“Does the woman need to make sure she stays attractive so her husband stays faithful?”

The question was posed to me a few years ago by a woman in her late 20’s.

We were talking about marriage and, in the course of conversation, this popped up.

It surprised me because the question came from a poised Christian woman with a good head on her shoulders. Somehow, she had bought into the cultural narrative that the woman needed to make herself look a certain way so she would be attractive to her husband, particularly if she wanted to ensure he stayed committed.

I’ve been married 16 years which means there’ve been approximately a gazillion occasions where I’ve looked like roadkill — like if a raccoon with a bad hair day hadn’t slept in three weeks and was then flattened by an 18-foot semi; yup, that’s been me countless times.

Over the lockdown in India, like all good citizens of the world wide web, I shopped excessively on Amazon (You know you’ve gone overboard with your attempts to “help” the economy when boxes arrive at your doorstep and you haven’t the faintest clue what they contain). One of my exemplary purchases included six t-shirts, different colors, all the same style—and all from the men’s section because they make men’s tees so much roomier. I kept three for day wear and three for the night. Let’s just say I wasn’t gunning for attractive.

Of course, being beautiful to your spouse is important. And I don’t think anyone should supposedly “let themselves go” because they’re “off the market.” But, as I’ve said before, we keep ourselves healthy and fit because we are God’s workmanship and we take care of what He has declared good. Not because we want to keep our husband’s eyes from straying.

When a spouse makes a commitment for better or for worse at the altar, part of that promise, I believe, is for roadkill days. Also, who are we kidding? Women are the ones who turn into human hot air balloons so we can bear little cherubs who suck us dry for the next few months. And then there’s a host of hormonal stuff that we deal with through our lives. Let’s just say “Amazonian” rather than “attractive” would be the more appropriate adjective in certain seasons of our lives.

In the Song of Songs, Solomon can’t stop gushing over his bride. Although some of his metaphors are startlingly absurd to our modern ears (“Your hair is like a flock of goats…”??? Maybe someone should have told him that he can safely lay off the livestock comparisons), Solomon sees his wife as beautiful even if convention dictated otherwise.

It struck me that the “Beloved” or the Shulammite woman in Song of Songs was not considered traditionally attractive. In Chapter 1, the woman says to the people around her: “Do not stare at me because I am dark.” By the cultural norms of the time, she wasn’t considered beautiful because her skin had been darkened by the sun (Sadly, this is still a pervasive sentiment in eastern countries like India).

But Solomon praises her beauty again and again. When she says in chapter 2 that she is ordinary and average (a “lily of the valleys”), he protests: “Like a lily among the thorns is my darling among young women.” (Song of Songs 2: 2) She was beautiful to him because she was his, not because she fit a cultural standard of attractiveness.

To the young woman who asked me that surprising but relevant question a few years ago, I would say: A woman’s beauty is not meant to be skin-deep. It’s not meant to fall into the confines of what the culture says is pretty or perfect. It’s meant to be what the Bible describes as  “the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3: 4).

No, that doesn’t mean we are to speak only in whispers and nice-isms. It means we quiet ourselves before God and find our worth and inner beauty in Him so we don’t strive for people’s A-okay by the way we dress or adorn ourselves.

That’s the kind of beauty that doesn’t fade over the years.

May we be more focused on being affirming spouses who work on our own inner beauty rather than being fixated on the external.

That’s the kind of attractiveness that spans a lifetime.

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Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash