Venus, Purity Culture, and the Ideal Christian Woman | Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt

Who decided what a “good woman” should look like?Long before social media, paintings, sculptures, religious images, and other forms of visual culture were shaping our expectations of women. Those images did not merely reflect society. They helped define beauty, sexuality, motherhood, virtue, and even what Christians imagined a godly woman should be.Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt is an art historian (Ph.D. from Washington University) and is a professor of art and art history at Covenant College. She’s also the author of two books: the award-winning Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art (Baker Academic 2023) and her recent book Look Like a Lady: Five Visual Tropes of Womanhood and How to See Ourselves Differently (Brazos 2026), which forms the basis of our conversation today. Chapters:00:00 The Desire to Be Desirable00:41 What Is a Woman?03:39 Meet Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt06:16 How Art Shapes Christian Theology09:58 Why Medieval Jesus Looks Like a Little Man14:22 Five Images of Womanhood15:20 The Venus Trope and Sexual Desirability18:10 Why Women Learn to See Themselves as Objects23:21 Purity Culture and the Objectification of Women28:37 Mary, Elizabeth, and a Better Way of Seeing33:35 The Myth of the Perfect Mother38:02 How the Reformation Changed Womanhood43:44 Are Women Competing for God’s Love?46:27 Infertility, Motherhood, and Female Identity49:30 “Is Something Wrong With Me?”52:24 Do Fathers Get More of a Free Pass?54:45 How Women Become “Monsters”59:47 Does the Church Still Vilify Women?63:45 Shaped by Trauma, Not Defined by It65:36 A Bigger Vision of Christian WomanhoodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.