Good Jeans vs. God's Plan

Recently an online war has erupted over the American Eagle ad campaign featuring the blond, blue-eyed actress Sydney Sweeney. So you don’t have to look it up, here’s a synopsis: In the ads Sweeney says she has good “jeans.” “Jeans” rhymes with “genes.” The charge against the ad campaign is that, because she’s so obviously white, her indirect assertion she has good genes is racist. There are also charges from feminists that catering to the male gaze feeds the patriarchy. I’m not taking a position on either of these things, I’m simply trying to lay the situation out for you. Let me steer things toward a different-but-related issue that arises in my heart. This beautiful young woman does have a genetic advantage, and young beauty brings up some pain points. (I don’t believe the advantage only pertains to white beauties. For example, I’d argue that the African American actress Zendaya has a similar advantage—she’s better looking than most of us. And both actresses are young—another biological advantage in the arena of beauty.)

Speaking for myself, even in my physical prime I compared myself unfavorably to the beautiful women around me. As I age, I see even what beauty I did have ebb away. In our culture, women’s value is calculated by her ability to attract eye gaze. Even in my Christian subculture I see youth and beauty overvalued in subtle ways. It’s just a somewhat-sad fact of nature that some human beings please the gaze more than others, and that social rewards arise out of that pleasure. This unfairness at times distresses my soul.

But then I remember that the Creator made beauty. Specifically, He made young sex appeal. Sexual maturation changes the body such that all of us become somewhat sexy during our prime. Not by accident, the prime years are also the fertile years.

God created sexual attractiveness to facilitate the formation of families and the bearing of children. He gave us that falling-in-love capacity so that we could bond powerfully with one partner for life. The world has prostituted this capacity, such that instead of that attraction leading into a deeper love, it leads to the ever-shallowing of it. The world dissipates erotic power from the stable enclosures of the marriage covenant into the thin air of licentiousness. And that leads to a world of pain in which beauty becomes dangerous. But God’s purpose for beauty makes it safe.

Physical attraction drew Mike and I together, but within God’s plan this love deepened into the slow and steady fire of covenantal marriage. This was God’s intention for young beauty. It’s meant to dazzle, not the whole world, but the one God has for us. Mike still sees the 22-year-old me, indelibly etched on his memory. I’ll take it. I was at my best, looks-wise, and that dazzle led to deeper and better things, namely true, faithful, unfailing love.