The Virgin Mary may have looked something like this

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brown_bear said:
did not intend to offend in the least
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You did not offend me! Please don’t think so!

I actually understood what you meant to convey, as I also think the eyebrows are a bit too bushy and hair a bit uncombed. And we Lebanese can also be a bit politically incorrect and blunt, so no offence from that quarter either.

I was merely pointing out that you could have worded your objection better.

And don’t worry about fitting in one bit! Lots of Middle-Easterners (myself included) have white/whitish skin. Olive skin is common but not universal.

Christ’s peace.
 
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Whatever Mary may have looked like in real life, I think we can all agree that she did NOT look like the blonde, mid-Western Anglo-Saxon featured girl that she is pictured as in all too many popular images.
 
@Pitcairn17 People tend to represent Our Lady with the ethnicity of the place in which they live and the dress/environment of the century in which they live.
Here some examples (you can find many more in the Perpetual Rosary thread).

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brown_bear said:
Among other things, she looks like she came out of a cave.
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Back in the day, caves must have come equipped with exfoliating sponges, Pantene ProV shampoo and conditioner, and bodywash enriched with Vitamin E and shea butter, because that portrait looks pretty good for somebody that grew up in ancient Palestine.
 
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Did the children who saw her at Fatima give a description of what she looked like?

The color of her hair or eyes?

In my mind’s eye, she has reddish brown hair and hazel/blue eyes.
 
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Sarcelle said:
Did the children who saw her at Fatima give a description of what she looked like?

The color of her hair or eyes?
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She had dark hair and eyes and looked Portuguese. However, the problem with relying on apparitions to show how Mary looked is that
  • in many Church-approved apparitions, she has appeared looking very different; her looks, such as skin tone, hair and eye color etc generally match the heritage of whoever she is appearing to, so that she could be “their mother”. Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Fatima, and Our Lady of La Salette all looked very different, yet all are Vatican-approved.
  • Mary also has a glorified body, which likely does not look like she did in her human body (remember that when Jesus appeared in his glorified body to Mary Magdalene, she didn’t recognize him).
  • Catholics are not required to believe approved private revelations, therefore even if Mary appeared looking the same way in every one, a Catholic could still believe she looked different in real life.
 
Pitcairn17 said:
Whatever Mary may have looked like in real life, I think we can all agree that she did NOT look like the blonde, mid-Western Anglo-Saxon featured girl that she is pictured as in all too many popular images.
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I think that’s a very safe assumption, and people who really dig their heels in and insist that the Virgin Mary or Jesus looked Swiss in the face of all common sense really make me raise my eyebrows. I don’t like to throw around the “racist” card too casually, but if it’s really important to you that Mary had blonde hair, blue eyes, and very fair skin…maybe ask yourself why that matters to you.
 
brown_bear said:
In my country, I am considered one who expresses himself with great property and calmness.

Communication between Italians is different: we are rougher, more rude, but we are less hypersensitive than you.

I’ll give you an example: the girl in the photo, you say she is Middle Eastern, and it will be true, but she could very well be from southern Italy. Yet no one in southern Italy would have ever made an objection like the ones you are making to me. Because we are used to a more informal language, to shoot it a little big, not to measure the words too much.

In Italy they would have said: “Okay, he doesn’t like that little girl as a representation of the Madonna, what’s the problem?”
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I understand that there are language and cultural issues here, and I believe you when you say you didn’t mean to express anything racist. Sorry if you felt attacked or insulted.

But you do understand why I asked, right? If I showed you a picture of a black guy with a neutral expression on his face and said “Is this Bob?” and you said “No! That can’t be Bob! Bob is intelligent!” then I might wonder if what you’re implying is that black people can’t be intelligent.
 
My mother was certainly beautiful, even when she was old.

Our Mother Mary will be even more so.

Certainly his gaze will have had extraordinary beauty and depth.
 
You give too much importance to the color of the skin.

I give more importance to the look, to the expression.

She doesn’t seem particularly intelligent to me, while Our Lady must have had an intelligent expression, for a very simple reason: she was intelligent.

His intelligence, together with his faith and love, are seen for example in the Annunciation.

An intelligent person cannot have an unintelligent face.

It is questionable that that face is not very intelligent, but not that Our Lady necessarily had to have an intelligent face.

But how the racist instance came to your mind, I just don’t know.

By the way: did you remove my first answer to your comment? You could also have asked me, if you had told me it bothered you I would have known how to correct it.
 
Pitcairn17 said:
Whatever Mary may have looked like in real life, I think we can all agree that she did NOT look like the blonde, mid-Western Anglo-Saxon featured girl that she is pictured as in all too many popular images.
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I’m not sure where people live that they see all these “blonde Marys” because the vast majority of Marys I have seen in my ilfe, including at my childhood parish which was Irish-German Catholic, have dark hair and skin that is somewhere between light tan and olive. My mother had various Mary statues and icons in the house; her two favorites were a plastic Our Lady of Grace, which does have pink skin, and a small icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, who looks totally different with olive skin and Eastern icon features. It was explained to me from a young age that Mary in religious statues and art takes on different appearances because she is the mother of us all and therefore looks like different people to whom she is mother.

Also, there is nothing wrong with a blonde Mary. Several Church-approved Marian apparitions had Mary appearing as a blonde, because she looked like the heritage of the persons to whom she was appearing. Mary has also appeared looking Vietnamese, African, mestizo, etc. Mary is the mother of us all and is not restricted any more to one race or nationality. Blonde Marys are only “wrong” when one insists she must have looked that way in her human life, which nobody I know has ever contended, because she was a Jewish girl from the Holy Land and we presume she looked like one.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Blonde Marys are only “wrong” when one insists she must have looked that way in her human life, which nobody I know has ever contended
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Really? I’ve seen multiple people on CAF insist that Mary was blonde and blue eyed in her earthly life.
 
i would imagine man’s idea of beautiful and God’s idea are probably very different.
 
I have only seen one or two posts like that, and I don’t consider myself to “know” people who post here unless they are regular posters over time. If there’s a “Blonde Mary” advocate on the forum, I must have missed it.

Besides, this is the place where whatever extreme far-edge version of a Catholic idea is going around is bound to crop up. Half the time, whoever is posting it ends up suspended in short order.
 
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brown_bear said:
I give more importance to the look, to the expression.

She doesn’t seem particularly intelligent to me, while Our Lady must have had an intelligent expression, for a very simple reason: she was intelligent.
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I think you’re assuming too much from a still image. You can’t tell whether someone is “nice” or “smart” from a single still image. You could have two photographs of the same person, one with a “dumb” expression on his face and one with a “smart” expression on his face.
 
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