Oh Mary Part II: Mary did you come?

Mary doesn’t look happy at all.

Though it’s impossible to dictate that she has any negative feelings in those portraits, partly because of the artistic style, which I like to call “making people look miserable;” when I look at Mary, I always see her as a little annoyed, almost angry, almost.

And realistically, it would make sense:

1. Mary might be annoyed by Christ, who was depicted as a baby in her arms in many paintings. Any infant of Christ’s age wouldn’t stay still in their mothers’ laps or arms for too long while being painted. They’d wiggle and cry and grasp their mothers’ hair or jewelries, and let’s be honest, they’d look hideous doing it.

So the image of baby Christ, who we see as flushed from smiling in paintings, is a manufactured fiction rather than a realistic depiction. The painter couldn’t possible paint the Son of God as annoying. The “Son of God” is a fiction anyways, so it would be fine for Christ to be painted as almost too good to be non-fictional.

But in contrast, Mary the woman is factual, and so is her perpetual annoyance towards what she claimed to be the Son of God.

2. Perhaps, in the many hours that Mary poses for the portrait with baby Christ restless in her arms, she was thinking how stupid it is people to take her words for granted, and just believe the child she was pregnant with is “God’s Child.”

Mary came from a humble, ordinary, working-class background in the small village of Nazareth, who never had her face painted on portraits as that was reserved for the royalty, the wealthy, or religious leaders. And maybe, in the many hours of having her portrait painted, she was quietly mocking how that rule is so easily subverted the moment she brought “God the Father” into the conservation.

Or maybe everything was planned. Mary lied to people that child is the Son of God so she could have her face and name immortalized. She perhaps well understood the importance of having a face, rather than just powerless anonymity in history, or mythology, even just as a “mother,” but not “God the Mother.”

3. Or the two combined: maybe she’s annoyed because despite of how she absolutely despised the child she has to appear motherly (and somehow virgin-ly), as she knew it’s no time to make her lie falls apart — not when she just began to be respected not despite her femininity but because of it. And she knows she must love the child, even though he’s part-fact-part-fiction, which was considered as somehow better than part-man-part-woman, part-white-part-colored, part-straight-part-gay… etc… (it is not)

Or maybe… it’s exactly because Christ is part-fact-part-fiction, they gives her the power that she yearns so much for she had none; perhaps not even when she had sex, or should we say, “being had sex to.”

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Though we say, “sex is power,” but that saying is really contextual: who’s sex is power? And what’s the ethnicity, gender, skin color, class, sexuality, gender expression etc of that person who supposedly “owns” the sex.

Maybe it’s impossible for a singular being to “own” the sex, for it would be paradoxical. Sex happens when there’s at least two people involved, and both or more parties are eligible to say “I had sex” (see, I “had” or “have” means the particular sexual experience they were referring to belongs to them). It’s only possible for a person to say “I had sex and it’s my sex and no one else’s” when that person is masturbating, but even then it would be “I had sex with myself,” and the word “with” would suggest there were two parties involved, even if it’s just “me” and “myself.”

But in the patriarchal society, we’re conditioned to believe sex only belongs to one of those two parties, and usually the socially privileged one, for instance:

1. In porns, sex belongs to men. I’ve seen many porns that end with a man cumming, while showing no proof that the woman actually orgasmed. But I have seen no porn that ends with a woman cumming and the man hadn’t. It would be valid to say sex belongs to the man when it’s depicted to end with the man’s satisfaction and not that of the woman’s.

2. Sure, there’re some porns that show a woman cumming, but I’ve seen none that ends with it. Perhaps because realistically, men wouldn’t bother making women cum after they’ve summed because they had been taught in a way that sex belongs to them.

Some porns follow this trope: two people having sex, the woman orgasmed, the man orgasmed (and perhaps leaving his semen inside her vagina). I think even in those porns that show a woman’s orgasm, she doesn’t “own” the sex, but she’s providing a “service” in the sexual context.

Men are paradoxical: on the one hand, they don’t tend to care if their female partner has orgasmed or not; but on the other hand, they take big pride in making a woman cum because that supposedly prove his competency (or maleness, which is the ability to sexually satisfy and thus dominate women in sex).

Some porns make the woman cum before the man because it is a bridge designed to provide a psychological service to the male audience. It is merely a bridge because it is irrelevant to the ending because a woman cumming in typical porns mean nothing other than to provide psychological satisfaction.

So even when she comes, she doesn’t own the sex — her sex — because the sex continues even when, in reality, she’d drift off to post-orgasmic bliss. In contrast to if she really owns the sex, action would stop the moment she lays there satisfied.

3. Let’s talk about something other than porn, because it’s arguable if pornography is truly a force that shapes social and cultural structures. Notice how in biology class on sex and reproduction would always end on the note, “male ejaculates sperm, fertilization happens, embryos… fetus… whatsoever…”?

I wonder why for men sex would end with an ejaculating orgasm, whereas for women, sex ends with being pregnant and giving birth to a kid she might not want, and might not be able to get rid of. One would only willingly owns something when it brings then something worth celebrating, like pleasure. But almost nothing at all is taught about women’s pleasure, like G-spot, or the clit.

Speaking of the clit, it’s worth mentioning that only in 1998, the first detailed modern anatomical study of the clit was published. And the term “cliteracy” was coined in 2012, really not that long ago.

So when the boys and girls blush or giggle as their teachers taught them sex and reproduction in biology class, boys are excited (or aroused) by the concept of ejaculation, which was known to them as pleasure; whereas girls are blushing at the mere concept of being had sex to.

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So, in the light of all that. Mary probably didn’t have power, same as many women then and now. “Sex is power” likely didn’t apply to her as much as she hoped it would.

And perhaps, that’s why she looked eternally annoyed. Imagine having need to pose for a portrait, holding a restless child who does not come from your orgasm but that of someone else’s, while the only thing you look forward to is go home early and play with your clit.