God and Human Bodies

I recently wrote about the cultural and spiritual challenges surrounding women’s bodies.  That essay was prompted by the appearance of the movie version of 50 Shades of Grey, and the implication that sexual violence was somehow enticing or desirable.  In it, I quoted my abbot, Andy Fitz-Gibbon, who wrote, “Violence is always a failure to love.”  I agree, and I believe that statement applies to physical violence perpetrated against another, such as rape, or emotional violence visited upon oneself, as in criticizing every bite we take or day we do not exercise.  I also believe it applies to the standards of beauty to which women in our culture are held.

This week the celebrity formerly known as Bruce Jenner publicly presented herself as Caitlyn, a transgender woman.  And not just a woman, a knock-out!  For her public debut, Ms. Jenner was groomed and photographed for Vanity Fair by Annie Leibovitz.  She has been lauded for her courage and criticized for her selfishness.  But I was struck by the degree of conformity to culturally conditioned images of what a beautiful woman “should” look that Ms. Jenner seems now to embody.  And what does that then say to those of us who struggle to inhabit our own female bodies without the benefit of high-end surgeons, photographers, and wardrobe assistants?  In claiming her own personal freedom, what has she done to or for other women?

Human bodies are both a gift and a challenge.  How do we care for them, feed them, exercise them, conceptualize them, inhabit them?  To what extent is my body meant to be an authentic expression of who I believe I am, and to what extent is it “just” the package I live in, something that permits me a degree of mobility and autonomy, but no more than that?  Must I demand “perfection” from my body, or may I accept it as a sort of partner in life, some “thing” or some “one” whose needs and limitations I will always have to take into consideration, who will be present no matter how I “think” or “feel.”  Can I be as generous and forgiving of my body as I am with my family, or my friends?  (The answer to that, sadly, is usually no.)

Is there a religious answer to any of these questions?  It strikes me as too simplistic to say that God made each individual body according to some divine plan – to those born with severe physical disabilities that would be evidence of a God too cruel to be imagined.  But if I can find a way to extend my partnership to include my body, my conscious self, and the divine, then perhaps a new kind of compassion can evolve, a compassion that would extend beyond my self to include those who are struggling with gender issues as well as weight issues, clothing issues, health issues, food issues, etc.  Only compassion, that love which displaces the temptation to violence, can bring about the kind of wholeness which, I believe, is what most of us really seek.