People use what they have. I first heard this statement while listening to a conversation about an extraordinarily handsome young man who had landed a lucrative modeling contract. Naturally, there were a couple of people who just had to make catty, disparaging remarks, mainly about how it was a good thing he had looks because he had nothing else behind those pretty blue eyes. He was “eye candy,” just not too sharp. That’s when Marsha remarked that everyone uses what he has.
I thought of Marsha’s comment last week when reading a letter to the editor in the local newspaper. The writer was protesting an earlier article that had made unkind and degrading remarks about beauty queens. Why, she wondered, was it okay for male sports figures to get their girlfriends pregnant, experiment with drugs, act promiscuously, get drunk, and so forth, but a girl using her beauty and talents to secure scholarships and to represent her state or nation was mocked or ridiculed?
The controversy made me think of Queen Esther. If not for her beauty in besotting the king, her people the Jews would have all been destroyed. In fact, she became queen primarily because of her looks when she entered what amounts to a beauty contest, and the king ended up loving her above all the other women. She was brave, gutsy, and loyal to her people, but it was her physical attractiveness that initially won the king’s heart.
One of my favorite lines is at the end of verse 14 in Chapter 4 when Mordecai asked her, “…who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Who knows but that golfers, teachers, taxi drivers, beauty queens, accountants, and football players are all in the “kingdom for such a time as this?” People should all use what they have whether it be brawn, brains, or beauty
mom's musings 