"he was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it any more obvious?"

1 corinthians 11:
3Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. 4Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is just as though her head were shaved. 6If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. 7A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. 8For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head.
11In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God. 13Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. 16If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.

It would be tempting for me to throw out this whole passage seeing as no one really seems to take the head covering thing seriously anymore. I confess I don't really know how to read this passage; I don't know how to separate the eternal truth from the cultural truth or if there is a difference. I kinda feel like I need to learn Greek before I tackle this text, or at least take New Testament.

However there are some themes in this section that make me question my identity in God as a woman, or young woman, or girl--whatever I am. “A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” Am I made to serve men? Because honestly—and this may be crossing the personal-information-you-don’t-post-online-line, but sometimes I feel like I am. It’s easy, I think, for girls to fall into this line of thinking that we need a man to make us complete; to fulfill our purpose. I’d like to know how much of that is creation and how much of that is crap. Sure, using whatever power I have in hermeneutics I can think of verses that contradict that sort of thinking, but then again, those verses were written by Paul (he’s a dude). It seems like most of the references made to women in the Bible follow the same sort of thinking. I don’t know what to think about myself. I don’t know what to believe.

Of course, I can’t ignore verses 11-12 either. That at the bottom of things men and women are not independent of each other; we are both in fact dependent on God. So that means we need each other. I guess the questions is, how we need each other. Do we need each other differently? And what/who do we need to be?

I also think I should add 1 corinthians 7:34 which says, "an unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit." Of course that's also from a sort of cloudy area of scripture.

I don't know. Can someone make some sense of this?