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The Christianity Today women’s blog provides news and analysis from the perspective of evangelical women. We cover news stories and books related to international justice and evangelism, pregnancy and sexual ethics, marriage, parenting, and celibacy, pop culture, health and body image, raising girls, and women in the church and parachurch.
Her.meneutics was co-founded by Katelyn Beaty and Sarah Pulliam Bailey.
July 10, 2012 9:41 AM
Oxfords, Docs, Converse, crocs. Peep toes, pumps, Mary Janes, clogs. Jellies, Wellies, Combats, Chucks. Manolos, Maddens, Sandals, stilettos. Kitten heels, mules, Birks and wedges. A new study reveals that our soles are the window to our souls; these tongues do...
June 18, 2012 9:02 AM
Rick Guidotti had been trained to see and capture a very particular standard of physical beauty. But walking down New York City’s Park Avenue one day, the fashion photographer spotted a girl with albinism. Though her fair skin and white...
March 26, 2012 8:37 AM
One of my pastors was preaching from Genesis 12, and he came to the part of the story where Abram and his wife Sarai head to Egypt during a time of famine. The account highlights the cowardly moment when the...
August 30, 2011 10:30 AM
This spring, a friend asked me to accompany her to Africa to document the labors of a nonprofit working in microfinance. She told me we’d be traveling to a number of remote villages to complete our assignment. Instead of a...
June 24, 2011 2:32 PM
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver. (Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo.”) “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” That's the title of a recent...
April 14, 2011 11:42 AM
The New York Times recently reported that the West is exporting its ideals of beauty and body size to developing nations, including our stigma against overweight people. We are, it is said, globalizing the “fat stigma.” It appears that...
February 8, 2011 8:21 AM
About a week before Christmas, I decided to join my husband’s family for an entire day of shopping. I got ready for the day with my usual routine of showering, blow-drying my hair, and picking out an outfit, but there...
January 20, 2011 10:30 AM
To one-piece or two-piece? That was the question for many Miss America hopefuls in 1997, when, for the first time in 50 years, the pageant allowed two-piece swimsuits. Pageant organizers say the swimsuit part of the competition, dubbed the...
August 18, 2010 10:07 AM
Splattered across the media this week is Kristen McMenamy, a supermodel and mother of three who was featured on the August cover of Italian Vogue. She appears inside in a striking (some say offensive) photo spread, lying on her back...
July 2, 2010 11:21 AM
Christian women aren’t supposed to have body image issues. Have you ever thought that? Perhaps quietly, to yourself, while looking in the mirror before walking out the door to church. In her new book, Unsqueezed: Springing Free From Skinny Jeans,...
May 26, 2010 9:07 AM
When I tell people that I study religion and beauty pageants in America, they usually ask, “What do beauty pageants have to do with religion?” “Everything,” I reply. So I was excited to see that another pageant participants' religious beliefs...
April 16, 2010 9:21 AM
After seeing an advertisement for the 8th Annual Garden State Film Festival on Twitter, I requested a press pass, thinking I might screen an inspiring film or two that I could recommend to Her.meneutics readers. The festival director suggested Newt...
April 7, 2010 9:00 AM
I’d never thought much about plastic surgery until 28 years ago, when my then 2-year-old son bit through an extension cord and burnt his mouth. Even though we had no insurance, my husband and I found a plastic surgeon who...
March 1, 2010 9:28 AM
My story begins on a plane. All I did was ask the woman next to me for some lotion. Eyes wide, she looked at me like I’d asked for rat poison. She told me she did not use lotion anymore...
February 12, 2010 1:53 PM
The dreams, the sacrifices, the glory, the pageantry, Bob Costas — I don’t care if the Winter Olympics are the “less fun cousin” of the Summer Games, for the next two weeks I intend to plant myself in front of...
February 9, 2010 8:38 AM
One of my favorite Bible passages is from Psalm 34. Verses 4 and 5 read: "I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces...
August 11, 2009 9:42 AM
The Cambodian government last week banned the Miss Landmine beauty pageant, slated for Friday in the capital city of Phnom Penh. Government officials initially supported the contest but changed their view, saying the contest would damage “the dignity and honor...
June 2, 2009 9:33 AM
"Beauty often wins love. It just does," write Karen Lee-Thorp and Cynthia Hicks in Why Beauty Matters. No wonder women and, increasingly, men are willing to endure the pain and risk of elective cosmetic surgery to attain it. New York...
May 12, 2009 10:56 AM
If you haven't had enough of Miss California yet, she's still reigning in the news today. Donald Trump, owner of the Miss USA pageant, says Carrie Prejean can keep her crown, even after more racy photos were released online this...
May 1, 2009 8:17 AM
Carrie Prejean, praised by conservative Christian groups for her statement on same-sex marriage in the Miss USA beauty pageant, is appearing in a TV ad for the National Organization for Marriage, a Philadelphia nonprofit led by Maggie Gallagher and Princeton...
April 27, 2009 9:07 AM
Over the past week, I have mentioned the April issue of French Elle - whose cover features European celebrities without makeup or Photoshop retouching - to nearly every woman I know. Each of them has echoed the sentiments ringing...
April 24, 2009 9:16 AM
By the time a story like Miss California's has been covered on blogs and in tweets for three days, it seems like old news. On Tuesday, the editors at Her.meneutics discussed how to cover 21-year-old Carrie Prejean's answer to celebrity...