Missionary Pose: Why do we love her so much?.
In 1995, British writer Christopher Hitchens published an essay entitled “Missionary Pose”. In fact, the topic of the essay does not concern sex at all, but reveals the truth about all the famous personality: the Catholic nun of the mother of Teresa.
This is a brilliant and cruel analysis of her life and actions, mainly collected with the media. But the fact that Hitchens chose the name “missionary pose” shows the parallel of our attitude to the topic of sex, and specifically to this position.
Therefore, it is safe to assure that the missionary pose just has a bad image. We think about it as something vanilla, about something boring, animal, and to such an extent that it has become a kind of joke. And yet, this, of course, is the most common sexual pose.
And in fact it is very unusual! Firstly, we are the only animal species that regularly uses it. Some chimpanzees sometimes have sex face to face, but this is rather an exception than the rule.
This is not the easiest position for people, and if you asked the anthropologist, he would probably tell you that the mechanisms of our body are much easier to sex in the dog’s pose. Nevertheless, the survey showed that about 10% of people say that they use an exclusively missionary position.
Missionary sex has a long and interesting story. Early ancient Middle Eastern ceramics depicts a missionary pose since the time, as soon as ceramics have been invented, and before that it can often be found in cave paintings around the world.
In China, the missionary position was preferable because they believed that women were born up, and men – face down. Indian tribes believed that the only way to have sex is a warrior – through a missionary position. The early Christians believed that the missionary position was the most natural, and other positions could lead to congenital defects of the future child.
So why is such a bad reputation?
Most likely, some prejudices appeared during the time: because of the attitude of religion and politics to the missionary position.
In different places and at different times throughout the United States, the missionary posture was the only sexual pose allowed by the law imposed by religious fanatics and those who care about the unity of the nation. Divorce can be given to a woman whose husband has sex with her in other poses, except for the missionary.
The very name “missionary” has a religious subtext. In fact, the pose is not named after the missionaries, as you could expect, in fact, the name came from the natives of Papua-New Guinea, who imitated and mocked the words that they learned from the white merchants.
In other languages, this does not have the same boring connotation: in French it is known as a “classical pose”, in Italy – as an “angel pose”, and in Arabic places this is called “a snake pose”.
Communication with the religious dogma gave the missionary pose a reputation of joyless, ordinary sex without much passion and sophistication. Vanilla sexy pose. But in fact, the missionary position is one of the most useful for physical health, especially for a partner from above.
It also reveals a huge amount of stimulation variations for your entire body, unlike, say, from the dog’s pose, and has an additional bonus – the opportunity to look into the eyes of a partner and see pleasure on his face.