Here's a quote by by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland that's from a talk entitled, "To Young Women." I remember first hearing these words when I was a freshman in college, and the words left such an impact on me that I was able to immediately recall this talk when I was planning what I would say when I gave my own talk in church. It's a little long, but trust me--it's worth it!
"I want you to be proud you are a woman. I want you to feel
the reality of what that means, to know who you truly are. You are
literally a spirit daughter of heavenly parents with a divine nature and
an eternal destiny.
That surpassing truth should be fixed deep in your soul and be
fundamental to every decision you make as you grow into mature
womanhood. There could never be a greater authentication of your
dignity, your worth, your privileges, and your promise. Your Father in
Heaven knows your name and knows your circumstance. He hears your
prayers. He knows your hopes and dreams, including your fears and
frustrations. And He knows what you can become through faith in Him.
"I plead
with you young women to please be more accepting of yourselves,
including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look
like someone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are
short. Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some
time or other wants to be something they are not! But as one adviser to
teenage girls said: “You can’t live your life worrying that the world is
staring at you. When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious
you give away your power.…The key to feeling [confident] is to always
listen to your inner self—[the
real you.]”
And in the kingdom of God, the real you is “more precious than rubies.”
Every young woman is a child of destiny and every adult woman a
powerful force for good. I mention adult women because, sisters, you are
our greatest examples and resource for these young women. And if you
are obsessing over being a size 2, you won’t be very surprised when your
daughter or the Mia Maid in your class does the same and makes herself
physically ill trying to accomplish it. We should all be as fit as we
can be—that’s good Word of Wisdom doctrine. That means eating right and
exercising and helping our bodies function at their optimum strength. We
could probably all do better in that regard. But I speak here of
optimum health; there is no universal optimum size.
"Frankly,
the world has been brutal with you in this regard. You are bombarded in
movies, television, fashion magazines, and advertisements with the
message that looks are everything! The pitch is, “If your looks are good
enough, your life will be glamorous and you will be happy and popular.”
That kind of pressure is immense in the teenage years, to say nothing
of later womanhood. In too many cases too much is being done to the
human body to meet just such a fictional (to say nothing of superficial)
standard. As one Hollywood actress is reported to have said recently:
“We’ve become obsessed with beauty and the fountain of youth. … I’m
really saddened by the way women mutilate [themselves] in search of
that. I see women [including young women] … pulling this up and tucking
that back. It’s like a slippery slope. [You can’t get off of it.] … It’s
really insane … what society is doing to women.”
"In
terms of preoccupation with self and a fixation on the physical, this
is more than social insanity; it is spiritually destructive, and it
accounts for much of the unhappiness women, including young women, face
in the modern world. And if adults are preoccupied with
appearance—tucking and nipping and implanting and remodeling everything
that can be remodeled—those pressures and anxieties will certainly seep
through to children. At some point the problem becomes what the Book of
Mormon called “vain imaginations.”
And in secular society both vanity
and imagination run
wild. One would truly need a great and spacious makeup kit to compete
with beauty as portrayed in media all around us. Yet at the end of the
day there would still be those “in the attitude of mocking and pointing
their fingers” as Lehi saw,
because however much one tries in the world of glamour and fashion, it will never be glamorous enough.
"A
woman not of our faith once wrote something to the effect that in her
years of working with beautiful women she had seen several things they
all had in common, and not one of them had anything to do with sizes and
shapes. She said the loveliest women she had known had a glow of
health, a warm personality, a love of learning, stability of character,
and integrity. If we may add the sweet and gentle Spirit of the Lord
carried by such a woman, then this describes the loveliness of women in
any age or time, every element of which is emphasized in and attainable through the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ."
