More on vanity and physical fitness...

Kate Wicker is adding some commentary to the vanity/physical fitness discussion. Here's  a post she calls "Being a Hottie v. Being Healthy -- Part I."  After a useful summary with links, she writes:

The problem I have with pursuing hotness over health is that there often exists a schism between what is healthy and what is perceived as “hot.” In my personal experience, our health and how we feel physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally rather than just how we look seems to be a better gauge for whether or not we’re perversing food and/or pandering to vanity or to gluttony rather than our level of hotness as perceived by ourselves, the world, and even our spouses.

Over a series of posts I’m going to explore why I’ll continue to champion health over perfect proportions/a hot body.

I’ll start with this: A hot body doesn’t necessarily mean we’re healthy in mind, body, and/or spirit.

I definitely don't want to give the impression that I would champion "having a hot body" over health.  

I just want to encourage people to be honest about their mixed motives.  Doing so frees other people to admit the motives we're not allowed to admit.

I wrote this, or something similar, in Kate's combox (it'll show up after it comes out of moderation):

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Boy, you hit it on the nail with your boldfaced line!

I think it’s important for me to acknowledge my mixed motives, and I really encourage everyone to do it. I want to be fit because I want to be healthy and strong (AND because I want to look good). I want to look good because I want to honor the body God gave me, because I want to please my husband, because I want to show my children that my vocation is joyful (AND because, face it, I’m a little vain.)

Name it and claim it, you know?

Commenter LeeAnn quoted Fr. Paone on one of my recent posts about maintenance that humility is ” an honest facing of facts, admitting them, and acting according to them.” If one of the facts is your own mixed motives, then, ironically, admitting that you have some vain reasons as well as some pure reasons is a step on the road to humility.

But, as you were saying, just because you’re hot doesn’t mean you’re healthy either physically, mentally, or spiritually. It’s a good thing the devil never offered me the choice back in the day to get thin without getting, for lack of a better word, “better!” Change from the inside out is the thing to desire, *even if* the change never goes as far as the places that other people can see.

Sometimes I think that change can go from inside to out — and then reflect back inward and spur further change. I never thought of myself as having a “vanity problem” at all (mostly because I didn’t think I *looked* like a person who could possibly struggle with vanity, or wear the same kind of clothes as such a person). Then I attacked the gluttony problem, lost weight, got better looking, and bought nicer clothes. WHOA do I realize now that I have had a vanity problem, and what’s more I always did and never knew it. So… I understand now that it’s something I need to grapple with. (Along with many other faults of course. But I see now that it’s really a besetting problem for me, and deserves more of my attention than I thought it was.)

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I don't think it's inherently bad to want to look good.  I agree that it's fraught with not a little spiritual danger.  

As my fingers hover over the keys, I'm not entirely sure I want to say, "It's far more important to try to be healthy than to try to be beautiful!"  I think that different people may be called to emphasize one or the other or neither, depending on their circumstances or their besetting spiritual weaknesses.  We probably all should seek both health and beauty to some extent -- along with many, many other things -- in accord with the duties of our state in life.  

Both health and beauty come partly from natural gifts -- some people are gifted with naturally good health, some are natural beauties -- and from our own efforts -- almost anyone is capable of working to improve their health or of destroying it through sabotage and neglect; and almost anyone can enhance their natural beauty through presentation, self-improvement, and attitude OR can disfigure themselves to repel others.  Both are a cooperation with God to bring forth fruit from whatever gifts He has given us.  The analogy to being open to God's grace in spiritual matters is clear.  

I think we can learn a lot from seeking health OR from seeking beauty.  A lot of us are just having trouble disentangling the two because health is usually inherently beautiful .   The two are rarely opposed, as the "v." in Kate's headline might be read to mean.   

Occasionally they are:  some measures to improve or repair health are disfiguring (chemotherapy, amputations).  But I don't think most of us are dealing with that kind of situation.  Maybe if we were, it would be easier to make clear distinctions.  For most of us, though, it will always be hard to decouple health from beauty.

Comments

[LeeAnn Balbirona]

[b]I don't think it's inherently bad to want to look good. I agree that it's fraught with not a little spiritual danger.

As my fingers hover over the keys, I'm not entirely sure I want to say, "It's far more important to try to be healthy than to try to be beautiful!"[/b]

Agreed, because if you look at the teachings of the Church and writings of the saints, you see that health as a goal in and of itself is not high on the priority list. Rather, I think, the message has been, do what is necessary for your health in accordance to your position, occupation and station in life...so long as that does not impede pursuing a life of holiness. The Baltimore Catechism has a question "Of which must we take more care, the body or the soul?" and of course the answer is the soul, because it is eternal, whereas the body (while a good thing) is temporary. It's a tricky equation, trying to balance out reasonable care of the body with pursuit of excellence in the spiritual life.

[Renee]

There is a flip side to this. I am healthy. Just had lots of tests due to a pregnancy at 45, to make certain I am healthy. I am. I am also fat, and I would love to not be fat. Certainly, my health would benefit from me not being fat, but mostly, I want to look better. I am not certain it is vain, either. It doesn't consume me, but it is there. I enjoy looking pregnant now, because once it is over, I'll look fat again, and I know from experience that it'll be a while until I can seriously do much about it. Maybe that is vain, but I think it is just being realistic.

[Bethany]

Loving your insight in these posts!

[Jennifer]

Good food for thought. I have been pursuing a healthy back (ie hot bod) due to a severe back crisis this past summer. My doctor told me that I had to "work on my core strength" in order to prevent this from happening again. So I started working out and I found that it was challenging and as I got stronger and stronger I developed a new appreciation for all those people who lift weights, do planks and push ups on a daily basis. It's hard. I think it can be an act of spiritual pride to look down upon those who have physical fitness, (athletic?) stamina and strength. It's hard to have a hot body. It takes discipline and hard work. When people compliment me on my new shape, I say thank you with gratitude because I know how hard I worked to get this way. It didn't come easy. And this discipline has affected the rest of my life - I organize my time around getting to Mass, getting to the gym, doing household chores, picking up the children at school, walking the dogs, etc. etc. Am I pursuing the hot body or is it a result of the hard work I put into it so I won't throw out my back every 6 months or so? Who knows, all I know is that I can't afford being immobile for two weeks at a pop anymore.

[Kate Wicker]

Bearing comment

I've been meaning to chime in here because I really appreciate this ongoing discussion. 

One point I want to bring up in case people do not read my original post and aren't familiar with my history is that there are women who choose thinness (and what they believe is beautiful and more importantly) worthy) over health. I suffered from a clinical eating disorder. It was an all or nothing choice for me at my worst: Either choose to stop abusing my body (and be healthy) or choose to be in control and to be thin. It's taken me a long time to embrace your wisdom that being healthy and being beautiful often overlap. But health is not the same as being a hottie for a lot of women. Pursuing a body that is "hot" (or what society has told her is hot), in fact, may force a woman to sacrifice health.  

Furthermore, being beautiful is not the same as being a hottie either (not that you are suggesting this). Yet, Western society does seem to often push a "hot" ideal as being what is beautiful. 

When I explore this topic, I realize I might come off as being overly sensitive about pursuing any form of physical attractiveness given my eating disordered past and own struggles with vanity. However, as I recenty wrote about in a follow-up post I would never suggest that we don’t try to be as beautiful as God intended us to be in the physical and spiritual sense. But for many women that healthy kind of beauty may not live up to what a lot of people consider the makings of a hot bod. 

I agree 100% that there's nothing wrong with expressing our mixed motives for losing weight and/or exercising or eating right. Actually, there's a lot of "right" with it. 

 When  Christians bring spirituality into discussions about weight and physical attractiveness, there often exists a temptation to relegate the temporal to second-place status or to even completely dismiss things of the earth. I don’t agree with this extreme at all.  We have to break free from the mentality that things like physical beauty are completely superficial and irrelevant when we focus on virtue and holiness.

And, thankfully, I'm learning slowly but surely that pursuing a realistic image of beauty for myself and health don't have to be either/or kind of thing. When I thought thinness was what made me hotter (or more lovable and more powerful), I abused my health and ironically, the real beauty I was hungry for was elusive. 

Blessings. 

[LeeAnn Balbirona]

Erin, Fr. Longenecker has a post today about the Trinity being a model of the balance between body, mind and spirit that might be relevant to this discussion:
http://gkupsidedown.blogspot.com/2011/05/way-truth-and-life-little-trinity.html

Happy Sunday!