what is beautiful

Miss World 2006, Czech Republic

I've been thinking about beauty ever since the Venus of Willendorf. Back in art history at Augie, Dr. Kirn flashed her up on the screen and explained this little obese sculpture was a fertility talisman. As we blew through thousands of years of art in that class, it dawned on me that for most of human history, larger, more stately women were the epitome of beautiful...until the modern era, when, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was the 1920s when those scrawny flappers started to be considered beautiful, or at least, en vogue.


Ingres, Le Grande Oldalisque 1814

Twiggy c. 1960

One comment that Dr. Kirn made was that with the growth of Christianity, Mary became "the new Venus," reigning as the queen of feminine beauty. I wondered why...not why Mary and not Venus, but why at all. Why do women's forms and faces dominate art, is it really because most artists were men? I don't think so. I think the answer is, briefly, that women are beautiful. But we, as "the crown of creation," have a jealous enemy and beauty is a sensitive topic for many.

I have way more thoughts on this than you care about, but basically I want to ask you to pray. January 5-6 we are hosting a women's conference at Malenovice, and the theme is Beauty. 140 women are coming from all over Czech, with 5 of them coming from Christ Community Church, Elgin IL, to serve. We'll be talking about not only physical beauty: also relational beauty, spiritual beauty, realized beauty.

Thank you for praying. !