{"id":42116,"date":"2012-03-21T10:39:51","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T18:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=42116"},"modified":"2012-03-26T08:53:10","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T16:53:10","slug":"why-dont-orthodox-girls-try-to-look-their-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=42116","title":{"rendered":"Why Don’t Many Unmarried Orthodox Women Try To Look Their Best?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yitta Halberstam writes about the shidduch (finding a spouse) scene<\/a>: The second thing that jolted me when I opened the door (and which I know will incur many a mother\u2019s wrath, but which I feel I must speak about) was the conspicuous and glaring lack of make-up on a significant percentage of the girls\u2019 faces. I was stunned. The girls knew why they were there; there was no attempt at pretense on anyone\u2019s part. The mandate of the event was to give them the opportunity to present themselves in the best possible light. Why weren\u2019t they?<\/p>\n

Let me tell you about this particular population of girls: They were between the ages of 21 and 24, and mostly seeking \u201clearning boys.\u201d (The organizers\u2019 plan for the future is to hold additional events for other age groups and different categories of boys: learners\/earners, professionals, working boys only, etc.) They were eidel, frum, sincere, intelligent, and committed to the learning ideal. But even the most temimasdika ben Torah is looking for a wife whom he finds attractive. Yes, spiritual beauty makes a woman\u2019s eyes glow and casts a luminous sheen over her face; there is no beauty like a pure soul. Make-up, however, goes a long way in both correcting facial flaws and accentuating one\u2019s assets, and if my cursory inspection was indeed accurate (and I apologize if the girls used such natural make-up that I simply couldn\u2019t tell), barely any of these girls seemed to have made a huge effort to deck themselves out.<\/p>\n

Since most of the young women at chasunas seem quite presentable, I couldn\u2019t shake off my sense of disbelief as I looked around now. What were they thinking? How had their mothers allowed them to leave their homes with limp hair and unadorned faces? With just a little blush, eyeliner and lip-gloss, they could have gone from average to pretty. There are very few women who can\u2019t use a little extra help. Even the most celebrated magazine models can look downright plain when stripped of all cosmetics, al achas kamah v\u2019kamah girls who are not born with perfect features. So what was going on? Were they in denial about the qualities young men are seeking in future wives? Yes, it is somewhat disillusioning that men dedicated to full-time Torah learning possess what these girls might perceive are superficial values, but brass tacks: they want a spouse to whom they are attracted. The young men themselves might be too shy or ashamed to admit it, but their mothers won\u2019t hesitate to ask what for some is the deal maker\/deal breaker question, namely: \u201cIs she pretty?\u201d<\/p>\n

Thankfully, every one\u2019s conception of attractiveness is different; beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and a woman\u2019s intellect, personality and soul can have a tremendous bearing on the way in which her beauty is perceived. Still, there is trying, and then there is not trying. The mystery perplexed me: Why hadn\u2019t some of the girls gone overboard in presenting themselves in the best possible light? I felt like shaking them in despair. As I further scanned the room (I had started assuming the role of disembodied observer once I realized that I was at the wrong event; my son is learning full time now, but plans to pursue a Ph.D so he wasn\u2019t appropriate for this particular group), I could not help but notice the number of girls who could have vastly improved their appearances\u2013gone from plain Jane to truly beautiful\u2013if they simply made some effort. The truth of the matter is, I mulled, one way of looking at the story of Purim (and there are so many different prisms through which it can be viewed) is to see it as the narrative of the tyranny of beauty ruling every society in which Man (and woman) has ever lived. Vashti incurred Ahachshverosh\u2019s wrath because he wished to parade her beauty and she refused (bad skin day). The women of the kingdom who vied for the Queen\u2019s throne were given twelve months to prepare for the beauty pageant \u2013 why hadn\u2019t some of the girls at the shidduch event taken a mere half hour?
\nSome women who are deeply religious or intellectually inclined may delude themselves into thinking that their male counterparts will only see, appreciate and cherish their inner beauty, and that will (or should) be their overriding priority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yitta Halberstam writes about the shidduch (finding a spouse) scene: The second thing that jolted me when I opened the door (and which I know will incur many a mother\u2019s wrath, but which I feel I must speak about) was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[619,18],"tags":[29197,29194,29196,29198,29195,29193],"class_list":["post-42116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage","category-orthodoxy","tag-cursory-inspection","tag-facial-flaws","tag-glaring-lack","tag-limp-hair","tag-magazine-models","tag-yitta-halberstam"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}