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Women@Work

Attractive in Spirit

I learned two new words today: womanfully and manfully. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, womanfully means “with the characteristic grace, strength, or purposefulness of a woman.” Manfully means “having or showing the bravery and resoluteness considered characteristic of a man.”

Neither manfully nor womanfully speaks of power or weakness, superiority or inferiority. Instead the two speak of complementary contrasts: graceful strength in contrast with raw bravery; purposefulness in contrast with resoluteness. Both are needed in every arena of life, not the least of which is the workplace.

In most cases strength and bravery lead a circumstance to the same closure, as do purposefulness and resoluteness. Typically (though not without exception), women are more becoming, more womanful, when exhibiting graceful strength as opposed to brash bravado, when exhibiting steel-magnolia purposefulness (or determination) rather than impenetrable resoluteness.

Sadly, I have seen some female managers err on the side of conducting themselves manfully in the workplace. Perhaps without realizing it, the manager will begin to concede her distinctive feminine qualities as recompense for her success in a male-dominated world. Eventually, she settles so comfortably into the male hierarchy that she comes to look and act male. She dresses in dark business suits tailored for the male body and grooms herself sparsely, without the slightest nod toward femininity.

Once she has cast womanfulness aside, the woman’s tendency is to take on the worst, most blatantly macho qualities—perhaps with the subconscious goal of proving to male counterparts just how touch she can be. At the extreme, I have seen women become impertinent, callous, verbally abusive, crude, indifferent and even downright obnoxious. In short, anything but womanly.

How can we cultivate inner beauty and a quiet and gentle spirit in a twenty-first-century world of technology, space travel and constant scientific inquiry? When I was writing my first book, Names of Women of the Bible, I researched the names of fifty-two women in the Bible. One of those women whose testimony I researched was Phoebe. I remember her well because her name means “radiant” in Greek. That seems to have been her personality as well. I surmise that because, when the Apostle Paul refers to her at the close of the book of Romans, he commends her to the believers in Rome as one who is a “sister,” a “servant,” and a “great help to many people” (Romans 16:1,2, NIV). Radiant Phoebe found a way to let that inner beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit shine through.

Phoebe shows us, as Esther did generations before, that when God is with us—granting us His favor, His blessing, His approval, His worthiness to accomplish His work—an inner beauty will radiate from inside us. This radiance will outpace any fading beauty treatments we may give ourselves on the outside.

Reprinted by permission from Staying True in a World of Lies, copyright 2002 by Julie-Allyson Ieron. All rights reserved. For ordering information write to joymediaorders@aol.com.

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