Proverbs 31 - Submissive wife or radical feminist?

So forgive me for my lack of diligence, I have not yet attained the necessary godliness to keep my life in such clockwork order as the Proverbs 31 women, nor have I achieved anywhere near as much economic productivity, my house is quiet drafty, turning up and lining the curtains has been on my to-do list for over a year, there are piles of laundry everywhere, my child is poorly which must mean I'm a bad mother and I am just never going to measure up.

Measuring up is not what I believe proverbs 31 is about, but it's so hard to read it without feeling like that. Partly because of the polethera of books and websites giving you advice and 'wisdom' about how you to can attain these dizzy hight of Christian wifely success. One book I borrowed I never managed to read because one random flick open and I was faced with a BMI chart (important fact I heard somewhere; the people who repeatedly show up as healthiest in various studies are the people in the overweight category - so go on eat that chocolate bar, as long as its fair trade of course!) next random flick was a discussion about a disastrous day when the author had worn blue tights and a black skirt - the advice make sure you pick a 'core colour' and stick with it. Hm! I am fairly sure this is not what proverbs 31 is about.

I've start doing this short drama activity in girls groups based on the mirror mirror scene from Snow White. Someone plays the queen and says the predictable mirror, mirror etc.. and the person playing the mirror has to come up with comebacks that will help the queen stop worrying so things like...

Why you trying to look like someone else?

You're the best you you ever could be.

Who made me the judge of beauty?

You've got so much to give why waste time looking in the mirror? 

You know what Snow White's not really your opposition patriarchy is.

I'm reading a lot about sexualisation at the moment and the potential consequences for young women of an ever narrower definition of beauty actually not even beauty what they are being repeatedly told is they must be sexy. Much of what I'm reading draws parallels with Betty Friedman's work articulating the problem that has no name as the 'feminine mystique' and though the construct she outed for what it was is very different to what we are now dealing with we need something similar today, an understanding that the ideal of femininity that is being shoved down our throats is making many of us very miserable indeed. 

Why is all of this relevant to Proverbs 31, because I think we need to be very conscious that as we come to this passage we have been pre taught to compare ourselves and put ourselves in competition with this women. I really don't think we need to. I think one of the very reasons this passage is here is to give us an alternative vision, a different role model, that will help us step out of the slimest waist, biggest boobs competition (or whatever the Christian equivalent is, most children? best handicrafts?) and fix our eyes on Jesus. Cause when we do that we stop caring about the rest.

The commentary I have talks a lot about whether or not this was based on a real women. Personally I can't see that it matters, whether real or not I'm not called to be her but to learn from her - that's what role models should be about, not people we want to be, but people we want to learn from. 

This acoustic poem has been classified by Wolters as belonging to to Israel's heroic poetry. He also suggests that it functions to contrast against the "praise" of women in ancient Near Eastern literatures and its preoccupation "with the physical charms of women from an erotic point of view". I guess its the equivalent in our toxically pornified culture of a piece of writing celebrating the person of Aung San Suu Kyi for example. If only she where on the front of teen magazines.

So we absolutely mustn't go into exploring proverbs 31 with an attitude of competition. This is a women describing her understanding of what is possible as a women deliberately to provided an alternative to the narrow understanding of femininity constructed by patriarchy. 

A proverbs 31 community does not give in to femafision (click here to find out what femafision is!). Love to you all my brothers and sisters and I am not in competition with you. (This has not yet been prof read so forgive the spelling etc - spellings just a social construct anyway!)