Hallie Lord has a guest post at Elizabeth Foss's blog that is worth looking at. She has long argued on her own blog, Betty Beguiles, for a proper understanding of the pursuit of feminine beauty or prettiness, as part of the vocation of mother and wife. Generally there she takes the "pretty is good" side, since so many women have a sort of fear of pretty — either because they worry it smacks of vanity and materialism, or because they don't have enough self-esteem to think they can pull it off.
Here she argues for the enjoyment of, shall we say, "girl stuff" (bubble bath, shoes, lipstick) for its own sake, for the sake of the pleasures we find in it.
(To the extent that we like that kind of thing, of course. I'm not veryinto lipstick, for example. But to each girl their own girl stuff.
I was reminded of just how much joy there is to be found in these things as I watched my three sweet small girls celebrate Christmas. I was struck by the glee with which they sought out their most beautiful dresses for Mass on Christmas Eve, the quiet delight they found in brushing one another’s hair with the new hairbrushes that they found tucked into their stockings, and the long hot bubble baths they insisted upon on Christmas afternoon.
My daughters aren’t yet old enough to recognize that there might be value in doing any of these things for the benefit of others; they do them simply because they realize that which is easy for us busy Moms toforget: God created them (and us) for joy and the enjoyment of simple pleasures is their (and our) right.
So often the love that many little girls have for "pretty stuff" is brushed off and even condemned: as evidence of cultural sexism or materialism or vanity or premature sexualization. But it's so nearly universal that I think there must be something naturally good in there too.
I like the conceptof recapturing a little-child-like love for beautiful and luxurious things, as a way of guarding against vanity, by enjoying them as simple pleasures. So much better than raising them to more importance than they have, or else erring in the other direction by thinking of them as worthless or even dangerous. All beauties have their proper place.
bearing blog 