry airbrush the life out of people? They want you to buy the lie so you BUY THEIR PRODUCTS. The beauty industry makes billions of dollars on selling face lifts, fake breasts, liposuction and more. They know that we women want to fit in, to be worthy of admiration. And we will pay to look the part of Barbie.

We even have plastic cards that give us a false sense of wealth, buying beauty with money we don’t have, so we can look like people who have been airbrushed, after all.

No, there’s nothing wrong with looking great. There’s nothing wrong with makeup or fashion. In fact, God is the Author of all things beautiful. But those things are just icing on the cake. They are nothing to obsess over, to lose sleep over. God certainly thinks more highly of you and I than we do of ourselves, and He probably has to chuckle at our attempts to be “beautiful” when He knows the truth.

Real beauty comes from the inside. It’s love. It’s confidence. It’s your personality. It’s your skin color, your natural-born beauty that God is crazy about. After all, He’s the Master Artist, and He created the amazing wonder that is YOU. The truth is you are lovable and worthy of admiration just the way you are. And the other reality is if we value ourselves, we will be healthier and happier. And that is something even an airbrush artist can’t create.

By the way, Barbie called, and she wants her life back. She doesn’t like being packaged and sold in plastic boxes any more than God likes his daughters to be.

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body," (1 Cor. 6:19-20).