Transcript of Interview with Gina Loehr about Choosing Beauty. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com
Listen Now to the audio version of the show.
Choosing Beauty at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1033386/Choosing-Beauty–30-Day-Spiritual-Makeover-Women/
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Chris Cash: Welcome to Catholic Spotlight. This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show where we talk about what’s new, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host Chris Cash, director of E-Commerce for catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs. And today, in the Spotlight we have Gina Loehr, author of Choosing Beauty. Welcome, Gina.
Gina Loehr: Thanks very much, Chris. Thanks for having me on the show.
Chris Cash: And of course, those of you who follow the show regularly, I apologize that we had been a week off. Just returning from Catholic family land, which is a great little family camp up in the Steubenville, Ohio area. If anybody is interested in that, check it out. Its at familyland.org, you’ll find the information there. Or you also could ask me about it if you got questions, I’m happy to help pass on the word about great Catholic Apostolates like that. But today, we’re talking about Choosing Beauty, a 30 day spiritual makeover for women. So, Gina, you want to tell us a little about the book and what brought you to want to write this book?
Gina Loehr: Yes, absolutely. It’s an interesting little text as the title indicates. It’s a 30 day journey; it’s written in short little bit size sections that could easily be used as a one month spiritual makeover. It can have a reflection for women on the spiritual life and how that relates to our fullness of beauty. And I mean, in that in the full sense, holistic beauty. How spiritual growth and spiritual development can help us really radiate the beautiful image of god in which we were made. That’s general concept. It’s structured according to the virtues, the cardinal and theological virtues are the different chapter headings on with some focus on *** [02:08] and some focus on some issues about women head in particular. But it’s basically an attempt, and this is sort of my motivation in writing the book, it’s an attempt to focus on this thirst, this hunger, this desire that so many women have to be beautiful. And an attempt to focus on the true source about beauty, which of course you know as Catholic’s we understand that god is the ultimate source of truth and beauty and goodness. And the more we embrace his image, the image that we were made in, the more that beauty is going to be reflected to the world. I think that it’s something that women are keenly interested in. I know from myself, its been sort of a life long journey and quest to understand, okay, what’s true beauty, what’s the world’s idea of beauty, what’s gods idea of beauty, how do these things intersect and trying to kind of – to look a little bit more deeply into that with this book.
Chris Cash: Now, you know there’s a lot of makeup parties that go on around the country…
Gina Loehr: That is very true.
Chris Cash: And one thing that I just get the image up right off the bat looking at the book is these little spiritual makeover parties. Instead of a bible study you got a spiritual makeover party; where you sit down with the book and groups of women getting together just to share about their experiences.
Gina Loehr: Yes. Yes, that’s a cool idea. It’s definitely something that’s very conducive to group sharing as well. The book is structured with these little 30 sections, so each section has got a short reading and then it has five reflection or five discussion questions that could be used very easily for a personal, quiet devotional time, but also, very fruitful for groups of women to come together and discuss and share about their ideas on these concepts, sort of – of beauty and virtue and how they related together. And you know, it’s another thing that I explore in the book is the fact that women do tend to have this sort of built in relational nature. Like we enjoy relating with each other and talking, and being in communication on a personal level, so I think that taking advantage of that gift of women is something that goes hand-in-hand with this book very nicely.
Chris Cash: Now, have you gotten any feedback from people who are using the book so far or seeing groups using it?
Gina Loehr: Yes. Yes, I am. It’s starting actually to catch on a little bit in an exciting way. I guess people are feeling like this is a topic they’ve been looking for some direction on. And I will tell you, its – there’s *** [04:50] a couple of really interesting stories, things that kind of surprised me. The book is certainly geared towards women of all ages. But kind of you know specifically towards maybe younger women in their 20’s or 30’s, even high school age women. But I gave a copy to a very good friend of our family who is like a surrogate grandmother to me; she is in her 80’s. And you know just ‘cause well, here’s Grandma Betty. I wrote a book, you can have copy to put on your shelf. Well, she read it and she told me Gina, she said, “This has been such an amazing experience to read this.” She said, “I have spent so many years feeling so ugly, and when I read this book I began to understand that I am beautiful in gods eyes. And whose – I don’t know it just really – I don’t know it touched my heart that it had touched her heart in that. And also, just to think wow she’s just a beautiful woman. How could she have spent decades thinking that she was ugly? That’s the problem with her culture, it’s giving women a lot of misinformation about who they are and what beauty really is.
Chris Cash: And I know from personal experience that we’ve been sending this book out to our reviewer program and one of our reviewers who choose this book was Katherine Barron from Catholic’s In A Small Town podcast and Catholicsinasmalltown.com. And she was so taken by the book that she e-mailed me back very soon after reading it and said, “I want to do a whole series on this book.” She’s actually creating an entire podcast series, one show for each chapter. So, there’s going to be 10 shows, and that’s going to be premiering on September 1st, 2009. For those of you who are interested in getting even more in-depth discussion and study of beauty, as it relates to this book, so that’s even getting started now. So, you know even if you can’t find it local discussion group on the book, you might be able to participate through just listening to Katherine and her discussion with many other women in the Catholic media world.
Gina Loehr: You know I think that’s a great thing. I think its such – it’s a great project so to take this and use it as kind of a tool to open discussion among women. Its certainly not my intent to say, hey, I figured everything about beauty and here’s the answer to how to do it all right, but I more see this book as sorts of services starting point. A way to open the discussion on things that deeply concern and effects women on questions that our culture has addressed in sort of a twisted unfortunate negative way. It’s an attempt to open that up and say, hey, let’s look a little bit deeper. So, it’s a resource for that, but every different woman who comes to this text, who comes to a discussion group or does it on her own, she’s going to bring her own insights, her own reflections to help kind of unfold these mysteries that we’re trying to explore.
Chris Cash: Now, the title of the book Choosing Beauty kind of makes the implication that being beautiful is a choice. Can you talk a little bit about where you came up with that and what your implication is?
Gina Loehr: Absolutely. You know it’s significant because I think there is a tendency for women to sort of be brainwashed in the thinking, you know hey, either I was born beautiful or I wasn’t. And if I wasn’t, my only choice is go spend a whole bunch of money on you know makeup cosmetics, getting my hair done this way, having these implants or you know whatever botox kind of a financial attempt to become beautiful. It’s like the sense that it’s sort of something you either get or you have to buy. And what I want to emphasize is that no, it’s something that’s given. Beauty is built in. We are all – every single one of us made in the image of god, and there is nothing more beautiful than that image. We’re made in that image. The choice is are we going to reflect that image to the world or not. That’s how I choose my own beauty or not. The question, the choice is whether I am going to live the image of god to world, whether I’m going to reflect beauty, god’s beauty in the unique, irreplaceable, incredibly attractive radiant way that god intended me to image his – his image to the world. So, it’s a choice in a sense that hey, look, its been given to you, its built in, its an invitation, but are you going to live that through the choices that you make in your life, mainly uniting yourself with god, reflecting the virtues, becoming beautiful in the full sense, the holistic sense. Both inner beauty which then reflects the outer beauty as well.
Chris Cash: Now, how do you address both the inner beauty and the outer beauty in this book?
Gina Loehr: It’s something that I have to confess, it’s always sort of bugged me a little bit when people just talk about oh, you know inner beauty is enough or she is really beautiful on the inside. I – you know that’s just not good enough for me frankly. I don’t want to be someone whose just seen as – you know has a great spirit or *** [10:34] or whatever.
Chris Cash: She has a great personality.
Gina Loehr: Yes, exactly. It’s somewhat sort of insulting. And I think if we’re honest with ourselves, we really – we have to admit, no I want to be beautiful in the fullest sense. I want to reflect beauty in the fullest sense. And so the attempt in this book and the argument that I put forward is that literally our physical beauty, literally how we appear in the physical eyes of the people around us is a reflection of god’s image to the world. And that physical appearance is going to radiate, it’s going to be attractive, it’s going to be truly literally physically beautiful to the extent that we are showing gods image. And that’s where the inner part comes in is living a life of virtue and getting rid of the dirt and cobwebs and grey nastiness of sin, so that we can reflect beauty. So, my argument is that it’s a holistic thing. Inner and outer beauty, physical and spiritual beauty go together. We were made as body and soul in god’s image, and both of things together that make us truly beautiful. That’s what I think is the case and I think we see that too, if you think about people you know who have a true spirit of inner beauty. It really does make them more attractive physically as well.
Chris Cash: All right, well, we’re going to take a short break here to hear from our sponsor, but we’ll be back in just a minute to talk more with Gina Loehr about Choosing Beauty. This is the Catholic Spotlight.
[Break]
Chris Cash: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight. We’re talking with Gina Loehr about Choosing Beauty, a 30 day spiritual makeover for women. And what a beautiful book it is, so, which by the way the cover of the book you know it’s a kind of a really nice looking flower on the front you know. Was there any – did you have any input on how the cover was made?
Gina Loehr: You know I didn’t, and I’ll be honest I was a little bit nervous about how it would turn out, because I thought oh, gosh, you know people’s different interpretations of beauty or what that means, how is a designer going to interpret this. But he did a wonderful, wonderful job. The name of the designer is Mark *** [13:46] from Servant Books and Saint Anthony Messenger Press. And it is – I have to agree it’s a beautiful cover and I’ve actually gotten a lot of compliments from people where they think wow, this is really an attractive book. And you know I think it’s so interesting because the fact is that’s true about us too. We look at each other, we look at our covers, we look the external and we say wow, you know does this person intrigue me or don’t they. And then, we want to go deeper. And you know that’s just an honest reality about life. And again, one of the focuses on the book is making that external cover; you know our appearance to the world, making that as beautiful as it can be by this process of spiritual makeover.
Chris Cash: And I can attest to that being in the Catholic industry, I have told publishers many times that a cover for this or that book its not going to raise eyebrow. Its not going to draw the eye enough away from the other books to get people to even have a peak at it, to see what wonderful contents is inside.
Gina Loehr: Yes, that’s just a reality even though you’re not supposed to judge by the cover, we all do. And we should live in that reality, because that’s the way it is.
Chris Cash: Yes, it is. But you know luckily you’ve got a great cover. So, can you tell us a little about the 30 day format and why you choose to go a 30 day format, kind of make this into a months study?
Gina Loehr: Well, you know it’s a couple of things. One is popular psychology tells us that it takes about 30 days to form a good habit. And the good habit we’re trying to form here is a life of focusing on reflecting god’s image to the world. We want to get into a habit where that’s our focus, where we have a life of prayer, a life of developing and practicing the virtues, where those things literally become habitual in our life. So, the 30 day concept is based in part on that idea that hey, take a month set it aside, focus on the stuff and get yourself into the habit where it starts to roll a little more easily. Now, of course the book doesn’t actually have to be read in 30 days. It works just fine in any sort of timeframe that works for the reader personally, but that’s a concept behind it. Also, I think it goes along with the concept of spiritual makeover, which is part of that title. A short period of time, one month, the idea of a makeover, we love that. We love the concept of the before and after pictures. You know how were things before the makeover and now the dramatic change afterwards. And I wanted to emphasize the fact that we can have that same effect in the spiritual life as in our physical appearance or you know makeover of a home or whatever. That experience transformation, what would traditionally be called conversion, that’s an exciting concept. And it’s available to us if we make a choice to apply ourself a little bit in that direction. And this book give some concrete tools for doing that.
Chris Cash: Now, do you have any personal stories about the things that you struggled with in this realm?
Gina Loehr: Oh, yes, the book is full of them. There is lots of stories, in fact each little 30 – each little section of the 30 day begins with a personal reflection on something that’s related to these virtues and issues of beauty or whatever. And I don’t want to giveaway all the secrets, but I will say that I had a very big – I guess an enlightening experience, one time when I lost my cosmetics bag just before I had to lead a big retreat. And I was so nervous about going out in front of all these people without my makeup on. I mean, I was frantic. I couldn’t conceive of how I could possibly pull this off successfully, without my eyeliner, without my massacre or whatever. And you know I go through more details about that story in the book, but the bottom-line is that it mainly reflect on what had actually become like an addiction to makeup, where I couldn’t even present myself to the world without it. And I reflected on how much more concerned I was about this purely physical appearance than I was concerned about the spiritual realities in my soul, and the sins and that the dark points. And it made me reevaluate and make some choices and change some directions, which I will. I will leave that to the reader to find out the conclusion of that story.
Chris Cash: And it probably would – would not have made your audience take you any less seriously if you went out without your makeup or with it.
Gina Loehr: Yes, that’s exactly what the fact of the matter is that we – I think its largely because of the sort of unfortunate mentality or even brainwashing that’s happened in our culture, where women are so critical of themselves. And frankly, critical of each other in such a way that we really put this pressure on ourself without these kind of perfect physical appearances that we have to have. And it’s just not the case that people are that cut up on that. I mean, if you have a – the confidence of the true beauty that god gave you that you’re made in, that confidence radiates with so much attractiveness to the world. But it really doesn’t matter, it becomes a secondary thing whether you’re wearing the eyeliner or not. You know and its not – I mean, I don’t at all make any argument or mean to imply that make is bad and doing your hair is evil and you have to give it all up. And it is nothing like that; it’s just a kind of a balance. It’s a matter of realizing that you know these things are to augment or accentuate what I have, but it’s not like I am dependent on them for you know my freedom to exist in the world. That’s where it gets twisted.
Chris Cash: Now, did you have a hard time with figuring out what to share in this book as you were putting it together?
Gina Loehr: Yes, it is a little bit of a challenge. The challenge here…
Chris Cash: I won’t ask you for any real deep secrets here.
Gina Loehr: Well, I won’t reveal ‘em, so we’re even – but no, it wasn’t a different approach with this book. I had written a book that came out last year called Real Women, Real Saints, which we talked about before Chris. And it’s just to focus on 100 women on their lives on their virtues, on how they help us grow in spiritual life, but there is not anything in it that reveals anything personal about me. This book is different, as I said every little section in this one starts with a story that’s from my life from my experience. And yes, so I had to do some discerning about okay, what experiences in my life has god given for the sake of helping other people maybe, understand or see something more clearly themselves. And you know trying to figure out which experience has actually in a sense that kind of like a – yes, I don’t know a spiritual point to them or something. And trying to pull those out and use those in a way that illustrates the point, not in a way that focuses on me or anything like that, but that tries to illuminate the issue at hand. So, yes, that was a challenge, but with the help of some very talented editors I think we found a good balance.
Chris Cash: Now, are you giving personal retreats on this topic at this point?
Gina Loehr: I’ve been doing some talks on it. I haven’t actually built an entire retreat format around the book, but it’s something that could actually be done rather easily because there is lot of good content here that could be used for days of reflection or specific activities for groups of women or what not. At this point, I’ve been talking on this subject you know like our *** [21:29] lecture kind of things, but it’s very conducive as we talked about earlier in the program. It’s very conducive to bringing women together for reflection and discussion and things like that for sure.
Chris Cash: And in the interest of *** [21:40] self promotion, do you have any Website or contact information you want to share, if somebody interested in having you come and talk, or even commissioning you to develop that retreat?
Gina Loehr: Sure. Sure, sure. Actually the Choosing Beauty book is linked up. Its actually a companion text to my first book Real Women, Real Saints, both of the books are structured according to the cardinal and theological virtues. And Real Women, Real Saints of course, ‘cause that’s a 100 very concrete examples of women who lived this beauty, and Choosing Beauty gives us guidelines for how to incorporate that in our lives. So, the Choosing Beauty book in my information is all linked together on my Website, realwomenrealsaints.com.
Chris Cash: Now, what was is that made you decide to focus both of these books around the virtues?
Gina Loehr: Well, I guess, I have always been intrigued by the virtues, because they strike me as both beautiful and practical. You know we look at the image of faith and hope and love, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance. These are the cardinal and theological virtues, and they just – they give us these beautiful images of what Christian life is supposed to look like. Concrete ways to envision behavior in particular difficult circumstances. They’re beautiful, they’re these mountain top images, the virtues but also very concrete, very much – you know you can break down the virtues and try to find ways to actually do, actually live, actually be these things in your life. This is why the definition in the Catechism of virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do the good. In other words, the virtue is – it’s a good habit. It’s rooted in us to behave this way habitually and that’s what we want to be developing, that’s what we want to be cultivating. So, I’m intrigued by the virtues. I like the idea with Real Women, Real Saints at looking at models of virtue. Women who have lived out particular virtues in real life circumstances and give us you know concrete guidance in that way. And I also wanted to structure the Choosing Beauty book according to the virtues, because it can. I think it gives us really practical concrete guidance for being the image of god that is really where our whole complete fullness of the life is in reflecting that image to the world.
Chris Cash: All right, well, we’re about to wrap up. Is there anything final that you wanted to share with our listeners?
Gina Loehr: You know I would like to just invite women in particular to reflect on the fact that beauty is built in. That god has made you with an incredible capacity for glory, for radiance. God has made you to be his image in the world. And the question is only whether you’re going to accept and embrace that reality. Too many times we have hurt, we have pain, we have scars, we have insecurities that keep us from actually letting that image flourish, but god has planted it there and the invitation is just to say yes to that true beauty.
Chris Cash: Well, thank you so much, Gina. Your book really is an awesome beauty and I really hope that a lot of people will check it out. Join a study group, put together a study group, you know like Katherine is doing over at Catholicsinasmalltown.com to really explore this book and get the message out there that you’re beauty is skin-deep, but it can go deeper.
Gina Loehr: Amen, that’s right. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Cash: All you Spotlight listeners out there be sure to check out our other shows as well as to vote for us over our podcast Alley this month. It helps us to get in front of new and different people. And that is going to do it for the Spotlight this week. Everybody out there, have a great day and god bless.
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Transcript of Interview with Gina Loehr about Choosing Beauty. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com
Listen Now to the audio version of the show.
Choosing Beauty at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1033386/Choosing-Beauty–30-Day-Spiritual-Makeover-Women/