Girl stuff
There have been lots of interesting posts around the blogosphere of late, that I haven’t had the time to comment at length on, but here are some links.
It Matters Whom You Marry. Jean linked this article on facebook. It’s good. Perhaps it is my personality, but I particularly liked the section about how a relationship will impact you emotionally.
Are Chick Flicks ‘Emotional porn’? H/T Jean again. Let me preface this by saying that I think calling Pride and Prejudice, Anne of Green Gables and Little Women “chick flicks” is pushing the definition – not every story that happens to be about women growing up and possibly getting married, which is a reasonably common occurrence, is a “chick flick”.
The article concludes by saying that Chick Flicks, like all art, reveal something about human nature, from which we can "learn more about my own situation and hopefully, with the help of some biblical guidance, emerge as a stronger woman, person, and Christian" if watched in the right manner. This is true. Although I find it a somewhat tenuous argument in this comparison. I am sure porn films, and the existence of the whole industry, reveal something about the human condition also.
Truth is, I don’t actually watch loads of chick flicks, not because I have a problem with people doing so, but because many of them are just not what I find interesting, mostly because I find they don’t actually deal with the complexities of human nature (Pride and Prejudice aside here!). I did stop reading so many “romance novels” though (which I mostly only read in my teens/early twenties), because I don’t find them altogether helpful (and Christian ones were the worst). The reason for that is that guys have never been any of those things to/for me. You read about men who go to great lengths to win the woman they love, then you go to church and guys can’t be bothered asking you to coffee. They just don’t bear much resemblance to my reality.
A couple of articles on Fifty Shades of Grey:
I haven't read this book, and am unlikely to waste good reading time doing so, but one likes to have some inkling of what is going on in the world.
Why are women are devouring Fifty Shades of Grey?, by Melinda Tankard-Reist.
Fifty shades of the Curse. Wendy’s article is interesting. She claims that when we interpret Gen 3:16, “her desire shall be for her husband”, as meaning that women want to rule over men, we are getting it wrong. I know some people here disagree with this (I think?), and I haven’t yet taken the time to look into it. I do have to ask myself, though, why I have behaved, on occasion, as though “treat ‘em mean to keep ‘em keen” actually works on me (which it doesn’t, err, in theory).