HT to O. Can we set this up with an Ave J shoe vendor? Although, I can just see the potential mother-in-laws explaining the deeper meaning of shoes to their ignorant sons.
“Flats are either aidel or tall. The three-inch platforms are very stylish these days. If she’s still wearing pointy toes, she’s a little bit behind. Kitten heels? Professional, maybe. Who wears those?”
I suppose I should weigh in on this Jewish Press article that has so many people in a tizzy. (Thanks Mother for alerting me; thanks O and everyone else for producing it.)
The article, in brief, is about a mother of a short-term learner who went to an event for hopeful wives of long-term learners, and was affronted by how little glitz she saw in the room. The aidels were barely wearing makeup, most had not chemically straightened their hair, and none seemed to have a nose job or stomach staple. Really, how did they expect to get married?
She goes on to describe how her life changed once she put her own proboscis under the knife, including her switch from single to married status.
Well, you can imagine the resultant horror among the JP readership. She lopped off her nose? Our European ancestors, in the alte heim, were persecuted for that nose! And she just ditches it because it became inconvenient? The very idea!
Moreover, that nose she discards so carelessly was once considered quite regal. It was good enough for Caesar. It was good enough for Augustus and Octavius. It was even good enough for Caligula, who had no compunctions about taking a knife—or even a sword—to anything he didn’t like. And he left his nose untouched, thank you very much.
Caligula's Sniffer
But it’s the betrayal that bothers me the most. I don’t know how you feel about it, but my nose has been with me since birth, through thick and thin. It’s the first thing to greet me when I gaze into the mirror in the morning. It has always let me know when my mother was baking, so that I could sneak into the kitchen for a sample. It warned me when the water in camp was sulfuric. It keeps tabs on the milk in the fridge, alerts me when the veggies I forgot in the crisper pass over to the other side, and lets me know when someone has made a fresh pot of coffee in the office.
We’ve grown from these experiences together (although not always at matching rates). I consider my nose an old friend. What kind of person is so cavalier about excising such a loyal companion? If this is how easily she lops off a friend who has been at her side (so to speak) for her entire life, imagine how she treats friends of lesser duration when they become inconvenient. I’m so relieved we didn’t go to school together.
Besides, there is more to a nose than its mere physiognomy. How it is treated, presented, and carried, indeed, the very attitude of its bearer toward it, will create the overall effect of the nose much more than its actual topography. A charming, graceful, feminine woman can carry off a beak of less delicacy than herself. The trick is not to walk around with your head hanging in shame, as if your nose is weighing your face down. Carry it with pride! Pride for your heritage, pride for its regal cast, and pride because it’s a part of you—and you’re worth being proud of. However, I will concede, that if a woman is still single at 23 she should probably go to charm school to learn a more demur carriage and delicate bearing.
Cleopatra's Beak
Another technique is to remove the focus from your nose entirely by being so lively and flirtatious that nobody can spare the time to focus on your schnozz. There is an ancient Egyptian saying: “She who can flirt with the pros can rock any nose.” It dates back to Cleopatra, who, according to legend, was well endowed in the nasal way. And yet she was a talented seductress, seducing no less than J. Caesar himself, who had no shortage of beautiful women chasing him.
How did she do that? Legend relates that when Caesar came to town, Cleo didn’t wait for an invitation. She had herself rolled into a rug and delivered to Julius as a gift. When he unrolled the rug, out she popped, batting her eyelashes, patting down her hair, and asking to hear in person about how he tamed those Gauls.
I recommend that the self-consciously benosed maidel try something similar for her next date. Instead of shyly sidling nose-first into the dining room where your date is making polite small-talk with your parents, wrap yourself in the living room rug and roll in with a bang! Leap out and announce, “I’m he-ere!” Ask him something flattering and personal. Start the date like this and do you think he’ll even glance at your nose for a second? I sincerely doubt it.
JP's unairbrushed schnozz
There is one more non-surgical treatment for an unbeautiful nose. Think of the many famous people who have had unartistic sniffers. Due to rhinophyma, JP Morgan’s nasal organ was a different shape and color every day. Yet he was well beloved by his two wives, four children, and the ever-insolvent US government. And consider one of the more famous big schnozzes of the silver screen: Barbra Streisand. Although her nose was the subject of public criticism, she married twice. From this we can derive a very simple solution to the nosily impaired—one simple step that will have men beating a path to your door: become rich and famous. Because, it is well known, you cannot be both rich and ugly at the same time.
And that is the real way to solve the shidduch crisis.
Beautiful Barb as God Bequeathed Her
Hat tip to O for a laugh that needed muffling during work hours.
Being an outcast on the fringe of society is generally a lonely thing. Unless you’re single, in which case you’re in good company, probably busy doing good deeds, and well connected. Whereas if you were married you’d be bogged, down, isolated, have a lower satisfaction with life, and so on. At least according to studies.
So let’s take a moment (or a week) to feel sorry for single people.
Thanks, Geezhols and O.
If you’re female, rich, and desperate to get married, there’s a gigolo in Midtown that wants to meet you. He thinks his problem might be that he’s started looking late in life. Some might question his methods. It actually reminds me of a Shabbos table discussion in which we discussed the possibility of my mother advertising her single daughter in front of YU wearing a sandwich board. It never panned out. Too bad. She might have made the Wall Street Journal, and then even more people would “know” about me, and it’s all about “being seen” and “getting out there” so people “know about you,” right?
Why doesn’t anyone set me up with an art student? Huh? Huh? Aren’t there any male Jewish journalists out there? I’d even consider a lawyer. Instead, I keep getting geeks. Something’s not working here, my dear shadchanim. And The Atlantic thinks it knows why.
Why? Because I made a mistake. It was an innocent mistake. I didn’t know what the consequences would be when I made it. But I signed up for the wrong course of study and now I’m doomed forever more. My degree has made me aromantic.
…in fact, I’ve calculated that it’s reduced my chances by 87.352%, using a baseline for calculation the number of men I went out with before I started college, controlled for their plans/careers, compared to the number of men I went out with subsequently, also controlled for their career paths… I’ll post a link to the Excel spreadsheets for anyone who wants to calculate their plunging desirability post-STEM studies.
Is there a shidduch crisis, or it is a ploy by the ultra-orthodox to take control of defining orthodoxy? And if there is one, is it caused by conservatism, shallow expectations, or American culture? Do you think about this subject ever? Well, so does the Washington Post, now.
The paragraph I found most interesting:
Orthodox Jews make up less than than 10 percent of American Judaism, with an estimated population between 300,000 and 750,000 people. Being unmarried into your mid-20s in this world can be isolating.
Mein Gott! Only 750,000? And assuming half are female, that only leaves me 325,000 to choose from! Hashkafically in range, 200,000. But of course that includes married people and people who are too old and too young, so you can probably chop that down to only 50,000, if not far less.
Now do the math. You go out with 10 guys, of which maybe 1 or 2 you really liked. So we can say that only about a tenth of the men out there are likely. We’re down to under 5,000.
There’s an argument for settling if I ever heard one. There are 750,000 American orthodox Jews, of which 50,000 are datable, and 5,000 with which I could conceivably get to a fourth date. If I go out with 6 guys a year, how long would it take me to find my bashert?
…at risk of making my statistics professor cry, I’m going to answer “A large number of years.”
So basically, if you can hook one that’s half decent, don’t worry about the other 4,999. Just grab him and keep him.
Want your fellow to propose? Serve him a chicken dinner. Serve him this chicken dinner. According to Glamour magazine, this chicken is responsible for almost 70 engagements. (Here’s a video where it’s given credit for a proposal that occurred two years later.)
Why does it work? The hypothesis is that it shows a woman in a domestic light, which happens rarely in modern times. But for a segula, who needs a reason? They always work, no matter how long you have to wait…
Today’s Wizard of Id (thank you, Chopped Liver.)
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Courtesy of O, I bring you the checklist for the Perfict Boy.
“But that’s in just two days!” exclaimed my mother in shock, when the shadchan told her that my date wanted to take me out again, shortly after our first meeting.
I shook my head vigorously. There was absolutely no chance that I was going out again so soon. I had a life, you know. And who wanted to go through the whole dressing up thing again in the same week?
So that was when my mother laid down the law. One date a week was quite sufficient, thank you. I quite agreed.
“Yes, I understand,” the shadchan laughed. “I’m always telling the guys to slow down. They’d go on another date every night otherwise.”
“Why?” I asked one fellow who was pushing my limit in that arena.
“I just want things to progress,” he explained.
Well… yes, of course. But we’re still young, and a few extra days isn’t going to make or break anything. What is it—the heady rush of the hunt? The desire for closure? Goal-orientedness taken to an extreme?
They also seem in a hurry to propose. I’ve heard too many stories of girls suddenly facing a ring and saying, “But… I hardly feel like I know you.” Or of guys turned down because the girl wasn’t ready yet, or had just decided against him.
My brother managed a serious rush. If I can judge from the way my parents took it, he got engaged in about 2 weeks. In reality, I think it was a drop longer – maybe three. Since he was in Israel, I mostly remember my father hunching over the phone howling “But you just took her out last night!” over the bad connection. Obviously, she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she eventually opted for a lifetime with him. But that’s not typical.
I know it’s not typical because mathematicians have come up with a mathematical model for love, using game theory. In their model, the woman strings the guy along as long as possible, the better to judge his caretaker potential. Guys, on the other hand, rush things, wanting to get down to the family thing A-sap.
But here’s the part I like. The game theorists showed that the longer a woman held out, the greater the chance that she’d land a keeper. Poor quality guys get discouraged, or just don’t have what it takes to sustain a courtship. So, there’s something to be said for playing hard-to-get. Gals, there’s no need to make a snap decision (where “snap” is defined as requiring less than a month). Let the guy hunt you a little. You’ll find out if he’s a keeper.
Hat tip to O, Keeper of the Quotes and forwarder of interesting things.
