Today I learned of a new effort to revitalize the “War on Women” rhetoric – a political strategy that sadly divides women into camps and polarizes discussion.  Now, it’s resulting in some clothing choices for babies . .  

The apparent aim is coordinated rallies throughout the US on April 28 “to demand that every person be granted equal opportunities, equal rights, and equal representation.”  The sponsor appears to be the National Organization of Women, although the effort has its own Facebook page and website, www.UniteWomen.org.  Offered for sale in support of this event is a onesie for babies, sizes newborn to 24 months, in a wide range of colors, including mint green and light pink.  The onesie has this slogan on it:

Included to sell this item is an advertising photo for the $20 onesie.

If a mom dresses her beautiful, chubby baby in a onesie that says “My Mom made a choice.  Which was her right!”, what is she trying to say to the world?  Perhaps – though I could be wrong – this is not a statement about the baby, but a statement about the mother, using the baby as her billboard.  It brings to mind onesies that read “Grandma’s Favorite” or “My Uncle Went to Maui” – slogans intended to state something about a relative of the baby. 

But, of course, this abortion slogan is not at all like such onesies put on babies which spotlight the love for the child by a wide range of competing relatives.  The pro-choice abortion slogan emphasizes that the mother – not the child – is the holder of rights when it comes to who gets to be born and who does not.  The UnitedWomen.org onesie is a statement of power, not a statement of love, but I could be wrong.

Perhaps it is a statement of love.  A mother dressing her child in a $20 onesie that says, “My Mom made a choice.  Which was her right!” might say that this is a statement of love – a statement that “I loved you so much I did not abort you” . . . which brings to mind a conversation I had with a mother who regretted not having an abortion when pregnant with her first child.  She expressed earnestly that, in retrospect – though her daughter was now grown, married and a parent herself – she should have aborted that child and pursued a career for several more years so that, when her subsequent children were born, she would have a better employment history. 

This, of course, is one problem with calling babies “choices” rather than facts or blessings or persons.  A baby birthed because the mother considered it a “good choice” when she had the baby, can just as easily conclude that she made a mistake and her child was, looking back, a “bad choice”. 

I do not think that pro-choice women love their babies any less than their pro-life sisters.  But pro-life women do not think of their babies as choices – anymore than we think of crazy Aunt Ethel or generous Grandma Sally or incarcerated brother Bob as “choices”.  I do not think that babies – if they were given a voice – would be excited about wearing a onesie that tells the world their lives are mom’s choice.  I think babies would rather wear the onesies pro-lifers designed.  It only comes in pale yellow, but costs less at $12.97.  On this point, I am pretty sure that I am right.

Contributed by Catholic Medical Association

President Obama’s HHS Mandate Is Bad for Women’s Health and the Practice of Medicine

Dear Senators Boxer, Murray, and Shaheen:

In a Feb. 7, 2012 Wall St. Journal op-ed, you claimed that President Obama’s HHS mandate, which forces everyone, including religious institutions, to pay for abortifacients, oral contraceptives (OCPs), and sterilizations as mandatory benefits in health insurance policies, was a victory for women’s health.  As practicing physicians, we can attest that nothing is further from the truth.  President Obama’s mandate is bad for women’s health and for the profession of medicine.

First, birth control is not preventive medical care like breast exams and pap smears performed to prevent a late diagnosis of cancer or immunizations to prevent pneumonia and influenza.  A child is not a disease, nor are fertility and pregnancy.  They are physiological states of healthy individuals.

Second, OCPs contribute to significant disease and dysfunction, such as increased rates of blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks (especially in smokers); increased rates of HPV transmission; and increased incidence of cervical cancer and liver tumors. The same synthetic hormones in OCPs that make a woman’s body behave as if pregnant all the time also change her body chemistry, rendering her more susceptible to STIs.  As physicians, we frequently must care [for] women suffering from the unanticipated side effects of OCPs.

OCPs can lower the incidence of ovarian cancer.  But only 1 in 72 women will develop ovarian cancer.  Of greater concern should be the many studies showing that OCPs increase the risk of breast cancer—especially in young women who use them for more than 4 years before their first full-term pregnancy—since breast cancer rates have increased from 1 in 12 (in 1960 when the pill was first introduced) to 1 in 8 fifty years later.  The International Agency for Research on Carcinogens declared estrogen and progesterone Class I carcinogens in 2005.  Why would we promote any substance which increases the risk of cancer, and describe it as preventive care?

With regard to “cost savings” in health care, the Guttmacher Institute’s own data show that increases in contraception use lead to increased demand for abortions, and that women are more likely to have unplanned pregnancies when using contraception.  There are no valid statistics demonstrating that use of contraception and abortion have improved the health of women and children.  In fact, the rates of premature and low birth weight infants have been rising precipitously since rates of abortion and OCP use have increased.  One in 8 babies is now born prematurely. NICU care now accounts for 25% of the entire maternal/newborn budget!

Finally, it is important to realize that mandating “free contraception” is not free—it will mean higher insurance premiums for everyone and/or less money for the treatment of real diseases.

A President who is willing to use the power of the federal government to violate the rights of religious freedom, conscientious objection, and free speech of thousands of religious institutions, and of many other Americans who object to this mandate on grounds of conscience, will also have no qualms about ordering physicians to participate in providing contraception, sterilization, and abortion even if it violates their ethical and professional judgment.  In gutting the conscience protection rule enacted in 2008, and in refusing to include clear protections for conscience in PPACA, the Obama administration has demonstrated its hostility to the conscience rights of health-care professionals.  Attempted coercion in this area will drive out of medical practice many physicians who take their ethical obligations and the Hippocratic Oath seriously.  If this happens, millions of women will lose access to physicians who share their beliefs, and all patients will be more at the mercy of future government dictates about what health-care services can be offered or not.

As Catholic physicians, we swear before God to serve the sick with competence, compassion, and charity, always to their benefit and never to their harm.  Abortifacients, OCPs, and sterilization do not belong in a preventive services mandate because they are not preventive medicine and not good for women’s health.  President Obama’s mandate will prove harmful to women’s health and to the practice of medicine. It must be rescinded immediately.

Maricela P. Moffitt, M.D., M.P.H., President, Catholic Medical Association
Mary Keen, M.D., M.R.M.
Rebecca Peck, M.D.
Kathleen M. Raviele, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., Past President, Catholic Medical Association
Laura G. Reilly, M.D., A.B.P.N.

Reprinted with permission form the Catholic Medical Association.  This letter also appears in full at the CMA’s blog.

What chores do you outsource?  I read a list once in Time Magazine: The “Ten Best Chores to Outsource.”  Expecting to see housecleaning, landscaping, pool cleaning, you know, actual chores, I was shocked and saddened by the “number one” best chore to outsource: pregnancy.

As the Time Magazine article put it:

Outsourcing brings to mind big factories and call centers.  But entrepreneurs around the globe now offer services—from tutoring to sculpting a bust of your grandpa—to regular folks for a fraction of the cost in the West.  Thought the world was flat before?  Well, now you can hire someone in India to carry your child.

Outsourcing “pregnancy” has become big business, transforming having a child into a “bits and pieces” brokered industry:  sperm from a handsome Scandinavian stud, eggs from a smart, beautiful Ivy League woman, a womb-for-rent from a poor woman in India trying to provide food and education for her children, and brokers in the middle helping set up the legal transactions to build a better baby the 21st century way.

Entrepreneurs like Rudy Rupak, CEO of PlanetHospital, make their living converting conception and pregnancy into a commercial business.  Rudy’s brokering business offers what his company calls the India Bundle.  This “affordable” package deal offers would-be parents an egg donor, four surrogates for four embryo transfers, room and board for the surrogate during the pregnancy, and transportation services when the parents arrive in India to pick up the baby.  Costs escalate from there depending on services rendered.  Gay couples wanting to do egg-sharing so that they can each offer sperm to fertilize the egg drives up the price.  All the various preimplantation genetic diagnostic tests also drive costs upward.

This is what a consumer model of baby-making looks like.

Twins cost more, of course, which brings me to the latest craziness: twiblings.  Parents Michael and Melanie chronicled their infertility story, which is not atypical, in the New York Times Magazine article, “Meet the Twiblings.”  After what Melanie describes as many failed relationships, she finally met Mr. Right, but maternal age had hindered her ability to get pregnant, so they were off to the fertility doctor for five failed in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles.  Always wanting twins, they decided to hire not one, but two surrogates, enlisted the help of an egg donor, and “gave birth” to a boy and a girl five days apart.  Since the babies were from the same egg donor and they used Michael’s sperm, they are siblings.  Being that they were created in the lab at the same time, they are fraternal twins.  But, given that they were carried in separate surrogate wombs, they have been dubbed twiblings.

Meanwhile cases like those of an Australian couple who aborted their twin boys because they wanted a girl, and Olivia Pratten’s battle for the right to have access to her biological father’s identity (she was born in Canada some 20-plus years ago via anonymous egg donation), make their way through the courts.  These are uncharted global waters we are swimming in, woefully unregulated, with, at best, some ad hoc international law.  What is even more disheartening is the lack of a faithful witness (with the exception of Catholic teaching) in response to infertility.  From the New York Times Magazine “twiblings” piece, a director of a Los Angeles agency for surrogate searches stated that many of their gestational carriers were “white, working-class women, often evangelical Christians—the kind of girls you went to high school with.”  Or Sunday school perhaps?

The basics are well established within Christian orthodoxy.  Children are a blessing and a gift, not a right, and certainly not a product to be designed and manufactured.  They should be begotten, not made. Artificial reproductive technology – ART – is the manufacturing of children, often by design and often using third parties, a violation of the ethical principle of the two flesh becoming one.  In the garden, husband and wife are a complete family.  This was declared very good, without children yet being part of the story.  While infertility is a sad and difficult occurrence for those who want children, it has been made even more difficult because of a lack of Protestant thinking on the matter.  

Infertility is not a death sentence.   Children are not products to be made.  Our reproductive bodies are not to be blithely parceled and sold to someone else.  And pregnancy is not a chore to be outsourced.  It’s time for some serious corrective thinking lest our reproductive illness creates unleashed madness among us, and those who stood by silently be morally complicit in the exploitation of some lives for the commercial manufacture of another.

From our female fairy tales, we observe that young women must steer clear of the dangers of “mirrors” and “mothers” to chart their path to womanhood.  Today, we look at 3 more themes from our enduring tales of passage from youth to womanhood.

Care-giving.  One of the least subtle of themes, the giving of self – and caring for others – resounds throughout our female fables.  Whether Snow White lovingly tidies up after the 7 strange little men who took her in, or Cinderella washes yet another spotless floor upon demand by her heartless stepmother, or Belle tenderly dresses the wounds Beast incurred in her protection, we readily soften to the nurturing and tenderness and yielding these young women express in harrowing, uncertain and even abusive circumstances.  Unlike male tales, women’s stories rarely celebrate a strategic assault, killing the villain and overcoming injustice.  While history certainly offers examples of courageous women warriors, these are not the tales through which women bond to their female young.   Interestingly, our tales of care-giving do not feature babies or young children – a nurturing function that many women will pursue, but not necessarily so.  Instead, the virtue emerges from responding to difficult, puzzling and even threatening adults with a willingness to tend, take risk and even find humor. 

Beauty.  The Disney revisions and take-offs on our female fairy tales has enhanced, in my opinion, what we hold dear as female beauty.  While the more traditional versions might be read (unfairly I think) to tether achievement of female beauty upon the arrival of the prince, modern renditions seem more to reward the achievement of beauty with the prince.  Ariel, for example, must discover and recover the value of her “voice” to mature from childish notions to the understanding that what the world might find pretty bears little relationship to womanly beauty.

The magnificent tale Shrek 1, however, pulls together the themes of our female fairy tales, with the delightfully modern twist that the Princess finds her authentic beauty only when the “curse” of her physical beauty is finally lifted.  Fiona’s initial assumption – like every little girl – that beauty is the same as prettiness is dispelled by the kiss of love – a love for the true beauty within her.

Men.  I saved men for last – for our fairy tales are rich in lessons about men, and how we learn, as worthy, adult women, to distinguish the good from the naughty from those needing improvements a woman’s touch will not bestow.  These are subtle but desperately important distinctions for most women who will seek to couple, and for other women who will, nevertheless, interact with men throughout their lives. 

 Cads.  In our fairy tales, we introduce girls to cads: “an ill-bred man, especially one who behaves in a dishonorable or irresponsible way toward women.”  Who takes the Cad Award:  Gaston – a muscular, physically exaggerated, conceited bachelor (Beauty and the Beast, “Here in town there’s only she, who is beautiful as me, so I’m making plans to woo and marry Belle”)             OR            Lord Farquaad – disturbingly disproportioned, pompous and righteous (Shrek I, ‘Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”) ?  

Fathers.  The fathers of Belle and Ariel well represent the range of men women collectively know make reliable, if eccentric, partners and fathers to their children.  Belle’s father is nutty; Ariel’s father, blusterous – but both are loyal and available to their children even as they are occupied with the work to which they devote themselves.  These are fathers who feel protective of their daughters, but, as their girl children leave their care, are blessedly inept to stop their course.  Fathers can remain in the fairy tale because most “good” fathers love their daughters unconditionally but do not ordinarily try, as mothers may be tempted, to micro-steer their daughters’ course to womanhood. 

Good Men.  A “prince” of a man, we learn from our female fables, might be handsome, daring or powerful, he might be a prince or a frog or an ogre, he might or might not be our “happy ever after” – but, more than anything, he is a man who loves the “sacred” within other people; a man who is just, matured and does not see or treat other people as objects in his path to pleasure or elsewhere.    He is a man whose respect – and even love – we strive to achieve because it acknowledges and rewards the sacred within us, within all people.  

I will close this fairy tale reflection with Elizabeth Hanna’s own words, for it is as true of every woman of every age as it is true of the princesses we honor in our female tales:    “And the sacred within her is the most important part of her.   She nurtures it, she adorns it, and she shares it.  The beautiful woman loves.  And when a woman loves, her angel wings take her higher than any plastic Victoria’s Secret imitation ever could.”

 Did someone mention Cinderella? 

Last week, Elizabeth Hanna observed that “we [women] want to know we are beautiful even while standing next to a Victoria’s Secret model.”  Admittedly, women often do not feel beautiful.  Even highly paid, long-legged models wearing skimpy, lacy underwear yearn to be prettier, sexier . . . more like that other, more beautiful model.  We all ache to experience ourselves as worthy, valued and – as Hanna proposes – sacred, 

How do we attain a steady, daily, reliable

feeling of worthiness?

Fairy tales – like Cinderella, Snow White and Beauty and the Beast – offer lovely guidance to girls and the women in their lives about passage from childish ways to virtuous womanhood.  We hear these tales before we can form sentences; we watch movies and sing their theme songs into adolescence; we read the tales to the children we babysit, and then to our daughters and then to our grand-daughters. 

What treasured wisdom about the feminine so captivates

the female imagination that these enduring fairy tales follow us through our lives?

In this post and tomorrow’s, I look at five themes that emerge from our fairy tale foundation as guideposts for moving from girlhood to womanhood.  I am not an expert in fables, or literature – just a reader, writer and mother who has consumed in every format a wide range of “princess” tales.  I hope you will add your thoughts and comments.

Mirrors.  Mirrors for females are a deadly temptation, a window through which the pit bull of vanity leaps, grabs hold and will not let go.  Snow White’s stepmother lacks virtue, as a woman and as a surrogate mother, because she cannot separate her “self” from her image.  “Who is the fairest of them all?”  she moans famously, as anxiety ridden as any woman watching the Victoria Secrets lingerie show Hanna so poignantly captured.  This woman becomes wicked, not because she was born evil, but because she allowed herself to know and see herself only as an image in a mirror – looking upon her visage just as anyone else might look upon her.  There she consumed herself, like an addict compelled to obtain more narcotic by any means available, until she turned herself completely into the ugliness she obsessively cultivated within her. 

Compare Belle from Beauty and the Beast.  Belle, too, becomes attached to a mirror – the small, hand held mirror given her as gift by the Beast “so that you’ll always have a way to look back and remember me.”  Belle uses this mirror not to see her own reflection but to look beyond herself – and to invite others to look beyond themselves – to see another, in their suffering and their pain.  Belle’s mirror is a mirror into another person, her father, the Beast – and their need for help and service.

Mothers.  As sure as any mirror can derail passage from girlhood to virtuous womanhood, so, too, can mothers.  Mothers typically do not intend to retard the growth of their daughters – most often, maternal opinions, needs, and advice are proffered in abundance with hope of easing daughters the direction Mom thinks is right and healthy.  But young women can become as affixed to their mother’s image and assessment of them as they are to their own mirror image.  

Consider this:  there are no mothers in the fairy tales

we women adore. 

Cinderella, Belle (Beauty and the Beast), Ariel (Little Mermaid), Snow White, Jasmine (Aladdin), Pocahontas – none of them have a mother. 

There isn’t even a mother substitute.

Other women appear in these tales either tangentially, like the warm and observing Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast; as villains, like Cinderella’s step mother and step sisters or the truly treacherous Ursula in Little Mermaid; or as magical beings bestowing favors, like the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella or the opera-singing Wardrobe in Beauty and the Beast.  By removing the often overly protective, overly controlling mother from our fairy tales, we expose our girls to the expectation that they will find their own unique passage to virtuous womanhood, not merely in imitation or satisfaction of the mother and not as a vain reflection in a mirror.  Their path must be uniquely and suitably their own.

Tomorrow, I take a look at three more themes from our female fairy tales:  care-giving, beauty and MEN!

“Everyone I know is applying for grad school, or ending their college relationships, I’m just getting drunk.” ~Kelyann Wargo, University of Michigan

Kelyann Wargo – a 20s something undergraduate – advertised a new business venture:  the “Walk of Shame Shuttle.”  According to one article in the Chicago Sun Times, the shuttle service offers “a post-hookup ride home or to the dorm for students who wake up somewhere else after a night of debauchery.”  Not only is the Walk of Shame shuttle service – at a cost of five dollars per ride – cheaper than your regular cabbie might charge, Wargo proudly explains she also offers the girls a high five, a bottle of water, and – are you ready for this – a coupon for Plan B, the hormonal abortifacient more commonly referred to as an “emergency contraceptive” or “morning after pill.”  Plan B is a drug that comes with an entire set of medical and moral issues, despite its approval for sale by the Food and Drug Administration.

I truly wish Wargo and the students she claims she is trying to help could have heard the testimony of Dr. Miriam Grossman, a Jewish mother and doctor with a specialty in child and adolescent psychiatry.  Dr. Grossman spoke recently before the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. According to the Catholic News Agency, Grossman urged the United Nations to stop supporting a culture where “sexual license is celebrated.” The doctor explained that there should be great concern for such an attitude particularly for our young women since a woman’s biology leaves them “highly vulnerable to sexually-transmitted diseases.”  In a recent interview on my radio program Dr. Grossman also spoke of her work as a counselor on a California college campus.  She witnessed first hand both the physical and the psychological fall-out of today’s hook-up or so called sexually liberated life-style, something we don’t read about in Cosmo or see on Reality TV.

I truly wish I could talk to Ms. Wargo.  I have learned the lies of the modern culture after suffering far too many serious bumps and bruises practically all of which were brought on by my own bad choices.  I would tell her that there is a better way – a way for her to become a woman of dignity and worth.  I would tell her that we serve a loving and merciful God who always allows U-turns.  Over and over again he forgives us and welcomes us back.

So how do those of us who have the scars to prove that the wacky wild of our own day offered wasn’t all that wonderful share our concerns with those women who are caught up in today’s hook-up culture which, thanks to Snooki and Kim, is portrayed as hip happiness?  That’s why I do what I do now in terms of speaking about how my return to my Catholic roots saved my marriage and turned my life around for the better.  Yes, God allows U-turns but He also provides a better way; His way or as he tells us in John 10:10 “the abundant life.”

How is the young Ms. Wargo to know she’s headed down a dead end?  Even the media conceals the truth:  whether it’s local media outlets in Michigan that have picked up the story or major dailies including the Sun Times, about the only negatives or questions that have been raised concerning the Walk of Shame Shuttle have to do with whether, thanks to higher prices at the pump, the business will actually be profitable in the long term.  Meanwhile, Ms. Wargo compromises her – and her customers – emotional, physical and spiritual health.

Maybe it’s time for another student to try a different approach.  Maybe another young, enterprising coed could offer a healthy alternative service:  a ride home before midnight, the “No Shame Shuttle” that gives a “high five” or an “at a girl” to young women for taking care of themselves in a culture determined to damage and exploit them.

Maybe then the Walk of Shame shuttle will be exposed for the real shame it is.

As a surgeon, I am legally and ethically compelled to give informed consent for any surgical procedure.  That same practice should be required of abortionists.  This information will not end abortion.  It allows women to take considered risk and would allow them to get screened at an appropriate age when the abortion occurs early in their lives.  Women do have the Right to Know.

Recently, there were articles in major newspapers including the New York Times, LA Times and Chicago Tribune concerning several state legislatures which were in the process of writing or updating their “Right To Know”  laws regarding the information to be given their citizens before an abortion.  Two of the most detailed and well written were those of Eric Zorn, a contributor to the Chicago Tribune.  Mr. Zorn provided long excerpts from the laws and even additional information about the states which have these laws.  He also provided a link to information given by myself, a breast surgeon, which supported the aspect of the laws which cause the most outrage and consternation by those who support abortion: the fact that induced abortion increases a woman’s risk for breast cancer.

I had been asked to present the facts that support an abortion breast cancer link to legislators in New Hampshire and Kansas before laws requiring that information be given to women were out of committee to be voted upon.  I did not argue the epidemiologic data although since 1957 there have been 67 studies, 50 with a positive association and 31 which have statistically significant results.

I presented only the biological facts that would concern a woman who is already pregnant. If that woman carries the pregnancy to term she would have a lower risk of breast cancer.  Since the Middle Ages we’ve known women who give birth have a lower risk of breast cancer.  If she aborts, she loses that benefit of lower risk.

If she never has a child subsequent to that abortion, she may remain childless which increases breast cancer risk.

Or if she does have a child in the future, for each year she delays that pregnancy after 20 years old, she increases her risk of premenopausal breast cancer by 5% and post menopausal breast cancer by 3.5%.  If she already had given birth before her abortion, she loses an additional 10% risk reduction.

A woman who aborts also puts future children at risk for premature birth as abortion was found to be an “Immutable Risk” for premature birth by the Institutes of Medicine in 2006.  If that premature birth occurs before 32 weeks, the mother doubles her risk for breast cancer and her child for cerebral palsy.

A woman who has a spontaneous abortion in the first trimester is not at increased risk as those pregnancies are associated with low estrogen and progesterone levels so her breasts have not enlarged by producing more immature breast tissue where cancers can start.

Induced abortions are usually in hormonally normal pregnancies and occur before 32 weeks when most breast tissue becomes cancer resistance thereby reducing risk.

There is no need to argue over the studies which show the Independent Link between induced abortion and breast cancer.  Even if the 31 studies which show that link with 95% certainty are disregarded, because there are 17 studies which show no link, a woman’s biology alone will cause an abortion to increase her risk for breast cancer.

Before any surgical procedure, as a surgeon, I am must obtain my patient’s “informed consent.”  The same should be required of abortionists.  Telling abortion patients the facts will not end abortion – it will allow women to take considered risk and get screened for breast cancer at an appropriate age when the abortion occurs early in their lives. 

Women do have the Right to Know.

Dawa has become a patron for women within the Buddhist traditions, helping to promote the good of women:  among her titles is “mother of liberation” showing the positive value of motherhood, similar to the way the Christian tradition looks at Mary’s motherhood as vindication of motherhood. 

While the Buddha eventually opened up the possibility for women to form monastic communities officially sanctioned by him, the way they were treated indicated that women were still inferiors in society. The rules put a Buddhist monk, even a newly-established monk, as outranking any nun.

Was the Buddha’s solution one which really gave value to women?

One can argue that he gave what he thought he could give for the society of his town and that he sowed the seeds for something greater to come  of it. From the Buddha himself, Buddhism has a way of negating conventions, even Buddhist conventions. Though some solutions are of greater significance than others, Buddhist conventions are often seen as pragmatic, with room for development and change in differing circumstances. Everything is impermanent, and so no social construct should be seen as holding lasting value.

Such pragmatism can be troubling. Did it mean that the difference between men and women should ultimately be overlooked, seen as a mental construct, like so many other constructs in the world?  One might think this would be the answer which would eventually develop; and there is room for this in Buddhist discussion,  For most, though, especially those following Mahayana Buddhist thought, this would be seen as failing to appreciate conventional truths, truths revealed by experience – even if not ultimate truth. What a thing is in the world must be seen as something, not nothing.

Buddhism is not nihilism, however nihilistic it might appear to the outside observer. A mountain is really a mountain, a river really is a river, a man is really a man and a woman really is a woman. There is something which comes out of being a woman which differs from being a man. Even if one might, through one’s lives, be a man sometimes and a woman at other times, the differences in gender must reflect conventional truths and are not to be radically eliminated by the elimination of the idea of gender.

In Mahayana Buddhism, where there is the emphasis not only of salvation for oneself, but the bodhisattva ideal where one works to save many others by becoming a Buddha, the question of gender re-emerged – and took a rather interesting turn which actually helped promote the value of the feminine. This can be seen in stories of the bodhisattva Tārā, stories which developed around the 6^th century CE (and possibly with Hindu influences). There was a princess, Yeshe Dawa, whose devotion to many Buddhas was said to extend for eons, and through them, she became a highly-developed spiritual personage. Eventually attaining great merit, Dawa was told by some monks that should she seek to become greater, and that meant she should seek to become a male in her next life.

Dawa’s response was simple: no. She made a vow to seek enlightenment as a Buddha and to do so as a woman, to perpetually be born as a woman until she attained her goal and demonstrated that it was only the “weak-minded” who frowned upon womanhood. She would promote the good abilities and achievements of women, and indeed, promote their welfare and salvation.  Women, though different, did not have to see their difference as hindering them in their spiritual quest.

Dawa has become a patron for women within the Buddhist traditions, helping to promote the good of women, such as motherhood; among her titles is “mother of liberation” showing the positive value of motherhood, similar to the way the Christian tradition looks at Mary’s motherhood as vindication of motherhood.

Human traditions contain much which is true. When we explore traditions, be it our own or those of others, we must be careful and critical, recognizing their social contexts and ideas which might need to be rejected as mere accidents that are not essential to our understanding of the truth.  By looking at how people from a tradition or culture other than our own have wrestled with questions which we face today, we can get a better sense of the prudence needed to find solutions for today. We don’t have to accept what they believed, or the answers they provided, but we can appreciate that these questions are universal and are worth investigating time and time again, never to be seen as fully answered.

Bringing back the concept of the woman as sacred requires that we, women, act like she is. Because if we act like it then men will too. And lingerie companies will. And the music industry will.

The problem is many of us don’t really feel like we are sacred. We may not even believe that we are. But feelings can always be overcome. And when a fact is true, sometimes we need to merely act as if we believe it, and then the belief (and the feelings,) will follow.

Let’s start with the outside. Wear what you would wear if you truly believed you held something sacred.

Wear makeup it if you think it adorns you well, but don’t wear it as a mask to hide behind. Don’t be as concerned with the trend, or the label, or how perfectly straight you can get your hair to go. I was amazed going from a high school with uniforms to college how the majority of college girls all dress the same. And I don’t think anyone would claim it to be a very pretty outfit (nike shorts, t-shirt, leggings, tennis shoes.) And yet don’t we want to be the girl who is completely “herself”—who dresses in her own style and doesn’t need to blend? We want to be comfortable like her. We are just scared that we aren’t beautiful enough. We don’t believe we are sacred. So choose to believe it. Ask yourself what you would wear if you truly believed you were beautiful.

And then think about too, how much you would reveal, if you truly believed you were sacred. It is true that in an ideal world covering up would not be necessary, considering how beautiful and sacred the female body is. But our culture has damaged the bond between sacred and sexual, and baring all can detract attention away from the sacred. We know this, and that is why we all have a line somewhere with regard to modesty. But think about modesty in terms of what you would wear if you did not fear disapproval or rejection. What would you wear if you knew you were beautiful and did not need to draw attention to your sexuality? Sometimes we feel entitled to show off, and when we are chastised our interior response may be you’re just jealous. Besides, if nobody else covers up, who will pay us attention if we do?

But here again, we must choose to commit to the fight. And wait patiently on the men to follow. Because they will.

For deep inside every man is a jaded little boy who wished he could be a knight and wants that princess who he can protect and adorn. But we have taught him that that princess does not exist. That instead, he can have quick pleasure and excitement from the toys we make of ourselves. But if we want men to get away from the TV screen on the night of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, we have to stop watching. We must exit the race. For it is a futile one. The sexy, the shocking, even the cute—it all ends. It all fades. The only thing that remains is the sacred. And we must embrace it and protect it and demand that it be respected by others.

I want to finish with the fairy tale of Cinderella. Cinderella teaches us the most important lesson about beauty. She did not have the luxury of buying beautiful dresses (up until the Fairy Godmother arrival.) She wore rags and she spent her days cleaning and scrubbing and well, being alone. If anyone could have determined that no one found her beautiful or wanted her it would be Cinderella. But Cinderella is the fairy tale princess. Why? Because she was by far the most beautiful. She did not let anything destroy her goodness, her virtue, her must precious self. She loved as if others loved her. She wore her rags as if they were a ball-gown. She sang as if people listened. She knew that she was a princess and so she did not let anything embitter her or make her think otherwise. She made her whole self beautiful by primarily making her heart beautiful. And as we know, if the heart is beautiful, well, a bodily imperfection becomes laughably insignificant.

But then there is always the objection:

What if my Fairy Godmother never sends me the prince.

This is a loneliness that many women have to deal with and it is the reason fairy tales are blamed with giving little girls false hope. But the unspoken truth of Cinderella is that she would have remained a princess even if she had never gone to the ball. Cinderella was happy even in the midst of her loneliness. Even while no one seemed to notice her beauty. And that is the wonderful thing about womanhood. Like a lonely temple in a desert, it does not lose its beauty just because no one is admiring it. The beautiful woman is a happy woman because she is living her life like she should. And the sacred within her is the most important part of her. She nurtures it, she adorns it, and she shares it. The beautiful woman loves. And when a woman loves, her angel wings take her higher than any plastic Victoria’s Secret imitation ever could.

When I was about thirteen I received some perfume from Victoria’s Secret. It was called dream angel. Of course I expected, with such a name, that it would smell like roses or vanilla, or some heavenly scent I had never encountered before.

It smelled like fingernail polish remover. I probably left it in the front of my counter to be the cool teenager I was trying to be, but I could never stomach it enough to wear it.

About eight years later I was sitting in front of my computer. It was a night in the Fall and my Facebook newsfeed was blowing up, as it tends to do, when there is some important sporting event or national crisis or holiday taking place. But the guys and girls weren’t posting about their favorite team or what they were eating for Thanksgiving. For guys, the statuses went something like this:

Dude…

And the girls, like this:

…Never looking in the mirror again.

My Facebook friends were watching the Annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.

I’ve only seen a snippet of it, but the part I saw included an interview with one of the “angels” (what they call the lingerie models.) She spoke about dreams and following them and how any girl can be whatever she wants to be if she just believes, etc. and generally, this seemed to be a large part of the feel of the show. Building self-confidence. Empowering women. And while it may empower the models in some ways, we can’t help but notice that it does quite the opposite to most of the female viewers. Again, you need only look at the Facebook statuses. Most girls and women I know who see a Victoria’s Secret model think not, oh that’s so empowering, I feel better about myself, but instead, oh wow, I’m so ugly. She’s so hot. How can I ever look like her?

This is a pretty widely accepted fact, and I hope it is not news to anyone. It is how Victoria’s Secret sells. They make us want to look like their models and then they show us exactly how (although they sell us a little short without providing airbrushing or computer touch-ups or gene manipulations.) But by the end of it, we rarely feel much better about ourselves. Many humanitarians give answers to this problem. Often the answers involve some sort of reason for why the models aren’t really that great so that we can feel better about ourselves. These answers usually go something like this:

Those Victoria’s Secret models are too skinny. They are unhealthy. Real women have curves.

Or:

Those are TOTALLY fake.

Or:

You know, what, no one looks like that in real life. So who cares? There’s no point in envying, because it’s not real.

Or:

Well, they might be hot, but they’re dumb. It’s much more important to be smart.

While these statements may be well intentioned they usually don’t help much. Too often, the women who say them (or who listen eagerly to them) continue to buy push-up bras, continue to cake on makeup, and/or continue over dieting. These answers avoid the problem and by pointing fingers and making more judgments they promote more envy and insecurity among us and egg on the inner battle.

Some will answer the problem with the classic “every girl is beautiful” concept. Dove does this in many of their ads by taking “regular women” (makeup-less, different shapes and sizes) and having them model in underwear. But while many of us may feel comparatively better about ourselves because of this type of campaign, it doesn’t seem to be enough. We want to know why we’re beautiful. Deep down we all fear that one day we won’t be as pretty, or perhaps that we aren’t pretty, and then, well, it doesn’t matter how “beautiful” “every girl” may be—we don’t feel it and nobody treats us like we are. And we want to know we are beautiful even while standing next to a Victoria’s Secret model.

I am going to suggest that the answer to this problem lies in our recognition of the fact that we are sacred. There was a time when this was commonly accepted. There was a time when a man would kneel down and kiss every woman’s hand because she was a woman. But by the fault of both men and women we have created a culture in which women are either treated as men or as sex objects. Rarely something in between, and too often they are treated as both. Many women don’t like the idea of being labeled because of their womanhood. But the truth is, this labeling is the only way our daughters and sisters and mothers and friends—ourselves—will ever truly feel beautiful. We need to bring back the age-old concept of the woman as sacred. In Part Two, I will address how we go about doing this.