By Tabitha Courtland // Biblical Womanhood // EEW Magazine Online

Culture teaches us that women’s self-objectification is self-empowerment. This pervasive school of thought encourages us to use our sensuality, seductiveness, and sexiness as tools of advancement, control, and influence. After all, it seems like the sexiest girls get the most attention and the biggest rewards.

The art of seduction—the skill of making ourselves more alluring, tempting, charming, or attractive—is highlighted and celebrated in entertainment, art and media now more than ever. Our biggest (and supposedly most empowered) female influencers and stars tout the virtues of owning and flaunting your sexuality to infiltrate, navigate, and dominate spaces historically ruled by men.

As certain feminist ideologies, distorted ideas, and misguided perceptions become more mainstream, how can we as women of God resist the compulsion to glorify sex, lust, and lewdness for gain and applause?

EEW Magazine Online is offering 5 ways to help you avoid the seductiveness trap and be the God-honoring woman you are meant to be.

#1 Tame your need for attention.  When you receive positive attention, dopamine, a neurotransmitter or chemical messenger in the brain that plays a role in how we feel pleasure, is released. If you perceive male recognition and praise as positive and necessary for validation, you will crave and pursue it and get a dopamine hit when you obtain it. Therefore, it is necessary to tame or train yourself to seek validation from healthier sources. Cultivate your relationship with God. Develop new skillsets. Reinforce truths which confirm that you are more than your most superficial qualities.

#2 Address your low self-esteem. Not many women are comfortable admitting they have a low opinion of themselves, numerous insecurities, and a constant need for outside validation. Though it isn’t necessary to shout your issues from the rooftop, you must get honest with yourself about your feelings of unworthiness, inferiority, and invisibility. Otherwise, your thirst for affirmation and recognition will compel you to fall in line with unhealthy cultural norms that alter your behaviors in unproductive ways.

#3 Lean into your faith values. A large majority of professing Christians reside on the shallow end of the pool. They believe in God, quote some Scriptures, and cherry-pick the biblical principles that best suit them and are least disruptive to their personal philosophies. Believers with depth, however, lean into their faith values. They walk out Bible-based principles that are inconvenient, counter-cultural, and out of step with the sexual revolution that knows no bounds. If you don’t lean in to your faith values, you will inevitably fall out of God’s will.

#4 Deny yourself. Jesus told His disciples that whoever is serious about following Him must deny themselves (Matthew 16:24). This kind of self-denial requires sacrificing one’s own interests and submitting to the will of God. It is no surprise that this is a hard to concept to adopt and adapt to in a society where we are constantly told to do what pleases and appeases our worldly desires. Today, everything is relative. The Bible is called antiquated. And traditional values are labeled old-fashioned and out of date. Therefore, you have a choice to make: will you follow the world or the Word?

#5 Refuse to conform. It takes strength to refuse to conform. It requires discipline not to try to look like a surgically altered Instagram model who serves up her body parts like free hors d'oeuvres on a party tray. Millions, unfortunately, are succumbing to conformity. Aesthetic procedures are at an all-time high.  Plastic surgeons performed 12.8 million surgeries in 2021 and 17.5 nonsurgical procedures (Source: International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery) The demand for breast augmentations, butt enhancements, liposuction and other injections have skyrocketed. Why? Because women are scurrying to meet unrealistic body standards in order to rank higher on the sexy meter. Refuse to be among them.

Becoming a temptress who is consumed with outward appearance for selfish gain is not God’s desire for you. Never mind how many are giving in, make a decision to stay firm, stay pure, and do everything for the glory of God.