Tag Archives: culture

Spectacles on Society: Right vs. Wrong

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So freely did Elvis Presley “bump, grind, and shimmy” around on stage that Ed Sullivan pronounced him “unfit for a family audience” in the 1950s. However, after selling millions of hit singles, in 1956 Sullivan reluctantly hired Elvis to perform, yet still insisted that Presley be on camera “only from the waist up.”

In the same year, Eddie Condon of the New York Journal said of Elvis: “It isn’t enough to say that Elvis is kind to his parents. That still isn’t a free ticket to behave like a sex maniac in public before millions of impressionable kids…”

If Elvis was considered a “sex maniac,” what would Mr. Condon have to say about culture today?

Upon reading this fact from the past, many would think: well that’s ridiculous, people were so prude and strange in the 50s. Or, perhaps the innocence and modesty refreshes you, making you secretly wish you lived back then. Whatever side of the fence you are on, there are interesting thoughts to be had of how culture has moved over the years.

Our good friend Merriam Webster defines culture as “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time.”

Darling believes that culture, although technically intangible, is a thing of beauty. It is constantly arguing with, affirming, changing, or growing us–stretching the current norm–which can be fascinating, moving, or even offensive at times. Looking back in history at social norms and beliefs always brings perspective to the present, and can show us if perhaps we need to bring some ideals back, or leave them in the past.

So we must ask: what was it that was so offensive about the shaking hips and hints at sexuality on TV? Was it because they didn’t want kids to grow up too fast? Did they believe that anything of a sensual nature was more of a “private” thing? Or was it only morals without reason passed down from previous generations?

Whatever the reason, the reality remains that we have moved, in a little over 60 years, from high standards of modesty and diligent efforts to protect young eyes, to a virtually unrestricted freedom to display overt sexuality in media, music, TV, and movies. Yes, we do have “rating” systems, but the Internet by no means follows the rules, and even our PG-13 would have shocked mothers of the 1950s to the point of throwing their TVs onto the lawn.

And we aren’t talking about the Elvis shimmy anymore. Now it’s “okay” for young people to do more than shake their hips, and they can do it in lingerie or teeny, tiny skirts in a music video, or even in front of thousands of teenagers in a sold out Madison Square Garden. They can kiss and touch their way to shock value right in front of mainstream viewers.

Is this move a progression in human society and a part of what some now call claiming our “sexual freedom?” Or is it inappropriate not only for children, but also for us as adults?

While we can’t blame any one person or people group for the lack of modesty or sexual discretion in media and culture, we can have an opinion and standards for ourselves and our children someday. It seems as if society today abides by the unspoken rule: don’t say anything is wrong because what’s wrong for you may not be wrong for someone else. One thing society of the 1950s had was a more united front (obviously with some opposers) on issues of morality and decency. Although most of us don’t agree with their extremities, we can also gain wisdom from some of their ideals and begin movements toward united beliefs in order to protect ourselves, our marriages, and our children.

British journalist Alex Hamilton once said, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything,” and this has much truth for us today. How can we be passionate, world-changers with no convictions about what is right or wrong? How can we build up a younger generation in integrity and morality when we have no solid moral code of our own?

Darling believes an important part of forming our “standards” is to stand on a ground of grace mixed with honesty. This is a place of claiming what we believe is right or wrong, while still respecting the beliefs of others. So, it’s not like we want to return to wearing aprons and watching Leave it to Beaver every night, but we do think culture has something to learn about leaving something to the imagination when it comes to sexuality and modesty.

Now we know these topics are controversial, and that’s why we want to dive in deeper and discuss several culture issues along these lines in coming articles. So stay tuned for more in the Spectacles on Society series.

 

Photo Credit: elvis-tkc.com

The Character of Beauty: Kindness

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What makes something or someone beautiful, really? What is it that makes us stop in our tracks and be left in awe? In nature, we often recognize beauty when it’s unexpected, unique or rare. For example, a rose blooming from a stem of thorns or the sun bursting out of the darkness as it rises. Kindness is like that. It is highly underrated quality in our culture, and something we don’t see as often as we should.

To be kind is to be affectionate, loving, gentle, and of a sympathetic or helpful nature. How many people do you know who exude that?

I cannot write about the beauty in kindness without telling you about the most beautiful woman I know in San Diego. She is radiant beyond belief, always genuine, and refuses to let you walk away from your conversation with her without a hug. Mother Teresa once said, “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.” Rosie is the epitome of that.

Rosie is the facilities janitor at my husband Brian’s office. I first met her last year when I was dropping off something for Brian at work. She saw us talking and walked over, asking Brian if I was his wife and if he’d introduce us. She immediately hugged me, and told me how excited she was to finally meet me, as Brian had told her all about me. Since then, she stops whatever she’s doing whenever I stop by the office, always giving me that big hug and asking about how things are going in our lives.

She is loving, authentic and kind–truly the kind of woman I want to be when I grow up. Though I consistently fool myself thinking that beauty has something to do with how I dress or how my body looks, she has the kind of beauty that I really want–the kind that impacts people’s lives and spreads love around.

The truth is, we cannot truly be beautiful without kindness. Yes, it is rare. Yes, it is difficult. But it is certainly not impossible, and it will become more natural as we practice. Here a few ways we can begin to pursue kindness in our daily lives:

1. Hold the door open for a stranger.

2. Acknowledge the humanity of others, regardless of their social status.

3. Listen to a friend who needs to be heard, refraining from giving advice unless we are asked.

4. Offer to help others, whether by bringing food to a friend who become a new mom, or by helping someone move across town to their new apartment.

5. Bring coffee to a coworker who has been working on a tough project.

6. Write an encouraging note to a friend for no reason.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for part two of this Six-Part Series on defining beauty: joy.

 

Photo Credit: modernhepburn.tumblr.com

25 Days of Darling: Day 18

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Put others first. There are only a few shopping days until Christmas, and parking lots and malls are a scene of mayhem; people are on edge–honking at one another and fighting for their place in long lines. Until Christmas, be conscientious while driving, even give someone a parking spot you were about to take. If someone is in a hurry, let them go in front of you in line. Keep in mind that it’s not about being “first;” its about love. And as you practice this, perhaps it will spill over into your life no matter what time of year. 

From the series:  25 Days of Darling

Photo Credit: http://www.foxnews.com/

Meet the Intellectual

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What sets humans apart from the rest of creation is the ability to use our minds to imagine, critique, reason, or create ideas.

Animals do not “think” about what they are going to do in the morning, or create art for art’s sake. Our brains are incredibly powerful, which makes them capable of the greatest good, but also the darkest evils. Since power is easily corruptible, we must guard our minds carefully—what we visually and audibly take in, and where we allow our minds to wander. Although the heart, mind, and spirit are all interconnected, it seems as though the mind has the greatest influence. Literally, we think, we speak. We think, we create. We think, we act. We think, we feel. What you imagine you are, you literally become.

Darling believes it is beautiful and attractive to be an educated, intelligent woman with gentle opinions and good questions. We want to encourage our minds to grow and thrive in intellect—learning about the world, debating current events, culture, books, and modern and ancient thought. There can never be enough learning. You are smart. You can know interesting facts. Your opinion matters. In regard to having a healthy mind, you can control your thoughts, you can be positive; you can change your perspective into something brighter. You can speak wisdom to others, and be a valuable, culture-molding voice in your own community. When hope grows and negativity is set at bay, love, grace, and care for others can truly change the world.

After all, beauty is not just skin deep. Being an interesting conversationalist is of high value. A woman with a sharp mind, quick wit, and a wise soul will never fail to intrigue everyone in the room.

Albert Einstein said, “All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

What do you believe is the difference between imagination and knowledge?

 

Photo Credit: vanessajackman.blogspot.com

Meet the Beautician

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Oh, how we all long for beauty! Mysterious and diverse as it is, we capture it, photograph it, and worship it, often forgetting how fleeting it is—like sand in an hourglass. However, in order to hold and keep beauty, we must build it solidly from the inside out, then it will never slip through our fingers.

What fascinating creatures we are with eyes like endlessly deep colored pools, long beautiful eyelashes that keep out all harm, and limbs and systems that function in perfect unity with one another. We are walking miracles, but how often we despise ourselves, hungry for what we don’t have, feeling like we never measure up.

To care for yourself well is to bring into reality the value of your being, your essence, and your own mark of beauty upon this world. Nutrition, exercise, skin, hair, and body care are essential to well being. When we neglect basic care of ourselves, we should see this as a warning sign that something is wrong on the inside. Without love for ourselves in our hearts, we have no desire to foster beauty on the outside.

Every woman possesses her own outer beauty. We should work to accent what we have been given, not work for what someone else possesses. Some of us are shaped like pears, others like apples, rectangles, or hourglasses. Yet why do we try and nip, tuck, re-shape, or alter our bodies? Darling believes it has to do with unrealistic standards of beauty presented by media, thus creating an invisible “pie” of beauty where a certain ideal equals 99% of your worth. We must fill in the other pieces with different aspects of beauty, and measure only by what we’ve been given. Besides, beauty also resides in our minds, hearts, talents, athleticism, and grace. If we build these from the inside, there is no doubt a deep-seated spirit of beauty will shine through. There is a lovely air to a woman who knows she’s beautiful and carries herself without a hint of jealousy or discontentment.

Yet we can’t deny the outside, as it is our unique face of the world, so let’s find a balance in beauty and health that truly builds self-worth apart from any form of vanity. What a pity to live under unattainable pressures and standards when what we have is just what the world needs to make it perfectly beautiful.

 

Photo Credit: thealternativebride.blogspot.com

In The Limelight

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Who among us can recall life before online social networking? Those hazy events which predate the Facebook status update and Twitter feed somehow seem less authentic in light of the continuous stream of information to which we now have unlimited access. By now, our favorite corporations, personal acquaintances, and public figures have all become accustomed to delivering their bulletins immediately and in as few words as possible. Our collective case of Attention Defecit Disorder, brought on by years of frenetic clicking and scrolling, is thus exacerbated. While mid-century devotees of Marilyn Monroe may have had to wait a week before learning of her latest irreverent statement to the paparazzi, we’re mercifully granted access to our own young starlets’ inner sanctums as events unfold, ensuring that no nightclub visit or cappuccino errand goes undocumented. Our desperate longing to bear witness to the decadence and tragic failures of their lives and careers is fed by their willingness to indulge the public.

If we are honest, most of us would admit that at times we crave this false intimacy. In the era of Youtube, where the promise of instant fame is anything but empty, our more conventionally famous figures seek new ways to cling to their notoriety. Desperate times call for shameless measures. Semi-nude photos leaked by the subjects themselves are reproduced on gossip blogs in a matter of minutes, and staged scathing exchanges between stars are taken at face value by those of us whose personal interactions are a bit more mundane. Celebrity court dates and parole violations are no longer leaked by jealous rivals; the offending debutantes themselves must now launch preemptive strikes to state their case.

It seems as though this easy access to what was once more discreet has stoked our sense of entitlement in ways that ancient tabloid prints could only dream of. A discerning public demands the unfiltered scoop, and we won’t settle for those grainy camera shots of yore. We savvy, modern consumers reserve our right to render snap judgments from behind the illuminated screens which obscure our own inadequacies. As long as our private embarrassments are not on public display, as long as we sit safely in our homes, not caught in a five-star hotel surrounded by drugs and questionable company, we don’t have to address our own harmful habits, do we?

In stark reality, it’s as though the delight we take in others’ misfortunes, the sheer pleasure we derive from the all-too-human weaknesses displayed by the rich and famous, only plays into our self-assured pride. We are more connected than ever to our idols and their failures, but the questions must be asked: Does this serve only to make us feel better about ourselves? What do we gain from obsessing over the failures of another human being? And are we watching the lives of the rich and famous closer than our own lives and relationships?

What are your thoughts on this?

Do you believe celebrities should have more privacy?

How do you truly feel after reading tabloids?

 

Photo Credit: whatthecool.com

 

Une Femme

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The world screams at women: “This is what you should be, right now.” Ten minutes later, the standard changes, and women run to catch up. Darling challenges women to become what they are made to be. It combats the model of today’s society that commands women to rebel against their nature and act more like men. The feminist movement is weak because it demands equality without giving it. Many women are running in the direction that denies them true freedom. 

Who Am I?

A woman. Una mujer. Une femme. Una donna.

Do not forget that we are strong. But this is not brawn. Strength signifies the beauty of our golden hearts and engaged minds that have the power to shape life and culture.

I am God’s Creation. Created beautifully. Lovely. To befriend each other, to behold beauty and love one another.

I am unique.

God created Adam to be relational, so was not surprised to see his need for a mate. It would have been easy for God to just put together another man, since he had already created one. But no. God created Eve. A woman. She was something so different that God and Adam stood back and were amazed. We are not just equal. We are unique. Given a unique mission by our Creator to explore what He created.

Now, culture ties a woman’s value to her beauty or to her ability to achieve social or political prowess. Wear this, wear that. Eat this, eat that. Watch this, watch that. Buy this, buy that. Be this, be that, and etc. No wonder the women of today often feel lost and hurt. Casting about for something to give our lives value, we judge our merit by sexual and social conquest. We make love subjective. We hate boundaries. We love rebellion. And we hurt because of it. We must find one constant to measure ourselves against, and it cannot be the culture of the moment. To find a true center of meaning, we must look to the beginning. We must look before things spun out of control and we lost ourselves in a deluge of chaos.

I am loved. We are taught that love comes to us at the price of certain conditions. We must act a certain way and wear certain things and give certain things to get love. It’s the same way with everyone. Unconditional love is a foreign concept, and some people believe some people are simply not loveable. We must challenge our boundaries of love and move closer to having a heart that overflows for others. Granted we are far from loving like God, but if we move an inch closer with love, so many things will change. As a matter of fact, the whole world will change.

Our goal.

I felt the need to answer the question of female identity before I knew I could write for a woman’s magazine. The need to know “who” and not “what” a woman is. For “what” signifies something without soul and we all know that women have soul.

Our goal is to slow down and even stop the erosion of women’s souls by focusing on who they are and not what. Darling Magazine is an aid to the woman’s soul. Help for college ladies, independent singles, and working mothers. In our modern day, life comes with no refrain for women; we have the luxury of time to focus on our inner selves, knowing who we are and what we should change to better change the world. Let’s be women who think deep, question well, and live out what we believe to be true of ourselves.

 

Photo Credit: mysparrowblog.com

Sex Appeal: Fact or Fiction?

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One day on a brisk morning walk down Sunset Blvd., I noticed something really strange. As I sauntered past the dining patio patrons, heads where turning to my direction. Many men put down their forks to gaze upon my monumental moving appearance, and they held that gaze like I was an angel who just touched Earth’s surface. I literally held my head higher, and changed the pace in my walk to a runway strut, and silently complimented myself on my choice of high heels and black pencil skirt. I felt so beautiful and sexy, there was nothing to ruin my day, until I edged the end of the restaurant row and stopped at the crosswalk. When I stopped to cross the street, I saw the most beautiful, 5’ 9”, model continue to pass me. I realized that the men dropping their mandibles was not for me, but for this beauty clicking in step behind me. So I found myself asking…is sex appeal like that actually attainable?

Well, I feel that’s how many of us women feel. In some instances we lap up the attention of men, feeling sexy beyond all care, just to have the next woman snatch up that light in a millisecond. I used to think what many call “sex appeal,” could be achieved by the right outfit, and perfectly applied makeup, down to a rocking body. However, I now believe that the words “sex” and “appeal” paired is the most ambiguous phrase in our culture. Men claim that they are attracted the smorgasboard of qualities. However, it is something that woman will spend hours and hours trying to achieve. It influences what we wear, or don’t, and even how we act around others.  I want to believe sex appeal is easy as picking out a bag of frozen peas at the grocery store, but I feel that eventually the culture will change what they find attractive, so what’s the use in straining myself to look like something that is fleeting as good weather.

So, case in point, should I strive to have more sex appeal?

Imagine being a woman in the 1940′s where men saw the thinner women as less sexually appealing. There were all kinds of treatments and solutions a woman could use to gain a few pounds. Now look at our culture today, the industry of “quick and easy” weight loss is a multi-million dollar business. Even though I wish we could move back to those days, I feel that our culture’s idea of sex appeal is as faulty as a paper boat. I know I desire to attract persons of the opposite sex, but I struggle with making it my apex of living. I know that this idea of sex appeal has been doused in the world of science, boiled down to the fact that the more “attractive” a person is means the better mate they are. How interesting is that? I see that sex appeal is only skin deep, even though some believe that a personality is wrapped up in this immediate response from the opposite sex, but how can we judge?

What do you think?

Dicitonary.com defines sex appeal as: the ability to excite people sexually or the immediate appeal or obvious potential to interest or excite others, as by appearance, style, or charm.

Is this definition accurate? Has it changed over the years? Does it even seem like it’s going to shift, where women with more “skin on their bones” will be desired than the runway model? How do you define it? Is it something that you put a lot of value in? And do you think men and women value it the same, or one more than the other?

 

Photo Credit: Google images