Category: Beauty and Fashion

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What Every Christian Girl Can Learn From Kate
by Elizabeth Botkin

The fashion leadership of Kate Middleton holds a lesson for every Christian girl. As wife to Prince William and presumed future queen of England, Kate is in a position of representing Great Britain to the world. Every inch of her appearance, from her hairstyle to her fingernails, article-2187534-1586A9E7000005DC-15_964x1220sends the world a message about the nation and the monarchy, the laws and the traditions, the culture and the history she represents – messages the world scrutinizes keenly. As ambassador to the crown, she can’t dress to merely express her individuality, follow the trends every other girl is following, or refuse to think about clothes at all. Her job demands making deliberate and strategic decisions about what message to send through every detail – from her traditional British fascinators to her sleek High Street heels.

The truth is, every Christian girl has just as much to represent as Kate Middleton. Our King is no less ruling, and we are no less ambassadors. Unlike Kate, we don’t have to spend £22,000 per year to represent our King and our heavenly citizenship. Like Kate, however, we also don’t belong to ourselves. We were bought with a price and represent the One Who bought us. Like Kate, we can’t afford to let others make these decisions for us. And like Kate, we have a world watching. What message are they picking up about our Lord, His edicts, and our loyalties?

Beauty and FashionWomanhood in Pop Culture
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Announcing the Reclaiming Beauty Study Course
by Anna Sofia & Elizabeth Botkin

We’re delighted to announce the release of the Reclaiming Beauty Study Course! The response to our Reclaiming Beauty webinar was so tremendous that we’ve repackaged the recordings into a digital study course, which includes nine hours of video recordings (audio with image-rich power-point, plus Q&A) and a brand spanking new study guide, ideal for women’s study groups.

To be honest, we’re grateful the webinar is over. It was a fascinating glutton of time and energies that we’re now very happy to be able to devote to other things, like gearing up for future family projects and studying things that are not beauty-related. And taking a minute to organize our messy closet, like we told all our listeners to do theirs.

That said, we gained a huge amount from the experience of preparing and hosting this webinar. And most importantly to us, the webinar seems to be doing what we prayed it would: helping young women sort through the important, frustrating, confusing subject of personal image.

During the webinar, listeners signed up from all over the world, some getting up in the middle of the night to tune in. The flood of notes we received after each session, and are continuing to get, made the whole thing worth every moment of effort. Here are just a few, out of hundreds.

Finally, the help I need…thank you! — C

The webinar helped me to truly “reclaim” beauty. I felt inspired with every session! — J

There were so many times where we would say, “Wow! I’ve never thought of it that way before.” Our lives are changed (or should I say, changing) for the better – practically, physically, and most importantly, spiritually. — V

I loved how you brought everything back to Christ and the truth of His Word. — B

 

 
It is amazing how one topic can do so much to change a person’s life. … Before listening to this seminar, I would have such terrible anxiety about what I was going to wear and who I was, that it was affecting my health. I have been battling with Anorexia for 7 years and I can’t thank God enough for your obedience to Him and sharing the discoveries you have made in His word. …I no longer feel like I have no purpose, the suicidal grip Satan had on me has ceased, and my relationship with my family is beginning to blossom with healing. — S

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this! It is so refreshing to hear a well-balanced view on this subject- a view that is based upon the Word of God and a love for the Lord Jesus. — A

…listening to you both was very helpful, encouraging, exciting, fun, freeing, enlightening, insightful, thought-provoking, action-provoking… It produced growth in all of us and it was a huge blessing! — V

After each session, we were amazed by the number of questions we hadn’t considered and the answers so graciously and persuasively presented from Scripture. …Your presentation was carefully researched, fiercely loyal to Scripture and yet gently and winsomely communicated, practical to everyday use and eminently vital for the cultural transformation of the world. — K, E, and A
 

“I encourage you to check it out because I have experienced myself what these ladies live and breath, what beauty shines forth from them.” (R.C. Sproul, Jr.)

“My daughters and I have heard the Botkin girls many times and we are always improved in our thinking as a result. I commend this experience to all those who would like to grow in their understanding of this important subject.” (Scott Brown)

Beauty and FashionBotkin ProjectsEducation
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Session One Finished and Available!
by Elizabeth Botkin

Praise the Lord for giving us a successful first session to the Reclaiming Beauty webinar. And our very warm thanks to all of you who joined us on Tuesday night!

For those of you who didn’t, we’ve decided to make the recording of this one session available to everyone free of charge. Go here to download the session, and here if you’d like to sign up for the rest of the webinar. There are six more episodes to come!

Beauty and FashionBotkin Projects
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Fathers, Daughters and the Beauty Subject
by Anna Sofia Botkin


Daddy’s little girls: us at 6 and 4

Beauty and personal appearance is one area of a girl’s life that many fathers feel unqualified to speak into. However, in this mp3 message, our father Geoffrey Botkin explains a father’s biblical duty to be shepherding his daughter in this crucial area of her life – affecting the way she grows up to see herself, the culture around her, and her role as a woman. Listen to this message along with our mother’s on the same subject, and get a full-orbed picture of how a father and mother work together to prepare their daughters to be “corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace.” (Psalm 144:12)

Beauty and FashionFamily Relationships
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Mothers, Daughters, and the Beauty Subject
by Elizabeth Botkin

Us with our mother in 2001, ages 16 and 14… before the days of hairstyling, makeup, or clothes that fit.

As the launch date for our “Reclaiming Beauty” webinar draws near, we’ve been thinking about what an important part mothers play in this part of their daughters’ lives. Though the webinar is targeted at young women, we’ve persuaded our mother to share some helpful words for other mothers on how they should approach this issue and help their daughters with it. We considered having her share this as a guest in one of the sessions, but decided this message was so important that we wanted to make it available to everyone for free. Please listen to this message. Pass it around to your friends. And don’t forget to sign up for the webinar! September 25 is just around the corner.

Beauty and FashionFamily Relationships
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First “Reclaiming Beauty” Session Open to the Public!
by Elizabeth Botkin

Friends, we’ve decided to make the first session of the “Reclaiming Beauty” webinar free to the public! Tune in from 7-8PM, Central Time, on September 25, and join us for a eye-opening look at “What God Says About Beauty and Beautification: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” — a fascinating introduction to the issue that launched a thousand ships. Bring your questions, and get ready for a new look at how to glorify God in your body! (1 Cor. 6:20)

Space is limited, so after registered participants, seats will be awarded on a first-come, first served basis. Click here to sign up for the first session free of charge.

We look forward to starting this journey with you on September 25!

Beauty and Fashion
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When Fairness is Unfair
by Anna Sofia Botkin

Earlier this year, 18-year-old Florence Colgate was dubbed “Britain’s Most Beautiful Face,” not by the authority of beauty pageant judges, but by the authority of science and math. Miss Colgate’s face won out over 8,000 others on the basis of best match-up with a mathematically devised blueprint for perfect facial proportions based on the Golden Ratio.

Her “scientifically proven” prettiness sparked a huge debate that still rages all over the internet. Hundreds protested (for good reason) that the mystery of what makes one face more attractive than another can’t be solved with a formula. A much bigger concern, however, was over what that formula would do to the self-image of millions who can’t measure up to it: Women would feel like they were doomed to ugliness because their faces didn’t match the grid. … Read more →

Beauty and Fashion
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Any Questions?
by Elizabeth Botkin

What have you always wanted to know about beauty and beautification? Whether your questions are philosophical or practical, we’d like to invite you to throw them our way as we prepare for the “Reclaiming Beauty” webinar. We’ll be answering questions live during the webinar, but hearing your biggest questions now will help us make sure our sessions will tackle are all the major topics our listeners want to hear about. Just email us at damselsATvisionarydaughtersDOTcom, and let us know what you’d like to hear us address. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Beauty and Fashion
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Reclaiming Beauty: A Webinar
by Elizabeth Botkin

ReclaimingBeauty

A New Look at How to Glorify God in Your Body

What is beauty?

Some say beauty fits in a size 0. Some say beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. Some say beauty is only skin deep. Some say beauty is only a quality of the heart. Some say beauty is truth. Some say beauty is a lie. Some say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some say beauty is as beauty does. Some say Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly are beautiful. Some say everyone is beautiful. Some say beauty is divine. Some say beauty is corrupting.

From all this confusion, one idea emerges clearly: The world knows beauty matters. They talk a lot about it, write poetry and paint paintings celebrating it, and spend $160 billion dollars a year on it. But what’s equally clear is that they don’t know what it is. The question is: Do we?

Today’s young Christian women have grown up in the most image-obsessed generation in history, a generation that worships some of the most twisted ideals of beauty the world has ever seen. But whether we love them or hate them… they tend to shape our own perceptions of what beauty is. Some of us accept its ideals, and struggle to fit into its mold – others of us are repulsed by it, concluding that physical beauty itself is immodest, worldly, and unspiritual, and reject the realm of beautification completely. But when all we’ve ever seen is the counterfeit the world offers, we can sometimes forget that the world did not create beauty – God did. And though we all know the world has a lot to say about image, we sometimes don’t realize how much God does too.

Fashion though history

It’s time to reclaim beauty. For thousands of years, believers, pagans, Gnostics, Humanists, Neo-Platonists, iconoclasts, and creators of culture have battled over this critical turf called “beauty.” Today, we have only to look at who designs the fashions, markets the beauty icons, rules the red carpet, adorns magazine covers, crowns Miss America, and designs clothes-and-makeup advertisements, to know who is currently holding the turf.

It’s time to take beauty back. When faced with an industry that runs on photoshop airbrushing, plastic surgery, starvation diets, grotesque catwalk styles, and billions of squandered dollars, our response can no longer be, “Beauty is not for us.” It’s time for our response to be, “Get your flag out of our ground.” It’s time for us to be a light in a culture that uses beauty as a weapon against God. It’s time for God’s ambassadors to make His principles – such as modesty and femininity – look as beautiful as they really are. It’s time for us to show the world: Ugliness is not beauty. Emaciation is not beauty. Androgyny is not beauty. Immodesty is not beauty. Unnatural distortion is not beauty. From Genesis to Revelation, God paints a different picture of the inner and outer beauty of a woman, and it’s time to show the world what it really looks like – one soul, one body, one face, one closet at a time.

A Webinar on Reclaiming Beauty
with Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin

Webinar on Reclaiming Beauty by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin

This fall, the authors of So Much More and It’s (Not That) Complicated and producers of “Return of the Daughters” are launching an intensely practical, image-rich, 7-week webinar on the meaning and cultivation of beauty from the inside out. Join sisters Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin as they dive into Scripture for the answers to an issue of great importance and frustration to young women: personal image.

Is it OK to look pretty? Wear makeup and jewelry? Put effort into my clothes? Take care of my body? Do I have to care about how I look? Where can I find modest, classy clothes without spending a fortune? What should my attitude be toward the latest fashions? How do I figure out what looks good on me? What is appropriate to wear when? What in the world do I do with my hair?

“Reclaiming Beauty: A New Look at How to Glorify God in Your Body” will cover topics ranging from such practical issues as skincare, fitness, posture, voice, modesty, home-made beauty products, and color analysis… to subjects as penetrating as personal identity, insecurity, comparisons, worldliness, vanity, idolatry, our attitude toward others, and the state of our hearts before the Lord.

Discover:

  • What it means to represent the Lord as His ambassadors to the world
  • Where true beauty starts
  • What the Bible says about beautification and adornment
  • How we should respond to the world’s idea of beauty
  • The history and philosophy behind the most popular garments
  • The proper priority-level of beauty in the Christian’s life
  • The biblical relationship between the physical and the spiritual
  • What it means to be separate from the world
  • What we can learn from the beauty industry
  • What the beauty industry has gotten wrong

Get practical tips on:

  • Clothing yourself better for a lot less money
  • Making modesty and femininity look excellent instead of frumpy
  • Making off-the-rack clothes modest
  • Putting together great outfits with what you already had in your closet
  • Using makeup tastefully
  • Giving sloppy garments new life with minimum alterations
  • Cultivating taste and style
  • Getting out of a fashion rut
  • Creating a minimum-time-and-effort plan for looking nice every day

A Webinar That’s Not Just Skin Deep

Webinar sessions will run every Tuesday evening, 7-8 PM Central Time, from September 25 to November 13 (excluding October 30). The seven sessions include:

#1. What God Says About Beauty and Beautification
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

#2: What Style Is Your Heart, Mind, and Soul?
Pardon Me, Ma’am, But Your True Identity is Showing

#3. Getting Your Temple in Order
The Physical Foundations of Beauty

#4. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
How to Work with the Build, Coloring, and Natural Beauty God Gave You

#5: Putting Things Together
Composition, Style, Occasion, Accessories

#6: Acquiring New Pieces (and Revitalizing Old Ones)
How to Get What You Need with Minimum Time, Money, and Fuss

#7: The Focal Point
Being a Good Steward of Your Face and Hair

The webinar registration fee is $44 per family. It is recommended for young women 12 and up, although parents are encouraged to listen with their daughters.

Click Here to Register

Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin

Starting out as aesthetic ascetics and determined frumps who were clueless about beauty and fashion, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth have had to build their understanding of beauty from the biblical foundation up (a work still in progress). They have no beauty certifications whatsoever, though they do have experience dressing for everything from speaking engagements to political events to concert harp performances to good old dirty work around the farm, and each get everything they need (clothes, shoes, hair care, accessories, cosmetics, etc.) for around $130 a year. They’re also interested in reclaiming the biblical family, film, art, music, and politics, and work with their family’s ministry, Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences.

Beauty and FashionBotkin Projects