Of Headlines, Hearts, & Depravity

“Kendall Jenner Goes Braless in this Wardrobe Malfunction Waiting to Happen”

This is a headline I saw recently. This is news. This is worth writing a story about. And this—this is what’s wrong with our country. This headline sums up in 11 words the depravity of the human heart. Simply put, we “other” everyone else for our own benefit and pleasure. We put them into categories that we would not put ourselves into, for the sole purpose of treating them in a way that we wouldn’t want to be treated. We sort our fellow man/woman, like cattle at a sale, according to what we want from them or want them to do. And then we treat them accordingly.

Women are no longer beings made in the image of God, fellow humans worthy of honor and respect. They are clickbait for headlines. We take pictures of kids—and that’s what she is, by the way. I don’t care that she’s a legal adult. She’s a freaking teenager who probably isn’t sure how to match her own socks. We take these pictures and plaster them online, hoping that horny old men and hormonally charged teenagers will click on them and leer. We’ll write articles about why it’s probably her fault for dressing that way. But who can blame her? This is what our society says matters. This is how we tell women they can be valued. We’re drunken tourists on Bourbon Street shouting “Show me your tits!” to every woman we see. And then we call them  sluts when they do. 

We call children fetuses. We say they aren’t people and so don’t deserve the same rights and dignity that we do. We say “You don’t know when human life begins” and somehow that’s presented as an intelligent argument. Think through that for a second though. Imagine a loved one was in the hospital and the doctor comes in with these words; “We aren’t sure if he’s alive or not.” Would any sane person say, “Guess we should pull the plug, doc”? Would any rational mind honestly concede that “We don’t know if they’re alive so it’s ok to go ahead and terminate” is a viable argument? 

Our problem is that we “other” everyone else. And until we stop, until we realize and acknowledge that everyone—man, woman, boy, girl, black, white, baby, elderly—everyone bears the image of their creator and is therefore worthy of being treated with dignity and respect we’ll continue to be stuck in this same place.