App, app on my phone, like my pic, so I can hear a nice tone.

Those likes and, less so for me, the mirror, whisper a tempting idea: it’s not entirely hopeless to strive to be fairer than I actually am. Fairer seems to equal more attention, acceptance and influence. Women put their looks to work to help them earn what they want, right? 

The mirror manifests a vague shape of hope and clarity with a message of what looks will earn you, and its psychological snare isn’t limited to a vain queen (or a vain woman, like myself). In a broken, opaque world, outer beauty has disproportionate power compared to enduring inner qualities. 

People pay to be like beautiful women, pay beauties to advertise for them, and use beauty for their own gain. Men may want to possess or use it, perhaps, gleaning masculine worth from the beauty reflected in the mirror next door. Pleasing the mirror won’t get you what you want. In this post, let’s shatter the mirror’s stale, yet potent, lie. 

Con As Old As Time: An Enviable Look Will Get You What You Want

Unlike our masculine counterparts, women borrow from a uniquely feminine bank to earn capital. Since before the Evil Queen, women have been conditioned to amplify their value and barter with an uncertain currency – their looks. 

With looks as currency, a woman may be counting on a return of attention, acceptance, influence, confidence, worth or … fill in the blank bank. These lofty returns carry a common theme: assurance. Assurance is security, certainty, and freedom from self-doubt. Here, I’m discussing self-assurance, and self-assurance is an innocent, ubiquitous human need.

What I’m Not Saying

Don’t get me wrong. Looking your best is empowering, and I think it’s right and good to value yourself by taking care of yourself and appreciating how God made you. Caring for your lifetime-enduring body and discovering joy and peace in your style and image are good things.

Each woman has unique beauty to share, and I think every woman should get to buy flattering, fun clothes worthy of her adorable, classy self. You’re too lovely not to take care of your once-in-a-lifetime body and unique outer beauty. You are a divine work of art.

By putting your best forward with your appearance, you have a chance to create a distinct, positive impression on those who are getting to know you and are interested in you. Presenting your best is a key ingredient for social success, since your image sends a reflective message. 

Although your best image looks great on you, your looks and your image are not the source of self-assurance.

Returning to My Point – The Con

The balance between being and presenting your best versus investing in an image for self-assurance is lopsided as a lonely seesaw. There’s a distinction between looking your best and using looks to earn self-assurance.

An enviable look may get you what you want, for a season. Sculpture-like social media magnets are evidence. But, looks aren’t the self-assurance moneymaker. The age-old con — looks return security, certainty and freedom from self-doubt — counts on a false currency for a real return. To yield genuine self-assurance, you need authentic currency. 

First, let’s examine looks or an image as the false currency of self-assurance. Second, we’ll discover its true moneymaker. 

For background music, please queue, “Tale Con As Old As Time”. Remember, the beauty referred to in these lyrics recognized potential where others didn’t. Belle’s looks didn’t create a storyline of love, her heart’s perspective and choices did.

The Con’s Damage: Losing Your Wallet and Time to an Elusive Image and Missing the Real Moneymaker 

It seems without a minimum amount of the right looks, a woman may not get what she wants. That’s the con, anyway. If a woman doesn’t look a certain way, will she be acknowledged or liked? If women (including me) didn’t invest substantial time, money and effort into looks, I’d be more skeptical this con still has sway. 

According to Statista, the global cosmetics industry generates over 100 billion dollars per year. A Groupon survey, “The True Cost of Beauty,” found American women spend an average of $3,756 per year on beauty products and services (sampled 2000 US adults in 2017).

The “right” or “desirable” image is subjective. The “right” image shifts like sand. Even for the most enviable, the trend is a moving target. Today, thanks to social media, I don’t think the Evil Queen is as bad of a character. Social media and its ads capitalize on insecurities and comparison, which fuel purchasing the “right” image. See someone more beautiful/with it/who has more followers than you? The con says: if you buy what she has, you’ll be more beautiful/with it/have more followers, too.

This pervasive message seeps into an array (if not all) of purchasing categories in life, not just looks: travel, art, homes, etc. Social media has become the cultural, omnipresent mirror on the wall of our time.

Rack up credit card points with magical beauty products, more flattering clothes and stunning travels for an admiral aura. Of course, a pivotal part of the presentation is its effortless quality. You not only look good, but you didn’t try to look good.

If you look perfect, you’ll feel perfect, right? Have you, like me, purchased a supposedly magical product to feel better using the right image? Like me, soon after, did you have less money and less of what you really wanted: more confidence, worth, attention — more self-assurance to make you feel better about yourself?

For me, exposing the mirror’s con is a relief, because I don’t want to release my iron grip on dollars, where dollars don’t count. Self-assurance isn’t free, but investing with an elusive image is investing with false currency. You can’t earn self-assurance with looks; you can only barter your gorgeous image for so long. Don’t invest in self-assurance with monopoly money and lose real Benjamins.

Self-assurance is hard-earned through: 1) knowing your Maker, and 2) choosing to validate your value with good decisions. Invest with real currency for self-assurance. Know how your Maker values you and align decisions with your value.

Jesus is the only true, perpetual source of self-assurance. He is the only certainty, provides the only lasting security and creates your best self possible by making you new and showing you how to follow His life-giving ways. Name anything else, including the mirror, which you rely upon for certainty, security and freedom from self-doubt. Anything else. All of it, besides Jesus and His ways, doesn’t last. He made the beginning, redeemed the middle, and rules over the ending – for all of us.

This is very good news, because your Maker, not the mirror, tells the truth about you: He loves you and died for you. When Jesus died for you on the cross and rose again, He confirmed your worth by giving his own life. Even if your image changes, God’s love for you does not. This is not a cute, mushy love. This is a — left heaven, was ridiculed, bullied, beaten, pierced with nails, had thorns in his skull, was hung on a cross and killed — kind of love.

He forgives and accepts you, even as He knows your ugliest moments and most repulsive internal features (we all have them). By following Him in mind and action, He can transform the internal ugliness. And, internal ugliness is more challenging to change than outer appearance. 

Security, certainty and freedom from self-doubt comes from God’s sacrifice for us and value of us. Through His grace, we have the opportunity to make good decisions and do the right thing. We have the chance to earn self-respect.

Exponential Growth for Self-Assurance: Your Decisions

You will always be valuable to God, but only you can choose to grow in self-assurance with value-validating decisions. Until you decide to believe God about your value and align your decisions with your worth, your self-doubt will outgrow your self-assurance. When your decisions align with your value, your self-assurance will outgrow your self-doubt. Self-doubt may pop in now and then, but its hold won’t be as strong. 

Here’s a small buffet of value-validating decisions: when you want to eat your feelings (as I do), remember, you’re worth more than that. When you want to drink reality away, Jesus will help you face it, and you’re worth more than that. When you don’t want to break up with someone, because you don’t know if you’ll find anyone else, he or she is worth more, and so are you. No one should be a sad placeholder, and you’re too valuable to sell out your future by giving up.

If you do have doubts about what you should do, whatever values others is the best choice. It’s a rule of moral science, if you will: a decision valuing others will shine and reflect an attractive glow back on you. The more decisions you make, which value yourself and others, the more self-assured and beautiful you’ll become. 

Unlike the Evil Queen, don’t let the mirror control you. Don’t fall for the con as old as time. Instead, choose to be the beauty in a tale as old as time, whose heart’s perspective and choices found love, when she sacrificed for her family, looked a beast in the eye, and saw beyond what others thought was a beast in the mirror.