Mexico’s Playboy magazine decided that December, the same month that it’s own Virgen de Guadalupe is honored, the same month that people all over the world celebrate the biblical story of a virgin birthing a messiah, would be a great time to put a naked mujer posing like the Virgen Maria on it’s cover.

Claro, it’s Playboy, not a magazine known for taste or respect except when compared to Penthouse, for example, and it’s pretty obvious that this was a stunt meant to get attention and stir things up. What interests me is the why people are so mad.

The publisher of the magazine has come out publicly saying that the image of the model whose name just happens to be Maria, wasn’t meant to invoke the blessed mother. No word on how the cover title , “We Adore You Mary” is pulled straight from a prayer. Nor how the inside, ahem, spread of the magazine has the model Maria wearing a crown that a santo would wear.

So where exactly is the offense? Is the offense in portraying Mary naked since the real virgin would never have been naked, ever? Is the offense in portraying Mary as a sexual being since the real virgin never, ever was sexual? Or is the offense in people jerking off to a woman playing the Virgin Mary?

The image of Mary the mother of Jesus has been appropriated through history beginning with blonde blue eyed representations of her to Chris Ofili’s Virgin Mary collage with dung. So this is nothing new. Neither is the making of Mary into a pop culture icon. Just steps from my house I can buy a Virgin candle, statue, bath, air freshener, floor cleaner, bed sheet, tee shirt, and towel. The virgin is friend to common folks, after all how else to explain her appearance in tortillas, trees and tiles splattered with salsa.

Pero sexualize the mother!

Mothers are never sexual.

Verdad?