Why I haven’t Shaved in Nine Months

How society deems our worth.

Just like the blog I wrote on body image, I’ve defined my worth in the past by society’s standard of what is considered beautiful, and I lost myself in it. I became consumed with being seen as beautiful, not knowing that it’s not something anyone can acquire, and even if you can acquire it, it’s only for a short period of time.

Societal beauty doesn’t last past your teens – or is it your twenties? Who knows, because everyone is trying to obtain it. The young want to look old, the old young. There are people clinging onto it, holding so tightly to their identity of beauty that they lose themselves, because it stops being about them and starts becoming about what others think, and what can be done for others to deem them as beautiful. And it never works. You could be beautiful in one person’s eyes, but in another’s you are not. Beauty isn’t sustainable, nor is it a constant, for it is ever changing.

Beauty is something God has given us by birth. It is a right. We were sculpted, created by an artist, and a perfect artist cannot make anything but beautiful. Beauty is not something that can be earned, scaled, or measured. God has made us perfectly complete in Him and not lacking anything. God has made what we deem as our imperfections for a purpose.

The hair on our body is suppose to protect us. The wrinkles on our face tell us how much life each other has lived. The stretch marks show us how amazing God has built our human skin to grow and shrink. Our scars are examples of the God who heals, without Him we wouldn’t be able to survive. These unattractive qualities aren’t undesirable to God, for they are a reflection of the purpose He has made our bodies to be. Our bodies weren’t just made to gaze upon but to work for us. Our body is God’s display of His continual work in our lives even when we cease to acknowledge Him. Our bodies aren’t against us they are for us, as God is.

Why should I change, manipulate, or hide my body to fit into what the world deems as beautiful when I already am? I don’t need to change myself to fit into the box that God has already made to fit me. Love your bodies, as God has fearfully and wonderfully made them. He knit you together in your mother’s womb.

Psalm 139:13-14, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

And that is why I haven’t shaved in nine months, because I don’t have to.