My wife works downtown. Saturday, she snapped this picture of a defaced billboard on her way to work and then posted it on her various social media streams.
That didn’t offend me.
See, the picture conveys relevant news, as this billboard stands at the threshold of our fair city’s Main Street corridor. The square image reveals a plastic surgeon’s billboard vandalized by “This is a lie!” and a grade-school defacing of its illustrative model. It’s a captivating image. The juxtaposition of the advertiser and the vandalism creates the type of visual intrigue often found in the welcome distractions that float through our social media streams and email inboxes.
What got to me were the comments women left under the image. Here are a couple samples:
“This makes me so happy!! I just commented to my daughter the other day that I really wish someone would climb up there and deface it :)”
“[W]ow! Now that’s truth in advertising.”
Really?
I understand part of the schadenfreude. Reality TV’s popularity is due in part to watching the wheels come off someone else’s life to feel better about our own. Tragedy is compelling, and self-imposed implosion becomes popular culture references in minutes. It’s how we know that we’re—duh, #winning!
But this isn’t Snooki or Lindsay Lohan. It’s vandalism. A local entrepreneur’s sizable advertising investment is now lost for probably-uninsurable reasons. Their brand was made a laughing stock. A sign company will now have a difficult time convincing others that this high-profile spot (a few blocks from murder scenes) is safe for other local businesses to reach out to their intended audience.
If this blemished sign were portraying a church, a day care, or the YWCA, these same Christian women would wag their heads instead of their fingers.
But this sign is for plastic surgeons, and plastic surgeons sell Botox injections and breast augmentations—services for which there is a line of people who aren’t coerced by these medical doctors to purchase. For some reason, the church has a problem with this profession. The disdain is much bigger than a couple comments on Facebook. And it strikes me as ironic, coming from a cross-section of women who have worn makeup & hair product, high heels & jewelry, tattoos & piercings—maybe even dental braces. As I’ve said in more detail in this post, just about all of us—men and women—artificially enhance the assets God gave us. To create an arbitrary moral line seems ridiculous, even if standard practice for religion.
For a child no longer breathing through a cleft pallet, for a woman who has sought wholeness after a mastectomy, for a burn victim who wants to escape the marks of tragedy, these doctors are heroes. To those whose smiles were crooked by genetics or broken by accident, cosmetic dentists have freed them to laugh and smile—people like my pastor and my dad. Even to those who used saline instead of Photoshop, these MD’s are people in whom they have entrusted with anesthesia and invasive procedures.
If we’re going to pick on businesses for enabling unhealthy choices, why isn’t there graffiti on Hardees and Texas Inn signs? Obesity and heart disease is far more rampant and harmful than rhinoplasty. What about cash advance establishments—tempting people into spiraling debt spirals toward enslavement? On the Lynchburg Expressway in the span of a couple miles, the American dream is sold in the form of jewelry, new cars, expensive entertainment options. Isn’t materialism as insidious as externalism? You could make the argument they are different lanes on the road of insecurity.
That said, I don’t think it is for those who bear Christ’s name to deface anything or to express displeasure through illegal and destructive means. And that goes for celebrating the vandalism of others.
What message does judgmental condescension send a secular culture about the grace, mercy, and acceptance that we’re supposed to espouse? It’s really difficult to look down our nose at someone’s face or heart, when we’re washing their feet. By condemning these entrepreneurs, we’re condemning their personal morals and those of their patients. For those of us who now have “no condemnation in Christ Jesus,” we need to be careful with how we wield condemnation of others.
I don’t care how real your boobs are. I’m not really sure that God does—though I make no statements on his behalf. I do know that the Truth tells us God looks at our hearts. The Bible gives the impression that such perspective trumps our ability to read book covers.
Hey, I struggle, too—not to judge, not to disparage, not to avoid those outside of my comfort zone and/or belief system. I’ve got a long way to go—at least as much as the facelift haters, probably much more. But I would guess that my path toward Christ-likeness shouldn’t take me up a ladder with a can of spray paint.
[footer]Stock image of spray can used by permission through purchase from iStockPhoto.com.[/footer]
Betsy
Great post- very thought provoking and even a lil convicting 😉 Thanks for sharing your heart on this.
ryangeorge
Betsy, thank you for the encouragement! My own failures in this area made this a very difficult post to write. I am so far from where God wants me to be in this perspective.
Crystal
I would not vandalize someone else’s property. Nor do I encourage someone else to do it. However, I think the message of the vandal is right on. We live in a world that idolizes physical beauty. That pressures women to look a certain and to put their self worth in that look. For those who fall short, well, plastic surgeons are all too happy to tell you they can fix it. Everything from supersizing your boobs to growing eyelashes longer. It’s a false and empty way to live. Of course plastic surgeons do good work. Like reconstructive surgery. I don’t think anyone would argue with that. But find a plastic surgeon who puts that on their billboard. Good luck. I am just one of many thousands of women who are tired of being told that if our bra size isn’t Playboy approved we are less. I wouldn’t do it. I don’t condone it. But to say that it’s not funny or doesn’t ring true is to be falsely pious and ignorant of the battles for the hearts and minds of women and girls in this country.
Mike
How were you able to identify the religious affiliation of the vandal?
ryangeorge
I wasn’t—only the religious affiliation of those who commented on it.