Oh, please. A priest is going to hold a beauty contest for nuns, to prove that some of them are hot? Father Objectification sez, “Beauty is a gift from God” and assures us that the sisters won’t be asked to parade around in bathing suits.
Please be offended for yourselves here.
I have two comments.
First of all, we might THINK that nuns might actually be the only women on the planet who would not be subjected to this kind of competitive, looksist bullshit.
Secondly, am I getting Father O. right when he suggests that old nuns = ugly nuns? Slap that jerk with a strand of wet fettuccine!
Is it not enough that nuns are subject to priestly authority as religious women and spiritual beings? Now they have to be judged by them as externally beautiful or not? Where in the Bible does Jesus or Paul or anyone suggest this sort of competition? Is it in some obscure part of the Rules of St. Benedict or Francis or Ignatius that I haven’t heard of?
A few years ago a friend sent me a calendar of hot Italian priests in collars and vestments. If the boys want to objectify each other for fun and profit, they can go for it. But they should keep their judging, assessing male gaze off the nuns, whose business it is to serve the Lord, not to look pretty.
Boy, am I cheezed off!
Um, it got canceled a whole day after it was reported. See here: http://www.google.com/reader/view/#search/beauty%20contest%20nuns/1
Erm, I meant here:
http://www.bookofjoe.com/2008/08/breaking-news-b.html [Thanks for the link, Mary Sue, and GOOD! -PB]
Ok, PB, you know I love you, and I was with you up until the very end, when you said it was the nun’s business to “serve the Lord, not look pretty.”
Isn’t that what this whole blog is about, serving “the Lord” and still looking pretty? And if nuns looking pretty is only to satisfy the “judging, assessing male gaze,” then what are we doing?
(And p.s. I wrote a whole paper on the “gaze” of the lover in Song of Songs and in pop culture, so I’m not saying we should promote that kind of thing necessarily, just questioning why it’s different for us to look pretty than Catholic nuns).
[I should have said “look pretty for a contest.” But I wasn’t clear. I was too tootin’ mad to be clear! Of course I hope the sisters are beautiful for themselves, but did you read what that jackass priest said about nuns? Totally sexist, vile stuff like “I wanted to show that being ugly is not a requirement for being a nun.” – PB]
OMG. I just don’t even have words…