Sexy Jewish Stereotypes — Questions
by: Dave Belden on December 8th, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Josh Stanton’s post about Sexy Jewish Stereotypes was not just the most popular post of last week on Tikkun Daily: it actually overtook Rabbi Lerner’s Israel as Idolatry to become the third most popular post of all time on this blog, behind two about health care (here and here).
The post featured a photo of a young Jewish woman in expensive blond hairdo, pink tiger-striped top and leather pants.
Hmmm. What does this say about our readers? Happy for young Jewish women to be free and finally approved by the wider society as hot? Or just in need of some eye candy in a spiritually approved context (it’s on Tikkun after all, it must be permissable)?
What? I’m not sounding happy about this post? Am I some kind of puritan or something? I don’t want young women to be liberated in their sexuality? Or men (in particular) to have pleasure in looking?
Let’s do the “liberated in their sexuality” bit first. Here’s a wise comment about the “sexual revolution” that my generation launched, that comes from the pages of Tikkun and is more representative of our attitudes. It was written in 1988 but is entirely relevant today:
If we came of age in the 1960s, we were told that sexual revolution presaged the total transformation of society; and that all the evils in the world-from imperialism to racism, militarism to environmental decay-could be traced to repressed, patriarchal standards of sexuality… By making love, one was striking a blow against making war.
… Since that time, many young women, including my daughters, now in their twenties, have told me something like this: “The sexual revolution probably opened up some things. A positive aspect might have been fighting the double standard — so women could fool around the way men had and get away with it too. But it wasn’t ever ‘free.’ We were pressured more than ever to be sexually liberated by men and then were accused of being uptight and puritanical if we didn’t want sex or wanted more than sex.” Recently, a twenty-six-year old woman, an artist and a dedicated feminist, told me: “My whole peer group, men and women both, are confused about what relationships are supposed to be. All the women are working on, well, I guess I would call it the spiritual aspects of sexuality. They don’t want sex for its own sake anymore and they think, and I agree, that a lot of the sexual revolution stuff set up a standard where women got to act like predatory men. I’m sick of it. Now, with AIDS, we’re not having sex at all.. . and still finding it hard to achieve a decent relationship.”
There has been a good deal written about sexuality in Tikkun down the years. Our online archive got destroyed early this year and is still only partially rebuilt (volunteers needed and welcome!) but there are other gems like the article from which that quote comes, “What’s the Matter With Sex Today” (downloadable pdf only) by Jean Bethke Elshtain. That was the first article in a Special Feature: Rethinking Sexuality, all of which is available.
Looking for examples of young women critiquing “sexiness” in pop culture today? Try Bitch magazine. Here’s a nice quote I picked up from it (and it’s relevant to the article the Sexy Jewish Stereotypes post linked to, which praised porn pics) that suggests little has changed since 1988:
Most mainstream porn does not encourage female sexual expression. It portrays and encourages female sexual PERFORMANCE. Big difference.
Mainstream porn is 100% performed for men’s pleasure. Even if the women aren’t being out-and-out degraded, they’re certainly not treated like partners in the act, nor is their pleasure even remotely the point of the act.
I don’t read enough in Bitch to know how much they go where Elshtain went in her piece, when she wrote:
As for sexual morality, it too has been fashioned by the self alone, tailored to the individual’s desire for pleasure. The loneliness of the long-distance sexualist. Whatever happened to dreams of community?
In a comment on the photo in Josh’s post, Anna Beck mourned that the ideal of sexy appeared in this case to be the Aryan ubermensch one, and she added that the word “sexy” was itself unattractive: to her it sounded “whorish.” I happened to be reading a novel at the weekend where one character said something like (I don’t have the quote with me at the office) “My father taught me always to call a spade a spade a spade but to call a whore a lady, because they have enough pain in their lives already.” “Whorish” just isn’t a word I use because of this association with blaming the victim, but maybe I can connect with Anna’s point: that there’s something about selling yourself that is central to the modern version of “sexy.” Consumerism has gathered pace considerably since 1988, and if anything it has invaded sexuality even more now than it had then. The harm that is suffered is surely to the creation of generous, other-centered love, not just in sexual relationships but equally in their role in fostering loving communities.
We have a tirade in the upcoming issue of Tikkun by Chris Hedges, who brilliantly lays out the corroding effects of celebrity culture, and the way young women, especially, are being taught by TV shows like The Swan to undergo expensive makeovers so they will become attractive. (So buy the next issue to read his article. Subscribe now!). Women already spend way more than men on clothes, hair, make-up and beauty products (many of which turn out to be toxic). Not to mention purely cosmetic dentistry and surgery. The culture seems to demand it. For some it may be liberating or empowering, I suppose, but in the mass it seems to be just one more area where commercialization enters in and corrupts human values and relationships, one more place where we are told that spending money can buy happiness, one more place where appearance has to substitute for substance.
Worse, it plays into a parallel phenomenon that Michael Lerner has written about better than I can, about how commercialized society teaches us to promote our self interest even in love relationships, so that we have to sell ourselves to prospective partners as trophy wives or husbands, girlfriends or boyfriends, and can expect to be ditched as soon as we are no longer meeting the self-centered needs of our partners. In the Tikkun Core Values, Michael writes about people’s
hunger for personal relationships, families and communities in which they can experience themselves as being cared for and recognized in all of their specificity and uniqueness and spiritual beauty – not only for what the can “deliver” or “do” for others, not for how they will be “of use,” but simply because they are valuable and deserving of love and caring just for who they are as embodiments of the sacred.
So now to the part about men having pleasure in looking. Sure, what’s wrong with that? Beauty is beauty and let’s all of us be able to enjoy it. The older I get the more simple joy I get from seeing youth. But my still-alive heterosexual appreciation lenses for the female body, that have changed little since my adolescence, are confused by my marital and parental lenses that see women and girls as whole beings. Elshtain asked us
to rethink whether the sexual liberation standard was from its inception the generalization of a norm of adolescent male sexuality writ large onto the wider social fabric.
I am no expert on male sexuality, and have not thought that much about it, which may be why I was enthralled by Michael Bader’s Male Sexuality, which came out in 2008 — or maybe it’s a great book that would enthrall even the experts. I can do no better than quote our brief review of it on our Tikkun Recommends page last January:
When it comes to sex, there is always a method to our madness, teaches San Francisco psychoanalyst Michael Bader, and in this sophisticated and gripping analysis, he shows us why male sexual behavior is often shaped by needs for love and safety that are frequently misunderstood. If men are encouraged to explore the emotional sources of their sexual desires, and if women can distinguish between men’s motivation and their behavior, a deep empathy can emerge that can heal many of the tensions that cause relationships to fail and sexuality to be less pleasurable and more guilt-ridden. Bader, like Freud in his early crusading days, does not promise miracle cures for sexual or relationship problems, but rather the possibility for people to recognize each other as “struggling to make sense of the world in the best way they can, motivated primarily by needs for safety, security, love, and pleasure, rather than wishes to hurt or demean.” And Bader, who has participated in Tikkun’s campaign for a politics of meaning since we began this magazine, tells his readers that the solution to the problem of alienation is to recognize that both men and women need lives that are more engaged with other people; they “need to feel connected, need communities in which they feel recognized and safe, and need to have work in which they feel they’re making a contribution to something bigger than themselves.”
Let Elshtain have the last word:
We are moving toward a vision of sexuality that is both mysterious and powerful.
May it be so.
P.S. I was surprised there weren’t more comments objecting to Josh’s post. Does anyone want to speculate as to why that was or why that post was so popular? Are we all inured to the modern culture? Do we want our teenage and twenty something sisters, daughters or granddaughters to buy into this new stereotype of the Sexy Jewish (or any other type of) Girl?
Hi Dave,
Just a couple of words of clarification about this post. The picture in the post above is actually not from the initial piece in Details Magazine, as I was afraid of engaging in copyright infringement. Instead, the photo featured above was taken by representatives of Mirah Curzer Photography at a fashion show in New York. It is unclear whether the model featured is or is not Jewish. I merely needed a photo that would complement the blog post, which Mirah Curzer Photography was kind enough to offer. I do apologize for any confusion its inclusion may have caused, though I will say that the photos featured by Detail Magazine are far more explicit and far less tasteful.
Also, more to come on the “sexy” front — I do hope to add my $.02 in a post to come. I look forward to continuing the conversation.
All the best,
Josh
Honestly, I’m surprised that you’re surprised that there were not more objections to the sexy Jews post. After all, neither the post nor the article it quoted referred to Jewish women as “slutty” or some other sexually demeaning term. Calling a woman sexy is not the same as calling her “whorish” at all; in fact, it says nothing at all about her morality or sexual practices.
I think there is a fundamental misconception in this article as well as many of the responses to the original post. The misconception is that if a woman is attractive and not trying to hide it, she must be a loose woman. This is a dangerous mistake, and one that has led to female doctors and lawyers being afraid to wear more feminine clothing and have long hair, lest they be perceived to have “slept their way to the top.” I like to think that in 2009 we have progressed past the virgin/whore dichotomy, and realized that attractive women are also successful.
If you still have problems with your “twenty something sisters, daughters or granddaughters” being thought of as sexy, consider the alternative. Would you rather they be thought of as ugly? Or perhaps the best solution is to simply lock away attractive young women for fear that their beauty might bewitch men into attacking them. I, for one, would rather be sexy and successful.
I am glad you raised this as I clearly wasn’t expressing myself well (and am aware I stepped into a potential minefield by writing about sex at all). On your last point, I obviously was not clear: I tried to say that what was problematic about my own adolescent male gaze, which I said remains pretty much unchanged in me, is not that it saw girls as sexy but that it didn’t see them as whole beings. That’s what was confused by my adult experiences [which has added a different kind of lens without obliterating the adolescent one -- they seem to exist side by side]. Certainly as an adult and a parent I want any young woman I know to be sexually alive and fulfilled and attractive if that’s what she wants (it may not be). And that’s the question I was trying to raise about what “sexy” means in our culture today. It does say something in context, and all too often the context is still one created more by the adolescent male gaze, and by consumerist pressures to buy, and by ideas about selling ourselves rather than developing ability to love others and build community, etc. and not by any awareness of the whole woman: who should be able to be professional, intellectual, strong in whatever ways is right for her AND sexually attractive. I wasn’t aware that my words could be understood to be denying that vision of the whole woman.
This piece seems to me to be a very elegant, very sound exploration of the terrible dichotomy between woman as expressive sexual being with beauty and mystery, and woman with conscribed, imprisoned, reductive, sexual energy, more important as an object prettified, surgically altered, constrained by false standards of external acceptance and capacity, rather than for inner standards of beauty and desirability, and pimped out by a jaded, judgemental, ageist and entirely sexist society to sell herself and products to sate without love, male and other female’s lusts.
This new classist and economically pumped female object is valued in our messed up world solely for her sexual attractivenesswhich exceeds the critical human experience of herself as a fully whole and relational being.
Why would we be surprised? this is what we have perpetuated with the alpha girl role model of hateful and bullying behavior that has meant that our young are strait jakcketed in their growth as people and spend truillions on cosmetics every year in place of engaging the world in meaningful ways. It means that people’s talents and internal character, their sublimation of their appetites instead of hedonistic nihilistic voracious sating of them are no longer valued…as much as their capacity to stimulate the sexual interest of otehrs. relationships for the long tem are balanced on the women’s back, requiring no effort from the male for longevity or commitment, for their is a fertile field of nubile power seekers who have learned that any male they can attract sexually will be considered to have achieved higher status among his peeers not by experessing qualities that enhance and define us as mature and presious humans like love and loyalty, but by betraying values and expressing his uber-sexuality by exploiting theirs.
this Jewish sexuality article was fascinating and interesting, but also interested in leveling the playing field for the girls who buy into this because it is what our society enculturates. Parents seems to prefer that they have trophy wife and trophy daughters, rather than mensches.And this is true irrespecitive of ethnicity. How beautiful according to creepy stepford wife standards, that is a measure of success.
Anyway this article to me is like a tornado of thoughtful, lvoing, insight and thought provocation in an area that has been stagnant and fetid with the flip side of our increasingly doomed search for more and nmore senstaion in place of more expressive love -making: all the women and girl sex slaves filmed and snuffed and trapped for titillation.
From Bitch Magazine): “Most mainstream porn does not encourage female sexual expression. It portrays and encourages female sexual PERFORMANCE. Big difference.” In my opinion, one can freely substitute the word “male” for female where it appears in this sentence. Commercialization of sex misses the mark in many other areas. The idea that all or most men are turned on by women who use huge amounts of makeup, or get breast augmentation, or act like twenty year olds is completely insulting.
Nothing is less sexy than sexual acts where both partners are not excited and engaged. That being said, there are still responses to certain female physical qualities that are, I believe, hard wired into heterosexual men. I think the same is probably true with heterosexual women vis a vis men. You don’t see topless pics of fat old guys in the entertainment mags. Part of maturing, for most of us, is acknowledging that we just don’t live up to media ideals, and that that is normal and ok.
A slightly different distinction could be drawn between the public and social qualities given to sexuality (which I gather Dave suggests is akin to consumerism, whereas Mirah suggests it is an expression of feminimity) versus the internal forces and needs comprising one’s personal sexuality.
As Mirah suggests, the exultation of sexuality is likely a natural and encouraging process, even if it stems from a less genuine source such as pop culture or the fashion industry. And as Dave cautions, one musn’t confuse the sexuality of the airwaves with a mandate that must be followed, nor should anyone base their personal morality upon it in the face of inner doubt, or assume that women (or men) are as one dimensional as chic photography implies.
Taken on its own, I think Elshtain’s comment that Dave posted, “We are moving toward a vision of sexuality that is both mysterious and powerful,” is most telling. Dave’s quoted “timeline” of sexual acceptance and emotional backlash hopefully represents a progression leading us toward a more encompassing, empathetic sexuality. If we reach a point of somewhat Fruedian understanding of sexuality, where we’re all existential and understanding in bed, will we be healthier? Most likely, but in that case a public sexual culture that can be taken with a grain of salt, in light of personal understanding, couldn’t be harmful. Perhaps it become as positive then as Mirah suggests it could be now, without 20th century subtext.
In such a situation, we could celebrate the rise of a less “tainted” notion of Jewish sexuality, without the fears exoticism and “other” labelling. That’d be swell.
I am nourished by the quality and moral intensity of the responses to this article. I did think that photograph represented a particular quality of satire (a stereotype dressed into with a sense of irony) which is, for me, a particular aspect of Jewish culture which is unique. Intelligence is not afraid of parody. Being a mamzer (half breed) I have experienced in my lfie both the gentile and the Jewish cultures. I was glad that Dave referred to his own experience and his own life is responding to the article. Giving a purely intellectual response to the question of “Sex” is to distance from it and to deny the complexity of our personal responses to how we have embodied our own sexualities.
Why was the post hit so much? Americans are profoundly repressed around sexuality. Gentile culture is often very afraid of Jews because guilt around the expression of sexuality is lacking for many Jews. That creates both aversion and attraction among gentiles.
The question is not why was this article the most visited, but what are the articles which go the deepest to touch us daily. I read the daily because it is the time of the day when I can take a deep breath, let it out, and give thanks that humanity hasn’t totally flushed its intelligence down the toilet.
But truly, this is all hardly new is it? I think of Rebecca in Ivanhoe, or of Canadian poet Irving Layton, who in his impassioned summary of Jewish stereotypes he urges his sons to reject includes:
“The Jew old and sagacious whom all speak well of: when not lusting for his
passionate dark-eyed daughters”
Dave Belden:
“What does this say about our readers? Happy for young Jewish women to be free and finally approved by the wider society as hot? Or just in need of some eye candy in a spiritually approved context (it’s on Tikkun after all, it must be permissable)?”
Maybe it doesn’t suggest they’re seeking approval from the goyim or some kind of quasi-halachic permission from the Big Superego In The Sky…
Maybe it just says they can hardly believe anything so trite that it could have been lifted from the pages of Cosmopolitan in ‘73 made it into TD!
Peter is right – it’s all hardly news.
BTW, Dave, please desist from misappropriating and misusing the word ‘Aryan’ the way the Nazis did when referring to the Germanic (rather, Nietzchean) concept of the Uebermensch and related ideology. Aryan, properly speaking, means Indo-Iranian, NOT Germanic anything.
Yes, I agree with Rob Fox that my speculation about why our readers liked the post so much was a bit off base and insulting… I guess I was trying too hard to be catchy at the start of the post.
I had major “naked blogger” anxieties after writing that post because I was delving into such a huge topic and not able to give it the time it deserved or get feedback from anyone before posting it. I have been in deep deadline mania these last few days rushing towards our next print magazine deadline so still don’t have time to really think about people’s comments.
Sex! The hardest thing for me to write about, I’d say. But the point of a blog in some ways is to be ourselves, in both the posts and the comments, including revealing what we don’t know and are struggling to understand: it’s not to prove we have the smartest approach but rather to hunt for it together. The above comments were in that spirit and I thank you for them.
Thanks for your response Dave,
Perhaps my tone was a bit brittle and grumpy yesterday. Of course you should post what’s on your mind, and to a large extent I share your concern and I’m glad you made your points.
It occurred to me while reading the original article that while perceived desirability is of course more flattering in a way than outright negative stereoptyping, in this objectifying, media-circus-dominated culture, it’s really kind of a booby prize (no pun intended!).
The issue of sex is of course a highly charged one, and one of the biggest challenges for any movement that seeks after a truly healthy, countercultural approach to intimate relationships – resisting the commodification of women, men and young people in the process. I mean resisting commodification from both sides, the right and the, um…Right…!
I mean the religious/political Right with their ‘Family Values’-grafted-onto-your-superego mania as well as the serial shallowness and structurelessness of the Media Circus. It’s quite a Scylla and Charybdis to navigate successfully – and it probably won’t look readily marketable. Still, whod’ve thought Matisyahu would have the appeal he has! Not that I’m suggesting we all do a stint with Chabad, of course! – but some ‘unsexy’ things have their own quaint charm!
Michael Baden seems to be onto something, which in a way is oddly similar to what some first-wave feminists were saying – albeit in the sometimes rather moralizing language of their own times – that women can help men reconnect sexual desire with their longing for love and safety (that can, of course, happen the other way around too – depending on who is the more integrated partner).
A word from Martin Buber presents a real challenge to me:
“…indeed, if in all the much discussed erotic philosophy of the age we were to leave out of account everything that involved experience in relation to the I, that is, every situation in which the one is not present to the other…but merely enjoys itself in the other – what then would be left?” [I and Thou p65].