Graceful Embodiment

First, read the intro to this series here.

50 Ways to Be a Woman: #1

Practice good personal grooming habits. If you are going to have colored hair, keep your roots covered. If you are going to have fake nails, keep them filled. Take care of your skin, take care of your teeth. 

I want to go a few directions with this one, so please bear with me.  First of all, my inner feminist is screaming because at the top of the list of how to be a woman, we are told to cover our roots.  This superficial approach to our femininity can be seen as the cause and effect of so many gender problems of our society.  I could go off on a rant about these....


...but there is another problem I want to address, that is less obvious.  Our society suffers from a body issue.  Simply put, we don't know how to deal with our bodies.  On the one hand, we separate ourselves from our bodies (it doesn't matter what I do with my body; my mind, my consciousness is the real me) and on the other hand, we put ourselves under their rule (I am not truly liberated unless I follow the whims of my body).  The reality is, we are embodied souls, spiritual and carnal beings, rational animals.  Our bodies are a constitutive part of who we are.

While it is frustrating to lead a list about womanhood with instructions to care for our physical appearance, there is a good deal of truth to the idea that to be a a woman means to be in tune with one's physical self.  To resolve, or work towards resolving, the body-soul conflict that we all experience by virtue of being humans in a fallen world.

Practically, what does this mean?

Know your body.  Know how it functions when all is going well; know how to care for it when things are not.  Know how to keep well functioning as best you can, because it is an inseparable part of who you are.  Part of being a woman is respecting this body and living out a graceful harmony of body and soul.

That graceful harmony also means knowing how to control your body.  And I don't just mean sexually (though that is part of it).  Fasting and other mortifications can help us learn how to keep our bodies in check.  Being able to say no to bodily impulses on little, unimportant occasions will train us for bigger ones and promote that feminine graceful harmony of body and soul.

At this point, I think I can rewrite the Way of Womanhood #1: Live out a graceful harmony of body and soul.

We'll get more of this in the next post of this series, because the second item on the list deals with embodiedness as well: "Dress modestly. Gain attention through who you are rather than the parts of your body you choose to expose. It is worth far more in the long run."