I know what this is getting at and I can see how it would be frustrating to ONLY be seen as "pretty". Unfortunately, outward appearance is almost always going to be the first thing noticed, just 'cause. However, recognizing "Pretty", or "Beauty" as I
prefer to think of it, is put in man by God for a purpose I believe. You see, the Woman seems to have been gifted by God with Beauty in a way that is unique among all the creatures. It seems to me that She carries the Beauty of Imago Dei in a very
special way, and in a way that the Man does not (Man carries Beauty as well but it is certainly different). Additionally, recognition of this Beauty by man and his interaction with it is so innate that sometimes it's hard to even understand. Thus
Solomon wrote:
"Three things are beyond me;
four I can’t understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship at sea
and the way of a man with a young woman."
I believe, as CS Lewis did, that all Beauty, including that of the Woman, should be seen through a lens of showcasing "Future Attractions" as a great movie trailer might (this is long but worth reading every word):
"In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much
that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and
affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience
is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in
his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the
music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what
we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have
not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited." CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory
So if it is true that God has adorned the Woman in a special way with Beauty and that Beauty in general has been given to us as a way to both provoke our desire for the True Beauty as well as to provide us a glimpse or foretaste of the True Beauty, we
can draw these conclusions:
Man is naturally drawn to the Beauty of Woman because of God's purposes.
However, when Man mistakes Woman's Beauty "for the thing itself" he creates a "dumb idol, breaking the hearts of their worshippers", as well as the worshipped I might add.
When a woman is only recognized for her beauty, there is a naturalness to being put off by it. It is like giving an Academy Award only for the movie trailer.
This is why Solomon also wrote: "Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised."
So while recognition of the shallowness and offense of a man who only recognizes a woman's beauty is appropriate, one should also recognize that the correct alternative is to recognize a woman's fear of the Lord, not her intelligence or fierceness or
wit or worldly success or "charm".
Perhaps the wisest assessment of a man who, in his shallowness and/or worldliness, will only focus his attention on the Beauty, is to know that he is recognizing something of which he knows not. But you do.
