A lonely, wealthy old woman in a glass house (so outrageously designer that I was eaten up with envy straight away) hears the voices of children’s ghosts. Horror. She had time to haul her backside to Paris and Tokyo, but she didn’t manage—or didn’t want—to stick it out… well, for whom exactly? Because what’s missing for me is a man. Some bloke beside this woman who would at least clasp his head in his hands beneath the cross hanging on the wall, in a gesture of despair—as they seem to be showing a Polish home.
I wondered why there was no man there. And then it hit me. After all, this film refers to a noble tradition that is two thousand years old. Maria did not need a man to become pregnant, and she was very young at the time. Fourteen or fifteen, perhaps. And now a Catholic foundation is simply promoting this New Testament fashion and lifestyle in the twenty-first century. All I’m missing are donkeys, mangers, stables and that other fellow, Herod the murderer—but there will probably be time for that in the next campaign.
I don’t know how to fight this holy image of a contemporary Babylonian harlot, flying around the world without consequences instead of washing nappies (I don’t know whether mentioning Pampers fits this convention). And I don’t know what a counter-campaign would look like.
Perhaps we would have to show some collapsing shack and a woman in rags (that is, modest clothing), unemployed and dependent on MOPS benefits, laughing joyfully at the camera with toothless gums because a dentist is expensive—just like one trip to Paris for that well-groomed childless businesswoman.
I have nothing against women who have children or do not have children. They are all great. I do, however, have a request for the campaign’s creators. Could you, dear sages—male and female—of souls and every religion, take care of something productive and purposeful instead of burdening well-groomed, independently minded, self-reliant women in Poland who are managing in the labour market with guilt?
Grażyna Hanaf