A New Cultural Projection of Christianity

Justin and Hailey Bieber are now beacons of holiness!?!

Readership: All; Christians;
Theme: Identity, Image, and Impressions
Author’s Note: This post was first drafted on 2021-6-7, expanding an earlier comment. Coauthored with Jack.
Length: 1,500 words
Reading Time: 5 minutes

Justin and Hailey Bieber as Cultural Icons

In an earlier post, How to Change a Hostile Culture (2021 June 7), I discussed the overarching influence and power of the elite, and why it is important for this group to spearhead social changes. That’s why the following development has special importance.

Supermodel Hailey Bieber attributes the success of her marriage to Justin Bieber to their shared Christian faith — see this article from Fox News, written by Hailey Baldwin herself: Hailey Baldwin ‘wouldn’t even be’ with husband Justin Bieber if not for Christian faith (2021 June 3).

Some of their photos do project the image of what I think of as a Christian marriage.

However, there are many other photos that give concern. The “Christian” image projected is a bit interesting, to say the least:

Note the structure of authority that is conveyed in the image. Her high heels and exposed upper thigh convey V Power. Her hands on hips denote authority. The sunglasses portray a dark mystique. He is seated on the floor, barefoot, bent knees, topless, and grasping her calf, all indicating submission and vulnerability. We still see elements of feminism, male submission, female dominance, and cultural convergence in general. It is so obvious that if their positions were reversed, it would be labeled misogynous.

What impact have Justin and Hailey Bieber had?

It’s been one year since Justin and Hailey Bieber came out as “Christians”. It’s time for us to take a look back and see the overall impression that they have made and where it is leading.

Over the past year, I haven’t seen very much discussion of Justin and Hailey Bieber. This might be because they’ve received reduced airplay since coming out as “Christians”.

On 1 November 2021, they made a podcast with their pastor and his wife. Readers who opt for sitting through it will have to look past the giggles and bubbly feel goods to understand the real essence of their relationship. To save the reader’s time, here I’ll pick out some facts and statements that are of interest to our discussion.

At the 7:35 mark they stated that Justin was 24 and Hailey was 21 when they got married, which clearly goes against the overall cultural trend of marrying later. Hailey says she struggled going against this norm, but it was clear to her that God already brought her a husband. She justifies Justin getting married young by stating that “he’s had so many life experiences.” She said she appreciates Justin because he always supported and empowered her. She obviously looks up to him for his status and career accomplishments, and she mentions being “Hailey BIEBER”, his six houses, and so on. She’s very much focused on the status, economic comforts, and social perks.

Justin has very dreamy, Blue Pilled notions of marriage and family. At 8:46, the pastor’s wife points out that Justin’s mother was never married, and asks where he got this idealized image of marriage. Justin replies by saying he learned it from watching movies. Hailey said she had a very traditional family growing up.

The pastor capitalizes on these statements by emphasizing that “Justin Bieber wants marriage and family because it’s such a wonderful beautiful thing.”

At 11:58, the pastor asks Justin why marriage was a top priority for him. He says he was lonely, he didn’t want to do it all alone, there was some serious healing he needed to get past a lot of “trauma and scars”, and mental health issues and to function in a relationship. He says, “Hailey accepted me for who I am.”

At 17:00, the pastor homes in on how their relationship glorifies God, but he doesn’t get into the specifics of how that happens. Compare this to how the Christian Manosphere has identified Headship as the most important element of a relationship that glorifies God.

At 19:55, Justin expresses a lot of insecurity, “rejection issues”, and says it took him some time for him to “become more secure with where we were at.”

At 21:20, Hailey says during the first year of their marriage, she considered herself to be “independent”, until she realized that “marriage is 50/50”.

Hailey dominates most of the discussion, but Justin says a few cute or funny things now and then. She clearly wears the pants in their marriage.

At 23:25, the pastor points out that consistency was very important for them to settle down and feel secure in the relationship.

The second part starts at 24:00.

Justin says his Love Language is physical touch and quality time. Compare this to Scott’s statement, “Sex is men’s love language.” He credits Hailey for bringing “good changes” into his life, and he names changes like trying different kinds of food.

Hailey says the longer she is married, the less she wants to have children, because they’re having so much fun and she doesn’t want the “distraction” of having children. Uh oh…

At 30:25 the pastor says,

“One thing that is happening in culture is that you two are making marriage super sexy. You make it fun, you make it cool.”

He asks them, what is the sexiest intangible about the other?

Hailey says, “…when I get to watch you do what you were put on this planet to do.” She also says that he has so much confidence in doing his thing. This confirms the importance of a man having a mission / purpose and confidence.

Justin replies, “The way you treat people and make them feel [warm]. Everyone loves you for that.” Here we see that men value feminine attributes in a woman.

Epilogue

Upon observing Justin and Hailey Bieber’s marriage, what do we see?

• We see a woman who is attracted to a man for his confidence, experience, good looks, image, popularity, status, and wealth — enough to overlook his shortcomings as a man, e.g. confusion, and possibly emotional / mental issues.
• We see a top 0.001% man with extremely idealistic expectations about women and marriage — a man who could’ve had any one out of millions of women — who entered into marriage because of his own need for companionship and because she showed barely enough consistency to earn his trust.
• We also see a lot of mixed symbolism. The problem here is that when young people are exposed to both types of images, it reveals no clues about which type of relationship structure is actually Christian, and which is not.

Overall, their marriage is very much like a Complementary Boomer marriage, but with a few caveats.

• For one, it is catered and fully supported by all the trappings of their stratospheric socioeconomic status and wealth.
• Secondly, we don’t see clear masculine and feminine roles being played out. Instead, their relationship is better described as a very close friendship with some elements of emotional codependency, especially from Justin.
• Apparently, young Hailey sees no issue with the messages her modeling gig projects about sex, never mind about female role models, but, hey … at least she’s “Christian”, right?

The best we can say is that they had the good sense to marry young and seek God in their marriage. We do hear them giving God credit for the success of their relationship. There are glimmers of God’s glory sprinkled here and there. We can also be happy that they’ve found the joys of marriage, in spite of their shortcomings. I suspect that this is about the best that anyone could realistically hope for these days.

The graver issue here is that we do not see many indicators of a Christ centered Headship. Perhaps the only one is that he is more successful than she is and she clearly admires him for this. Perhaps this is enough to make their marriage work out. But as for the public image they project, there are very few behaviors or photographic images that clearly depict Headship. Her naturally florid IOIs might indicate Headship, but one would have to go looking for it with this in mind. Most young people are clueless about this and probably won’t pick up on this.

I have to wonder if they even know what Headship looks like, and that Headship is what glorifies God!

This is more of what is coming in the future, even for those who manage to remain nominal “Christians” — carrying the title, and considering themselves such, but not actually living that way.

This is an important development, because as I’ve written about before, the elite set the cultural stage for everyone else.

Readers may like to discuss the overall impact of the image of marriage they present and how it might affect the overall cultural popularity of marriage.

Related

See more images of Justin and Hailey Bieber here.

• Σ Frame (Jack): Only noble born men are qualified to do housework for unicorns (2020-08-24)
• Σ Frame (NovaSeeker): ADIEU HUSsies Sell a Broken Script (2021-05-12)
• Σ Frame (NovaSeeker): Is Patriarchy for Deplorables? (2021-05-31)
• Σ Frame (NovaSeeker): How to Change a Hostile Culture (2021-06-07)
• Σ Frame (Jack): The Influence of Culturally Imposed Sexuality on Women (2021-08-02)
• Gunner Q: Mizz Bieber Clots Her Brain (2022-3-12)