One former model is stressing to young women that their beauty relies on “wholeness and holiness,” rather than what they see in the media – a media that values women as “parts” rather than human persons.
Last week, Leah Darrow, an America’s Next Top Model contestant-turned-Catholic speaker, spoke at the 2018 Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Global Summit. MRC Culture interviewed Darrow shortly before she appeared on a panel about sexual exploitation at the event, organized by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Video below.
In the panel, Darrow talked about being on the TV modeling show, which she said objectified women. “Of course, I didn’t know that going into it,” Darrow said. Now, she calls herself “somebody who’s come back to my faith and kind of embraced the dignity of the human person.” Darrow left the modeling industry after a photoshoot where she was told to wear a particularly revealing outfit – and felt God’s call to pursue her faith.
An outspoken advocate for the unborn on social media, Darrow stressed that the dignity of each human person “is rooted in its very creation … the creation of each individual person in the image and likeness of God almighty.” “That is the dignity of the human person, every person has and can hold onto,” said the mother of four (one of whom she’s expecting soon).
But that human dignity, in regards to women, is often under attack, Darrow said, which leads to sexual exploitation and objectification. How can women combat it?
First, women must pay attention to which “voices we’re allowing into our life,” she said. “And also, what’s the voice that we hear oursel[ves], inside of our own head[s].”
Attacks on women’s dignity are often masked “in the name of love or liberation,” she added.
“It’s time that we became honest, and we spoke forthrightly and courageously about truth,” she stressed. “The truth of the human person, the truth of human dignity, that all women have that all men have, all children have, all people have.”
True beauty, she said, appreciates the human person. As a regular speaker of the topic and the author of The Other Side of Beauty, Darrow admitted “it’s hard to define” beauty.
“True beauty is about wholeness, it’s about looking at a person in the wholeness of who they are, in their dignity, in their value, and in their worth,” she explained. “It’s also about holiness. Which means our lives should be virtuous. We should be honest, we should be brave, we should be courageous, we should persevere. We should stand up for the things that are right, and speak up when there are things that are wrong.”
She also identified the threats against true beauty, including the media.
“It’s about not separating out a person into parts because women [in] particular, when it comes to beauty, we have been reduced to parts in the media, in movies, on social media, all over,” she said. “And we have to fight against that.”
She added that “the media absolutely has a role to play when it comes to sexual exploitation, and they should be held accountable.” She applauded Walmart’s decision to pull Cosmopolitan out of its checkout aisles. “Because it is absolutely sexual exploitation covered in the lie that it’s some type of sexual liberation,” she said. “Which it’s not … There is no research to prove that the sexual liberation agenda has proven more freedom, more happiness for women in general.”
Rather, she said, the sexual liberation advertised in Cosmo “brought about a whole lot more problems that not just women deal with, because obviously we are a human family, and we’re very connected,” she continued. “And so, the media has a huge role to play. We should be standing up to them and voicing our concerns.”
She added that, in the #MeToo era, “I think that there’s going to be a lot more attention paid to this.”
To the women in the modeling industry, Darrow presented a special message.
“If I’m completely honest, I would tell every woman out there, ‘You’re more. You’re so much more than a pretty picture,’” she said. “And what you can contribute to this world, what you really can contribute, your gifts and your talents, your uniqueness, is so much more than what a camera can capture.”
The modeling industry, she said, pushed the wrong idea of beauty.
“We need to look harder at ourselves and realize that, possibly, we have accepted a standard of beauty that is actually chaining us to ground,” she continued, “when we need to unchain ourselves from that, embrace who we are as individuals, who are unique and unrepeatable.”
Women are powerful if they realize the source of their worth, she stressed.
“Women can contribute so much to this world if we know our dignity, our worth, and our value lies not in our lipstick, lies not in our hair, or the number on the scale, but in who we are as God created us to be,” she said.
She also shared advice for young women in general, who are “surviving this current culture of sexual exploitation.”
“I would take the advice of Mother Teresa,” she began. “When someone asked her, ‘What can I do? I want to go to Calcutta,’ she says, ‘Go home, and love your family.’”
Darrow added to the saint’s wisdom.
“Start with you. Look at your own life. Have you fed into or believe the lies of culture that you, that your body is an object, that your body is just used for some type of use or sexual gain?” she said. “Look at the people around you too. Look at who you follow on social media, the voices that you are allowing into your life that guide you.”
Darrow concluded by pointing to St. Joan of Arc as a role model.
“In the last few seconds of her life, when she was being burned at the stake, she yelled at her executioners,” Darrow said. “And she told them, ‘Hold the cross higher, so I can see it through the flames.’”
She elaborated on the lesson women can learn from the martyr.
“I think that we, as a culture, especially women, need to come together and band together and keep our gaze, keep our focus on Christ,” she said. “Keep our focus on something that’s beyond us.”
She also urged that women must unite in saying “no more exploitation” and “no more of the sexual liberation because it’s not really liberating me.”
“But live a life of virtue and of goodness and of truth,” she concluded. “And I think that we have to remember that there’s hope … So I would say that: Stay together. Be brave. And speak up.”
