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There is a scene in the movie Mary Queen of Scots that shows it was written by a man. Queen Elizabeth is visiting with a new foal in the stables. Seeing the baby horse causes her to bunch up her dress to her belly, making her look pregnant in her shadow. She looks at it longingly
I can honestly say that in my childlessness I have never looked at a baby animal and thought longingly of my own fertility. Do men think we see kittens and puppies and our ovaries twinge? Do cats see human babies and wish they were knocked up too? Wtf.
Men have such a bizarre fascination with our ability to create human life but at the same time give zero respect, credit, or even curiousity to our feelings about it.
Then later in the film, Queen Mary gives birth and we watch her childbearing juxtaposed with scenes of Queen Elizabeth angrily...crafting. And I don’t mean crafting a speech or a military plan. I MEAN ARTS AND CRAFTS. She is curling colored paper into fake flowers.
Q Mary has the baby. She sits on a white sheet, her legs spread open, the sheet is streaked with birthing blood. Q Elizabeth, also sits on her floor, her legs spread open... paper flowers strewn from btwn her legs. One has a baby & one has meaningless, frustrating craft projects?
Not saying women don’t grieve childlessness. But how/why are important. Take for instance, in The Favourite. Q Anne can’t have children, her maternal feelings go into care for her rabbits. That’s real. Several other childless female characters are indifferent about it. Also real.
For god sake, Elizabeth was a QUEEN. A Queen with a shaky claim, many considered a bastard, whose people could turn on her for political or religious reasons at any moment. Who she had a baby w could get her killed. Can we talk abt how MAYBE she valued HER life over childbearing?
We gotta stop giving men the money to make movies about the inner lives of powerful women.
