The venom of Envy is powerful. It can make us paranoid, behave in ways we’d regret and blind us from our own good fortune. Why do we allow it to control so much of our short lives? One of my first posts was a diatribe of Pinterest perfection and how it, along with other social media pushes the ideal of perfection onto a generation, especially of women, who are finally starting to question this whole get married and procreate thing. For religious women who haven’t toyed with the idea of pushing back our social standards, a vast majority of them must make a choice.
Times are continuing to change, millennials are breaking the mold of role play in society, and I have a strange optimism that tolerance is becoming more than just a trend. With these changes, the resistance of conservative requirements like marriage and children seem to be fading away. Women want to finish college, men aren’t ready to settle down young, and praise the Universe, birth control is easily accessible (for now). With much of our next generation, things seem liberated.
Those damn Duggars though. When they started plastering the tabloids, I noticed a strange fascination people seemed to have with the perception of the unblemished. Oddly, we gawked at this herd of a family and couldn’t seem to look away as they tried to hold up their values through controversy and sold pictures of their weddings and kids as if they were Beyonce. Though plenty of people loved to hate them, many more downright idealized them, enough so to make two TV spin-offs. What is so remarkable about a God fearing swarm of Pilgrim people? Perfection or the expectation of such is very, very seductive.
Christianity and many similar fusion-religions have done a remarkable job at keeping their communities in-check and fruitful. By highlighting some convenient Bible passages to live by, gender roles are solid and more future Christians are born. Certainly there are more free-thinking people within the religious spectrum, but the majority of younger church-goers seem to stay conservative, like their parents before them. Of course the “dream” isn’t exclusive to Christians, but with their ideals of family life, it seems they are a pretty large group racing for the same prize.
I have no statistics here, absolutely no fact based data to help me out, so I’ll discuss this in the spirit of religion itself. Most of the research I sought sprung up from scouring dozens of those identical, cookie cutter Mom blogs, which, surprise-surprise, happen to be primarily faith-based. The patterns I noticed in these blogs were regular. A menu at the top of each one with a list similar to:
- My Family- Marriage- Homeschooling- DIY Crafts- Prayer-
with a few extras from Crocpot Meals to Couponing, then always, a cheery picture of the typical white, blonde woman, dripping with annoying innocence. Reading blog after blog, I was getting tired, so much talk about God; oddly, bargain hunting and the Lord are somehow related items, but indignation turned to concern when I found a string of articles with titles like: Submitting to your Husband- How to be a Godly Wife- Following God’s path and your Husband’s Lead- the list goes painfully on. Advice to women of faith in many of these articles pushes a dependence on prayer, trusting your husband’s choices as leader of the household and that ‘we tear down the opportunity of God’s intention of marriage when we fail to submit’. Yikes. If all religious women reading these postings are in healthy, fair relationships I would not be so uneasy. Envy can push people into believing their cruelest insecurities, and to a Christian woman, being a good wife is a critical portion of existence, so it would not be difficult to exploit by a controlling penis. What happens when a woman reads these articles while coping with an abusive partner? Submit? Blame herself for his behavior- I’m not joking, one post noted that since she had gotten too tied-up taking care of the house, kids and cooking, her husband was unsatisfied and it led to an affair with a co-worker. No, just fucking no. The entire dialogue plants women as some menial servant, unworthy of leadership in any capacity, and the root of marital problems.
Then we have to examine the male side of these Christian groups, are they exempt from the same nagging perfection as women? There aren’t many, but I found some Male authored Christian blogs out there, but they were usually written as part of profession, like pastors and theology experts. One article described counseling married couples, wherein, if the husband stayed home with the kids or made less money than his wife, “It never turns out well for the family”.
Clearly, the push for perfection is almost italicized in religious homes. Again focusing on women, the nesting genre is a huge attraction. Food, home, lifestyle and beauty can be sated through the said pile of ‘Mom blogs’. Reality in many of these clearly wealthy stay at home mloggers, as I will now call them, ™, is considerably different than their reader’s who adore them. I was able to see into this world by pulling up some articles questioning the health of these blogs and reader’s expectations to keep pace. A large majority of the mlogs are Mormon, due to the fact that they are indeed made for the religious wife, mom, homemaker type. That being said, some their content is outrageously extravagant. Scrolling through a ‘most popular’ list of Mormon Mom Blogs, many were clearly privileged white women, in the height of their childbearing years, with a budget that allows for boujee home decor, organic baby food and catalog worthy family photos (my eyes can only roll so far). Without a doubt, they had opportunity in their lives to meet this level of perceived happiness. Funds to help pay professional photographers for their different daily rituals, you know, normal stuff like Mom in full hair and make-up baking cookies with her Aryan children while fresh cut flowers sprout from crystal vases on every level surface. Many of their reader’s do not have this level of time or money, yet this is the standard they believe they are held to. So instead of pursuing individual identity and nurturing self-love, accomplishment means looking perfect, and that is it. Envy need not be bitter and resentful, sometimes it can have the best of intentions, while ruining our purest integrity.
Envy is represented simply in this painting. I consider it the Trinity of all religious based life goals: marriage, a home, children. Go forth and multiply, and according to these blogs, God brings success, but you must look damn good doing it.
Buddha’s two golden fish are represented as the paradoxical representation of envy. Their meaning is of freedom and happiness as they move unrestrained through the water. Since this comparison looks at the institution of marriage within religion, it makes sense that the two fish also symbolize the lunar and solar channels, ebbing and flowing against different balances, much like traditional marriage, opposite strengths and weaknesses of gender, trying to form a singular bond.
This was one of the hardest Seven Sins to portray, mainly because it is so universal. I felt a bit guilty as I dwelled on the religious community, since anyone, of any belief or non-belief is susceptible to coveting what others seem to perform perfectly, especially with social media hemorrhaging our brains on photos and blogs of that family life we always wish we had or could make for ourselves. Like the Golden Fish, we should swim on though. Swim past the urge to look like a Mormon blogger, and float freely knowing our personal identity does not belong to a husband, kids, home nor a God. Our identity is the one unique component of life, something we can share with the ones we love, but never have to apologize for possessing.
Celebrate it, don’t replace it.