This comment is not directly related to the original post, but it does have to do with the way the world sees young Jewish girls and the price we pay...
Yesterday's NY Times brought news of the death of Judith Moore, author of "Fat Girl" in which she calls herself "a short, squat road of a woman. My arms are as big as those maroon-skinned bolognas that hand from butchers' ceilings. My belly juts out. The skin on my thighs is pocked."
I haven't read Judith Moore's book, nor do I think she was Jewish, but these quotes stopped me in my tracks. They brought me right back to the self-hate, the loathing, the disgust that I have often felt for myself in the past. Fat. I HATE the word itself. I hate what emotional torture that word has put so many of us through during our lives. I hate the cost in thousands of dollars spent in therapy to overcome the scars of that word.
As a Jewish woman, I deeply resent the premium some sectors of our community (oh yes, I know, it's all over the place...but) put on little girls being slim, teenagers being sylph-like, on young women looking pencil-thin, and on older women being neat and trim. And I hate that on J-date so many men insist on their potential dates being thin. Pot-bellied, balding, messy, unkempt, sloppy, unfit men who demand perfection in their women.
Mostly, I hate what this does to little girls. I want to let every cute, plain, bespectacled, boyish, plump, lonely little girl know that they are special, worthy, that they will find their own way to beauty, and that loving themselves is job #1.
How can we help our little sisters, our neices, our friends' kids understand this? I think the responsibility is all ours, and I'd like to hear what others think, too.
This comment is not directly related to the original post, but it does have to do with the way the world sees young Jewish girls and the price we pay...
Yesterday's NY Times brought news of the death of Judith Moore, author of "Fat Girl" in which she calls herself "a short, squat road of a woman. My arms are as big as those maroon-skinned bolognas that hand from butchers' ceilings. My belly juts out. The skin on my thighs is pocked."
I haven't read Judith Moore's book, nor do I think she was Jewish, but these quotes stopped me in my tracks. They brought me right back to the self-hate, the loathing, the disgust that I have often felt for myself in the past. Fat. I HATE the word itself. I hate what emotional torture that word has put so many of us through during our lives. I hate the cost in thousands of dollars spent in therapy to overcome the scars of that word.
As a Jewish woman, I deeply resent the premium some sectors of our community (oh yes, I know, it's all over the place...but) put on little girls being slim, teenagers being sylph-like, on young women looking pencil-thin, and on older women being neat and trim. And I hate that on J-date so many men insist on their potential dates being thin. Pot-bellied, balding, messy, unkempt, sloppy, unfit men who demand perfection in their women.
Mostly, I hate what this does to little girls. I want to let every cute, plain, bespectacled, boyish, plump, lonely little girl know that they are special, worthy, that they will find their own way to beauty, and that loving themselves is job #1.
How can we help our little sisters, our neices, our friends' kids understand this? I think the responsibility is all ours, and I'd like to hear what others think, too.