"All Of The Clone-Like People"

Monday, April 22, 2013

"Be yourself. Everyone else is taken." -Oscar Wilde

So, for any of you who might not know, I'm a dancer. A competitive dancer. For me, spring is the time of year that's full of competitions and performances. Most of the time it's fun, but there are those few dances each year that just make me want to run away screaming. And there could be several different reasons why.

First of all, there's the classic, "Sloppy Beyond Belief" dance. This one has all kinds of flexed toes, bent knees, and other dance nightmares. Frequently, these dances come in the form of ballet- my sister's pet-peeve. They're ballet dances done by people who should not be competing ballet- four year-old girls and level one dancers, for example.

Then, we have the "Tidy But Boring" dances. These are particularly frustrating, because they frequently win. Sometimes, judges will favor the extremely clean dances that have absolutely nothing challenging or interesting to them, over dances that have one or two mess-ups, but are much more age and level appropriate.

We've also got the "I Can't Believe Your Mom Let You Do That" dances. These dances are a little touchy because, evidently, I've lived a slightly sheltered life. I have no regrets about the fact that I didn't know what the "s-word" was until only a few years ago. I don't wish that I'd learning about "knowing people" (in a Biblical way) before I did. But anyways, my "sheltered" and homeschooled upbringing has led me to be quite shocked by some of the dances people do. (And the moms who let them do it!) I won't even get into any of the stuff that falls under this category...

And lastly, we have our "Lose Your Faith In Your Humanity" dances, which frequently include dances from the "I Can't Believe Your Mom Let You Do That" category. However, there are a few more dances in this category that don't fit into the previous section. One such dance was performed to the song "Beautiful People", by Christina Aguilera. It started out with all of these girls in red, sparkly dresses, except one. She was wearing this awesome costume with a white button-down top, black pants, and "nerd" glasses. (Minus the glasses, I've worn that exact outfit.) As I'm sure you can guess, she played that outcast. The gawky, uncoordinated, nerd. Then, just before the last round of the chorus, all of the other dancers helped her whip off her "nerd" outfit, where underneath she was wearing -guess what?!?!- a red, sparkly outfit. She gave a huge smile, and joined the ranks of red, sparkly, beautiful people.

And after I watched that dance, I wanted to run away screaming- and crying.

Has our society gotten so bad that we honestly believe we have to become clones of each other in order to be beautiful? Have we fallen so far we even encourage that kind of thinking? What has the world come to?...

As you go about your week, remember this- you are beautiful because God made you. And He made you you. He didn't make you Sally Sou, or Billy Bob- He made you you. And God must have known what He was doing, or He would have used a cookie-cutter...