Blog By Sherrie Batty

This is the title of a feature article in the September/October Today’s Christian Woman magazine by T. Suzanne Eller. Eller starts out her article by sharing her harrowing experience of visiting a lingerie store, and intervening in a situation where a teen girl was trying on lingerie, and allowing the guys she came with to view her in the dressing room. Eller intervened where the store manager would not.

Maybe you have not found yourself exactly in this situation, but you might have felt similar discomfort and indignation when driving by a billboard with a photo of a woman, seductive in nature, standing in the grocery store line shielding your children’s eyes from the magazine rack at their eye level, or clicking off the television set as the latest base Hardee’s/Carls Jr. commercial slimes it’s way into your home. Hardee’s/Carls Jr. is now not synonymous with burgers, but with their unappetizing display of soft porn, turning away women (and their husbands) of all ages from frequenting their burger joints. If you can relate to these scenarios, you understand the feeling that must have risen up in Eller. Hardee’s is right with one thing, women are now the meat being sold, and girls who don’t remember when not all commercials and shows were sexualized, are falling prey to the lie that their value lies in their willingness to gratify males of the character found in the youth in Proverbs 7.

So what can you do? If you know any better than the message being sold then you pity the poor girls who give in to this outrageous cultural/media driven message, but are you living as Titus 2:4,5 encourages, “…training the younger women?” Eller found that going straight to the girls is the best method to combat the cultural message she sees, through mentoring. She also recommends: prayer; gentle example; joining a community (e.g.; One Million Moms); writing networks and fashion executives; and withdrawing monetary support by watching quality programming vs. shows and companies promoting the degradation of women.

If you’re not familiar with the depths to which Hardees/Carls Jr. commercials dip, you can find their commercials here.