Article February 2, 2009 Issue

A TRUE MODEL

BY INGE SCHMIDT

I HAD COUNTLESS female role models when I was growing up. They were intelligent, beautiful, athletic, strong, and independent. These individuals were, to me, ideal women. They were my mom, summer-camp counselors, professors, even my own friends. They had it all. There was nothing they couldn't do in my eyes, and it seemed they needed permission from no one! As clichéd as it sounds, they were my heroes.

As a Christian Scientist, I'd learned early on that we are all (men and women) children of a Father-Mother God, made spiritual and equally perfect in God's image and likeness, based on the Biblical account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis. But for some reason I thought I wasn't as "perfect" as the women I looked up to. Maybe I could strive for "pretty good," but "perfect"—well, that seemed way out of my league. You might say that I felt that my lifeline, my heritage, was different from these other women, whom I saw so clearly as the daughters of God.

The thing is, I didn't even realize how prohibitive and limiting my thinking was, until a few years ago when this less-than-ideal perception of myself all came to the surface. One evening, I was eating dinner in my apartment when I noticed my roommate's copy of a popular women's magazine sitting on the table. As I read the front cover, I remember thinking the headlines claimed to have all the answers to women's issues and relationship problems. But it was all starting from the wrong premise—a limited, sensual view. I thought, "It'll never get us anywhere."

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