The Assumption and Ashton Kutcher

During my senior year in college, I was an RA in an all-women's dormitory. On my weekly Duty Nights, I had to "make rounds" throughout the building each hour to make sure that the girls were safe and acting in accordance with the famously strict duLac standards of conduct.

I also had to check every bathroom for vomit.

I'm not kidding, and I did not live in an Animal House-esque party dorm. I had to check every stall and shower for vomit because cases of anorexia and bulimia were frighteningly high throughout all of the women's dorms on campus.

As we all know, this epidemic starts well before college. During one of our youth group meetings this past year, the teens had the opportunity to write down their fears and post them on a wooden cross as a part of a prayer service. After the kids left, I secretly gathered their prayers so I could pray over them myself. My heart sank while reading some of their fears, and it broke when I opened a note that read, "...That I will never amount to anything. That I'm not pretty and skinny enough."

Teenagers are taught to hate their bodies. In every advertisement and commercial, boys and girls are consistently reminded that they are not pretty/skinny/muscular/tall enough. Sometimes, the spirit-killing messages come from their own parents, and unsurprisingly, from other kids at school. It's repeated over and over and over again until the idea of being made in the image and likeness of God is drowned out, or worse, a truth that applies to some and not others. The girl who wrote this note is beautiful inside and out, but she's been trained to believe she isn't pretty or skinny enough, and will therefore never amount to anything. She isn't even in high school yet.

Teenagers are taught to hate their bodies, so they learn to hurt their bodies. They starve, purge, over-exercise, cut, intoxicate, hide, and over-expose their bodies in a vain attempt to reclaim the inherent dignity that they wrongly think has been stolen from them.

But, as Ashton Kutcher says in his acceptance speech at the Teen Choice Awards, "It's a lie," and he  argues that being sexy comes from your personality; from being smart, thoughtful, and generous. He boldly proclaims that, "Everything else is crap. I promise you. It's just crap that people try to sell to you to make you feel like less, so don't buy it."

He's right. This idea that the image of God should conform to the standards of Hollywood, that beauty only comes in one mold, is absolute garbage. It's a lie that the devil feeds us to make us forget whose image and likeness we bear, and to make us so focused on how we look that we bypass all of the opportunities to do something great with our lives. It's Satan's billion-dollar industry, and we're buying into it.

But once again, Mary strikes at his head.

And wins.

It is the woman who is poor and lowly, not the one on the cover of Israel Weekly, who is "full of grace" (Luke 1:28). God's grace is so alive in her, and she herself is so wholly submitted to it, that it literally carries her, body and soul, into Heaven, where she is "exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death" (Lumen Gentium 59). Pageant crowns can't hold a candle to that kind of beauty.

Mary was truly filled with grace from the moment of her conception and she humbly knew exactly who she was: "a handmaid of the Lord," a fruit of His creation. She identified herself by her creator, not her dress size or bench number. His love for her was everything she needed to know about herself and her place in the universe, and look how far it took her. She is now the Queen of Heaven and Earth, simply because she wholly submitted herself to the love of God.

If we truly knew who we are, if we fully believed that we are sons and daughters made in the image and likeness of God, then eating disorders, diet pills, cutting, and all of the horrible things that we do to our bodies simply wouldn't exist. They just wouldn't make sense. We would see vanity, insecurity, and the "you're too fat" culture for what it truly is: crap.

But, we are not preserved from the stain of original sin, and so are deceived and cooperate with the lie. We are not full of grace... yet.

The assumption of Mary tells us (among many things) that God loves all of us: our souls and our bodies. The parts of us that Hollywood says are not "good enough" are His image on earth. Our bodies are not just fleshy, temporary shells, but the handwork of the Lord, destined to be raised on the last day and to be glorified in Heaven for all eternity (CCC 989). The scars and emotional damage from years of insecurity will be wiped away (Revelation 21:4), and like Mary, we will see ourselves for who we truly are: Beloved sons and daughters of God.