We Raised Girls to Be Desired and Boys to Devour Them

A girl does not wake up one morning and decide on her own that her body is the most valuable thing about her. She learns it.

She watches the women celebrated online. She sees which pictures receive attention, which dances spread fastest, and which bodies attract the largest audience. She learns that beauty can open doors and sexuality can hold a room. Adults call her mature when they should be protecting her childhood. Parents laugh while she imitates movements she is too young to understand. Companies sell adult clothing to children, and social media rewards them for displaying themselves before they have any idea what kind of attention they are inviting.

By the time she becomes a young woman, the lesson is already settled: if you want to be noticed, show more.

A boy is being taught at the same time. He is handed a phone before he has developed the character to govern what he sees. Pornography introduces him to women as bodies before he learns how to speak to them as people. Algorithms study his appetite and keep feeding it. He learns to stare, compare, fantasize, and consume without ever having to consider the soul of the woman on the screen.

Then these two wounded people meet.

She has been taught to use sexuality to gain attention. He has been trained to treat sexual display as an invitation to consume. She wants to feel attractive without being reduced to her body. He wants intimacy but has been discipled by images that required nothing from him. Both are confused when the transaction leaves them empty.

We created this mess and then acted surprised by it.

Scripture does not pretend that appearance communicates nothing. Proverbs 7 describes a woman who meets a young man “with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart” (Proverbs 7:10). Her clothing was part of her intention. She was not merely walking down the street minding her own business. She went out to find him, flattered him, touched him, and used sexual promise to draw him toward destruction.

The Bible holds her responsible for what she was doing.

It also holds the young man responsible for following her. Proverbs calls him “a young man void of understanding” (Proverbs 7:7). He went after her “as an ox goeth to the slaughter” (Proverbs 7:22). Her seduction did not erase his agency. He could have left. He chose to follow.

That is the part our arguments keep avoiding. We want one side to carry all the blame.

Some women insist that presentation means nothing, even when the presentation has been deliberately constructed to produce sexual attention. Some men insist that being sexually provoked excuses whatever they say or do next. Both positions are dishonest.

A woman can knowingly present herself in a sexual way. A man is still responsible for his response.

Clothing is not consent. A short dress does not give a man permission to touch, harass, follow, threaten, or pressure a woman. Attraction does not cancel self-control. Jesus placed responsibility for lust directly upon the person looking: “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matthew 5:28).

Jesus did not say the man was innocent if the woman was attractive. He addressed the man’s eye and the man’s heart.

Job understood that responsibility. “I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?” (Job 31:1). He did not wait for every woman around him to dress according to his preferences. He decided what kind of man he would be. His eyes belonged to God, so he governed them.

Men need to recover that kind of discipline. A man who claims he could not help himself is confessing that his appetite rules him. Strength is not proven by how many women a man can attract or how aggressively he can pursue them. Strength appears when he can feel desire without becoming its servant.

Women also need an honest conversation about modesty, and it cannot be reduced to measuring skirts or shaming bodies. First Timothy 2:9 instructs women to adorn themselves “in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety.” In that passage, Paul also addresses expensive clothing, gold, pearls, and the public display of wealth. Modesty is larger than how much skin is visible. It concerns the heart that wants to be seen, envied, desired, or treated as superior.

First Peter 3:3–4 makes the same point when it turns attention from outward adornment toward “the hidden man of the heart.” Scripture does not say beauty is evil. It says outward beauty is too weak to carry a person’s identity.

Makeup is not automatically deception. A woman wearing cosmetics is not pretending to be another human being. Scripture does not establish holiness by the absence of lipstick, styled hair, or beautiful clothing. Esther received beauty preparations. The woman in Song of Solomon is celebrated as beautiful. The problem begins when appearance becomes a manufactured identity and attention becomes the proof that the performance worked.

Our culture now gives people the ability to alter their faces, reshape their bodies, remove every mark of age, and present a version of themselves that does not exist. Then we speak endlessly about wanting to be accepted for who we are.

We should at least admit the contradiction.

Men perform too. They pose beside borrowed wealth, exaggerate success, conceal insecurity behind muscles, and use status to attract women. Deception is not a female problem. Human beings have always tried to control how others see them. Technology merely gave the performance better lighting.

The deeper issue is what we have taught people to use as currency. Women learn that beauty can purchase attention. Men learn that wealth and status can purchase access. Neither one learns how to recognize love because both are busy marketing themselves.

Sexuality was never meant to become advertising.

First Corinthians 6:19 asks, “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?” Paul continues, “Ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). That command belongs to women and men. The body is neither bait nor merchandise. It belongs to God.

A woman’s body is not shameful. That is precisely why it should not be treated cheaply. Modesty does not announce that the body is ugly. It recognizes that some things possess enough value to be guarded from public consumption.

A man’s desire is not automatically evil either. God created sexual desire and placed it within the covenant of marriage. Sin tears desire away from covenant and turns another person into an object. The answer is not pretending men have no sexual nature. The answer is teaching boys that desire must answer to God.

Parents have failed both children here. We police a daughter’s clothing without explaining dignity, or we refuse to guide her because we fear being accused of shaming her. We warn sons about getting girls pregnant but say little about lust, pornography, honor, or the emotional damage they can cause. We allow the internet to explain sex first and then attempt to add Scripture after desire has already been trained.

That is backwards.

Titus 2 tells older women to teach younger women and calls young men to be sober-minded. Children were meant to receive guidance from adults who had lived long enough to understand where foolish choices lead. Instead, many young people now receive their moral instruction from influencers whose income depends upon keeping them insecure, aroused, angry, and watching.

The Church must speak clearly without becoming cruel. Calling every immodestly dressed woman a prostitute is lazy and false. It reduces a human being to one outward choice and gives self-righteous men permission to despise her. Jesus told the truth about sexual sin, but He did not treat sexually broken women as garbage.

When religious leaders brought Him a woman caught in adultery, they used her shame as a weapon while conveniently failing to bring the man involved. Jesus exposed their hypocrisy, refused to condemn her to their violence, and then told her, “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). Grace protected her from destruction without pretending her conduct was righteous.

That is the balance we keep losing. We either shame people without offering mercy or offer acceptance without calling anyone to repentance. Jesus did neither.

Women should be able to hear that modesty matters without being told they are responsible for every sinful thought a man has. Men should be told to govern their eyes without everyone pretending that deliberate sexual display has no influence. Parents should stop outsourcing formation to screens. Churches should teach holiness before a crisis rather than waiting until someone is pregnant, addicted, assaulted, exposed, or divorced.

We also need to stop confusing attention with respect. Sexual display may attract eyes, but eyes are cheap. A woman can collect thousands of approving reactions from men who would never sacrifice anything for her. Their attention does not establish her worth. It only proves they looked.

A man who truly respects a woman will not pressure her to expose herself for his pleasure. He will not ask for pictures, manipulate her loneliness, or use promises of love to gain access to her body. If he claims to love her while pulling her away from obedience to God, he loves what he wants from her.

A woman who respects a man will not use sexuality to control him. She will not offer suggestion, access, or affection whenever she wants attention and then withdraw it as punishment. Emotional manipulation is not feminine strength. It is sin.

Both must come under the authority of Christ.

This culture will continue selling sex because sex makes money. It will sexualize girls, inflame boys, and then blame them for becoming what it trained them to be. Christians cannot follow that pattern and call it freedom.

Mothers, teach your daughters that their bodies are worthy of honor and do not need to be displayed to prove they are beautiful. Fathers, speak to your daughters before strangers teach them what male attention means. Teach your sons to govern their eyes, accept rejection without anger, and walk away from temptation even when a woman is offering exactly what they want.

Young women, you are more than the reaction your body can produce. You do not have to become visually available to be valuable. A man drawn only by what you reveal will rarely know what to do with your soul.

Young men, a woman’s appearance never gives you ownership of her. Look away when looking becomes lust. Leave when staying will lead you into sin. The fact that temptation was offered does not excuse you for accepting it.

We have spent years teaching young people how to attract one another and almost no time teaching them how to honor one another. The damage is no longer theoretical. It is sitting in our homes, hiding in phones, shaping marriages, and following children into adulthood.

We raised girls to be desired and boys to devour them. We do not get to act confused about what happened next.

The way back begins with telling the truth. Your body is not an advertisement, and another person’s body is not merchandise. Both belong under the authority of God.

Start living like it.