December 18th, 2008 -- by Bacchus
The Vigin Mary, Nude In (Mexican) Playboy
I am not making this up. Mexican Playboy did a photo shoot of Maria Florencia Onori as the Virgin Mary, and the result was a bunch of pissed-off Mexican Catholics.
I myself think Maria is beautiful, and don’t have a lot of time for Christians who despise female beauty to the point where they freak out when it’s associated, however indirectly, with their holy figures:
I got this from Violet Blue, who has many more details.
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Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=2739
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=2739
Personally, the shoes are ruining for me . . . the Virgin Mary in my fantasies is either barefoot or in Biblical-era, sensible sandals ;)
But it’s still nice.
yeah, but they can’t get enough naked Jesus.
So, how’d they find out about the pictures? Aren’t they supposed to avoid publications like “Playboy?”
Oh, sure, it only takes one tattle-tale, but shouldn’t they be asking that guy how _he_ found out?
Every time the religious complain about something, it always carries the odour of hypocrisy.
1) It’s not despising female beauty. It’s simply recognizing that someone crossed a line by stepping too far into someone else’s sacred cows. If, for example, we want their religion to stay out of our porn, it might be polite for us to keep their religion out of our porn.
2) As for how they saw it, it was on the cover. I see the covers of magazines I have no interest in all the time. If kink.com popped up on the cover of Martha Stewart magazine, people would notice, and it’s not like we’re jacking off to Martha Stewart videos.
Putting a Virgin Mary shoot on the cover of Mexican Playboy so that it will be available during the Feast of Immaculate Conception and the Feast of Our Lady in Guadalupe is about as tacky as inviting Fred Phelps to officiate at a gay wedding. Sure, we have the right to do it, but maybe if we want others to do the right thing instead of just doing what they have the right to do, we should consider doing the right thing too.
She’s beautiful, but putting a Virgin Mary shoot the cover of Mexican Playboy, and doing it at this time of year is just inconsiderate.
Given that the concept of virgin birth is a central tenet to Roman Catholicism, I can see why the sensualization of a supposedly non sensual religious figure might upset devout practitioners of Maryolotry.
Seems like a bit of a cheap shot on Playboy’s part, since I doubt they will do a similar cover piece on Mohammed and his nine year old wife . . .
I agree! The shoes ruin it.
Men really need to get over the Madonna Whore Complex. I’m a sex consultant and I see a lot of male clients who married a virgin and are now in an unfulfilling vanilla marriage. I smack them upside the head and say, “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?”
For non-believers, it’s deeply unclear why nude re-imaginings of this particular religious figure would be offensive. Do Christians think she never took off her clothes? Or that she was not beautiful?
If it were a Hustler spread that showed her fucking Joseph, I’d understand the outrage, because then it would be attacking the characteristic for which she is venerated. But, it’s not.
Blasphemy is a sin according to the Church. If this is truly wrong in the eyes of God, let him handle it quit worrying and go on about your life. Let the sinners have their fun they’ll pay for it in the end. If God’s not offended, then you worried for nothing.
It’s offensive for the same reasons that having Fred Phelps and company show up at a funeral protesting is offensive.
Yes, they’re outside the funeral, not in front of the casket and they’re exercising their freedom of speech and doing what they believe they have every right to do.
But it’s not their funeral. They don’t care one bit about the person in the casket. It’s simply a springboard for them to do their piece on.
For non-believers, the reason to stay away from the Virgin Mary is simply that we’re non believers. Using her as a springboard for our goals is like Fred Phelps using a dead soldier’s funeral as a springboard for his goals.
Maria Florencia Onori doesn’t need to be dressed up as the Virgin Mary to deserve the cover of Playboy, so why do it? Why should Mexican Playboy use something that someone else cares about deeply when it’s clear that they personally don’t care one bit about it?
We understood Neil Gaiman when he said,”… if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.”
There comes a time for non-believers to stand up for the believer’s right to have their beliefs respected. This is one of those times, especially if we are to have any hope of having our beliefs respected further down the line.
Ken, I’m afraid that to me, your argument smacks of handwavium. You speak of respecting believer’s beliefs, but you haven’t identified any way in which the pictorial in question actually disrespects any of the doctrinal beliefs about the Virgin Mary.
What’s really going on here, I think, is that there are cultural tendencies associated with, but not derived from, aspects of religious belief. And you, just like the people claiming to be offended, are confusing the tendencies with the associated belief.
In other words, a pretty nude dressed up in the religious iconography of a religion whose believers tend not to approve of nudity is being parsed (by Ken and others) as disrespectful of the religion. In fact, it leaves the religion untouched (as the hypothetical Hustler portrayal I mentioned would not) but it probably is a mild tweak at the sensibilities (non-religious, cultural sensibilities) of the believers in that religion. It also (perhaps rudely) invites them to take positions that highlight the disconnect between the actual tenets of their religion, and the cultural prejudices they like to defend, disingenuously, in the name of that religion.
Respecting the actual religious beliefs of others is a good thing, as is respecting their right to practice those beliefs in their own homes and churches. Respecting their attempts (which they themselves have termed “cultural war”) to shape and limit the culture they live in (the culture that they share with non-believers) in the name of that religion is quite another. This would be true even if the cultural rules they seek to enforce on non-believers were importantly associated with their religious doctrines; when that link is weak, as here, it’s even more true.
I don’t think I said it was disrespectful towards any of the doctrinal beliefs about the Virgin Mary.
I believe the pictorial to be disrespectful towards the people who hold those beliefs, and that disrespect comes from people who don’t care about the icon using it in a way that offends, for whatever reason, the people who do care about the icon.
If one child takes another child’s toys and abuses them, that’s disrespectful behavior towards the other child and a refusal to respect the child’s wishes.
Likewise, Mexican Playboy’s use of a religious icon they don’t care about for the purpose of making a buck was disrespectful to the people who do care, and care deeply about the icon.
There doesn’t need to be a religious logic for there to be disrespect. All there needs to be is someone not caring one bit about someone else is going to feel about this.
You can justify your lack of caring about their feelings a thousand different ways. You can tell me in a thousand different ways why they shouldn’t feel the way they do. In all of that you would be completely right.
But in the end, they’re still hurt, and I wonder if someone really needed to let them be hurt just to make a buck.
Ken, did you even read my argument? Because you seem to have ignored it entirely.
Meanwhile, you’re saying that its bad to hurt the feelings of others without any regard whatsoever for whether it’s objectively reasonable for them to get their feelings hurt from the behavior in question. That strikes me as a bizarre claim.
And you can’t ignore the fact that there’s a culture war going on. Some religionists want to narrow the freedoms of popular culture, forcing it within the cultural constraints of their religion; some secularists (and I’m one) want religion to stay out of secular business (which Playboy magazine surely is). I know which side of that war I’m fighting on, and I’m quite confident that feelings are going to get hurt in the fighting. Always have, always will. As dedicated as I am to civility, even a civil debate can hurt feelings while being worth having.
If you want religion to stay out of secular business, why are you supporting secular business putting religion in there? Placing religious icons in secular business is counterproductive to the goal of keeping them out. It forces their presence in a place where you don’t want their presence because they need to get involved just to protect their own interests.
What you seem to be interested in is expanding your freedoms at the cost of their freedoms. That’s simply not productive to you or your interests. What I’m hearing you say is that not only do you want them out of your sandbox but you want their icons in your sandbox without them having a say in what you do with their icons. They’re going to resent this appropriation of their icons and final result will be detrimental to your cause.
Publicly supporting everyone’s right to be left alone and respected strikes me as a much more productive way to promote our right to be left alone and respected.
She makes me want to go to church and I’m not even Christian.