self-esteem sunday

this past sunday the theme in sacrament meeting was "women should feel good about themselves". we had 2 talks on feeling God's love and 1 on the divine role of women. i am impressed with our progressive bishopric for even thinking to assign a talk about women, but the poor awkward boy they chose to give it made it all the better. he is an 18 year old guy going to GA Tech (all guys at GA Tech have meager social skills at best). he was extremely nervous & it was easy to see that he really did love his mom & sisters and wanted women to feel good about themselves, but just didn't quite know how to get that across.

so he started out talking about "gender equality". i perked up at those words and started poking PC (despite his best efforts to be pro-woman, i am convinced he has sexist feelings toward Hillary Clinton). the guy giving the talk was trying to make the point that men & women should be unified; however, instead of using a scripture like "neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord" (1stCor11:11), he busted out with "the head of every woman is the man"(1stCor11:3) .....i'm still not sure how that supports gender equality, but most of the girls in the ward had a good laugh about it later.

he then moved on to modesty. it actually really annoys me that every talk that has anything to do with women always includes modesty. i like to think that womanhood has more complex & relevant issues to discuss that why showing our shoulders is sinful. *sigh*

anyway, at least he had a slightly original take, which was mostly marveling at how girls are so good at altering their clothes to make them modest: "...i mean, you can just add a t-shirt *laughter in the congregation* , um, that is not exactly what i meant, i meant that - well, i know my sisters have a hard time finding modest clothes and they can change clothes and make them modest & the guys should tell the girls they appreciate all the effort the girls do to make their clothes modest because it is hard..." he finished up by talking about how great the women in his family were & how his family would not be as unified without them.

overall, it was a sweet attempt to make girls feel good & i'm glad it was given by such a self-conscious kid. it made it harder for me to be offended :)