Welcome to Gaia! ::

Okay, so as normal, there's a story behind this.

So I'm in this class called Theatre Major Studies which is an audition only theatre class. We went to get our headshots and group pictures done yesterday and they're all like... professional and stuff.

So I get my headshot done, and I take a peek at it. And man, I look like... a million times better than I thought was possible. I seriously looked about fifteen pounds lighter, I had an itty bitty waist, and the fact that I have braces didn't destroy my smile at all. Everyone else who saw it said I looked phenominal and commented that once my braces come off I'm going to be very pretty.

Now, I definetly liked getting all these complements on my physical appearence because... I don't get them often. I'm 15-20lbs overweight, I have braces which make smiling difficult and I'm usually plauged by mildly annoying ance. So I definetly was very, very excited by the fact I look fantastic with no brush ups what-so-ever.

But that made me think. Is this vainity? Is it so bad to want to look nice and feel good about yourself for knowing that you're athseticly pleasing to others?

I know vainity is a sin, but I consider it "vainity" when it becomes like... obsessive and interferes in your relationship with God. I think that since our bodies are temples of God, we should present them as such. We should, you know, take pride in how we look. My point is that someone should not spend hours and hours grooming themselves and spend excessive amount of money on clothes, etc, but I don't think they should walk around wearing a potato sack either.

So, what do you guys think about vainity? When does it become sinful? Is it bad to want to dress nicely and look good?

I think what is a sin is, as you both said, putting worries about how you look in front of God. I also think that God wants you to take a certain amount of pride in how you look, though. After all, He created you as a perfect, unique and beautiful thing, and I'd think He'd be offended if you thought He'd done a bad job.

So, there's no problem in thinking "Hey, I look good today" or in taking pleasure in compliments. As long as it doesn't go to your head, it's simply rejoiceing in God's gifts.

You should be proud of the body God gave you, but you shouldn't worship it.

If anything, you sound like you've got some self-esteem issues to work out. But that's okay, because I do too. (I'm a little overweight too, it definitely sucks, and braces are evil. I feel for you there.)

Let use some mythology as an example. The story of Medusa is that she had very beautiful hair, but she bragged about it constantly and said it was better than the goddess of beauty's hair (sorry I'm terrible at names) and therefore the goddess of beauty turned her hair into snakes.

That was perhaps a bad example, but what I mean is, you shouldn't love your appearance more than God. God gave you your appearance. Vanity is like receiving a great game for Christmas from your best friend and then ignoring the friend and playing the game all the time.

Aphrodite was the goddess of love, and then later she decided she was the goddess of sex. I don't know if she is/ever was the goddess of beauty, I'm not very Greek mythology skilled.



Thankyou. whee

In the sixth grade I saw a video about Greek mythology, and all I can remember about it was that it said that Aphrodite was the goddess of love and later decided to be the goddess of sex and it also talked about someone giving birth to a five year old. XP