The Maternal Goddess « The Thinking Housewife

The Maternal Goddess

August 26, 2010

Julia Roberts poses in a Hindu temple with her son

— Comments —

George writes:

Is it just me, or does that boy look underweight. Should we really be able to see his shoulder blades and spine like that?

Laura writes:

The photo accentuates his shoulder blades. Creepy isn’t it?

The whole thing gives me the creeps. I make further comments on the photo here. Julia, by the way, has converted to Hinduism, as you may have guessed from this portrait of a temple devotee. The strange thing here is her gown looks Japanese. When I first saw this picture I thought it was a reference to Madame Butterfly and maybe that’s why the child was there, but that wouldn’t make sense in the context of Eat Pray Love, which is what this cover shoot is about, and the magazine caption situates Roberts in a Hindu temple.

Reader N. writes:

Perhaps it is just me, but the image of Julia Roberts doesn’t look like a real human being. She looks like an expensive department store mannequin, the kind that would be seen only in an upscale store such as the old Macy’s on 5th Avenue in New York, or the original Neimann Marcus in Dallas, Goldwater’s in Phoenix, etc. Her facial expression is rather vacant, and frankly there should be a discreet price tag somewhere on her kimono.

Laura writes:

Normally, Elle lists prices of the clothes, but this is by the designer Etro and all that is said is “price upon request,” which means it is fantastically expensive.

Hurricane Betsy writes:

What is creepy? The purported accentuation, or the fact of being skinny?

If we have skinny children, they should be photographed only in such a way as to hide that fact? I found nothing creepy about the child, and I’d be saying that even if I didn’t have a skinny son. His shoulder blades don’t show like that any more, but nevertheless, he doesn’t appear to have much body fat! Should I be ashamed of him? (He is both nice & smart but I never say this out loud as it wouldn’t be modest.) I must say that you lost me completely on this one. My husband, my (skinny) boy’s father, was like a rake for many, many years. These things happen.

However, I’ll tell you what’s creepy: Roberts herself, as you imply. All that weirdness about shooting stars. Judas Priest, I know that Hollywood is a sinkhole for the world’s most disturbed “human beings” but I didn’t know whether to s–t or go blind when she rattled on about her and her husband’s great love and the Cosmic Significance of It All. Pfffffft.

Laura writes:

It wasn’t his skinny-ness that I found creepy. I found it distasteful that a child his age was half naked on his mother’s lap for a formal portrait and the photographer chose to highlight his nakedness in this way. She is elaborately dressed in brocade and he has virtually nothing on even though he is perhaps six years old and he is turned facelessly toward her so that his personality is obliterated and he is reduced to a doll in her arms. To me, the photographer deliberately contrasted his impersonal frailty with her power and glory. This is a creepy maternal power trip. That she went along with this with her own son is sickening.

Rita writes:

Love the child’s red hair though…at least she’s bringing white children into the world!

Hurricane Betsy writes:

I have thought about what Laura said. And I have looked at the portrait again and again, in addition to reading the various points of view. You grasp stuff faster than I do. I understand now: there is something actually macabre about that scene. The child’s face should not be hidden. Why does the mother look like a store mannequin? Why does the child look like a doll? Who is trying to prove what? What’s wrong with Mother + Father + nicely dressed Child all smiling at the camera like the portraits they take at the department store photography shop? You know, where you pay $25.00 for a big picture and 10 little pictures, instead of hiring a sexually disturbed high-art photographer who probably charges thousands?

Laura writes:

I saw this photo in a magazine in a dentist’s waiting room and, in that sterile setting, the pornographic suggestions in the photo seemed especially apparent and blew me away. But then much of the advertising and many of the photo shoots in a fashion magazine like Elle, with its pretensions of high culture, are quasi-pornographic today.

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Posted by Laura Wood in Uncategorized

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