Seeing Through The Tropes: How Art History Shaped Women's Identity | Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt

How do the images we see shape the way we understand ourselves and one another?

In this episode of Makers & Mystics, Stephen Roach sits down with art historian and author Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt to explore her new book, Look Like a Lady: Five Visual Tropes of Womanhood and How to See Ourselves Differently.

Drawing from centuries of art history, Elissa identifies five recurring ways women have been depicted and understood: Venus, Vessel, Maiden, Mother, and Monster. These aren't simply artistic categories. They are stories that can quietly shape our expectations about beauty, femininity, motherhood, sexuality, agency, and even holiness.

Together, Stephen and Elissa explore how these visual tropes have influenced both popular culture and Christian imagination and consider the alternative stories that can help us see women as whole, particular, embodied people rather than objects, symbols, or stereotypes.

The conversation moves from ancient Greek sculpture and Renaissance paintings to Victorian photography, contemporary beauty culture, purity culture, and the ways women are represented within the church.

Along the way, Elissa introduces five counter-stories:

Witnessing instead of objectifying
Being instead of becoming an empty vessel for someone else's meaning
Moving instead of remaining passive or contained
Cultivating instead of being reduced to motherhood
Partnering instead of viewing men and women as threats or opposites

At the heart of the conversation is a deeper question: What might it look like to recover a vision of womanhood rooted not in cultural expectations, but in the particularity, dignity, agency, and belovedness of each person created in the image of God?

For artists, this conversation offers an invitation to consider how the images we create participate in forming the imagination of the people who encounter them.

And for all of us, it raises an important possibility: perhaps freedom doesn't come from simply rejecting old stories, but from learning to recognize them—and telling truer ones.

Elissa Weichbrodt is an art historian, educator, and author. Her new book, Look Like a Lady: Five Visual Tropes of Womanhood and How to See Ourselves Differently, examines the ways visual culture has shaped our understanding of womanhood and offers a more expansive, hopeful vision.

Connect with Elissa on Instagram: http://instagram.com/elissabrodt
Get the book: https://bakerbookhouse.com/products/9781587436925_look-like-a-lady

Listen to our previous conversation with Elissa: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s11-e07-redeeming-vision-with-dr-elissa-yukiko-weichbrodt/id1090123738?i=1000605110237

Art & Identity, Author, Beauty, Culture, Historical Figure, WholenessStephen RoachSeptember 9, 2026Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, Women Writers, women, visual art

S11 E07: Redeeming Vision with Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt

Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt is Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Her research and writing consider representations of race and gender in 19th and 20th century art and visual culture, but she is most passionate about equipping laypeople to engage generatively with the images they already see.

In this episode, Dr. Weichbrodt and I discuss her book, Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art, which at the time of this recording was just released from Baker Academic.

In our conversation, we talk about how we might engage with art that makes us uncomfortable, challenges us or takes us outside our familiar ways of seeing.

One of the chapters in Redeeming Vision is titled Wondering at God’s Transcendence. Of Course, given our theme for the season, I couldn’t resist spending some time unpacking this chapter specifically.

Abstract Art, Author, Faith and Art, transcendenceStephen RoachMarch 21, 2023Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, Professor, Art Professor, Redeeming Vision