One evening as I was scrolling through social media, I stumbled across a photo that I haven’t been quite able to shake since; one of those that linger on your mind, and it’s not long until absolute anger and irritation build up in your heart. In large, bold print and placed on an image of a car, it read: "Sex before marriage is like buying a car — you gotta test it out before you buy it."

There’s something wrong with this picture and all that it conveys. There is something wrong, America. There is something wrong with displaying to the world that women are like cars — commodities to be used, bought with a price and completely left in the dark when we are finished with them — in hopes that someone else might have use out of them. In this, we are absolutely painting them as disposable.

If that same photo were to pop onto your smartphone and you were to be ever so inclined to like, share or even let out the slightest chuckle, shame on you. Shame on you and your open objectifying of women. With every like, inappropriate comment, smirk and even through the passing around of the garbage in the midst of our fingertips, we are silently voicing that this is OK; that it is truly acceptable to relate women to objects that operate in the pure intent of servitude.

Now, is that the message we want to send to the rising generation?

Because I for one refuse to let any young lady believe that she has to be "tested out" to be of significance. I refuse to let her think for a minute that she is inherently useful because of her physical assets and with what a man can manipulatively take from her. I refuse to let her believe for a second that she is just another woman on a list, desperately hoping that maybe she'll be deemed suitable to be used and abused by a self-honoring man for the remainder of her life and that maybe, just maybe if she's "lucky enough," to keep his lingering attention.

Personally, I would rather be single for a lifetime than to buy into this lie. Why? Because I don't need to sell myself out to know that I deserve to be someone's first AND their last. I don't need to wake up in a stranger's bed to know that I can and should stay on a man's mind for more than a measly night. I don't need to take my clothes off to attract and to be "sold" to the highest bidder. I don't need to be taken advantage of to realize that my identity and worth is far beyond what I can give away to a man that is not my husband. And in that, something that can and most likely will be ripped out of my fingertips in moments when someone better and more captivating comes along.

I don't need your standards. On second thought, I don't need your lies — absolute destruction waiting to happen. And I certainly don't need your objectification.

I'm certainly not advocating the "All men are pigs and we women are victims forever" speech. That is simply ridiculous and truth be told, I wouldn't even call myself a feminist. But I would argue that there is some truth in generalizations, even this one.

I'm just simply saying that the worth and integrity of myself and all women go far, far beyond what men can take from us. Somewhere along the way we've developed this horrid, distorted view of women, and I'm here to say enough is enough.

Women are the prize; the solution, not the problem and certainly not objects. Please do show me one verse that says "She who finds a husband finds a good thing." News flash America — women are the good thing, and I can’t quite see good things equating to objects.

Now, this isn’t a letter in hopes to reach every single heart of men, although that would be ideal. But I would much rather reach the hearts of women, no matter what circumstance you are found in the midst of. May we be women that will have the boldness to stand up and declare that we aren’t bowing to this terrible excuse of a standard. I believe that that will make far more of a difference. So please, do stand up and stop casting your pearls to swine.

"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you." — Matthew 7:6