Beauty Is A Beast

I haven't been great about moving my columns to this here site, but the recent shooting at a LGBT facility in Tel Aviv made me feel compelled to put this puppy up. It's a bit dated, but enjoy...

It’s been a month since Donald Trump let an ugly bigot parade around as a beauty queen, and I still haven’t been able to rid my mind of the grotesque sight.

Gay hatred scares the biblically correct nipples off of me. As an American. As a human. And, particularly, as a Jew.

The insidiousness of homophobia, the casual acceptance of it, reminds me so much of how some of the Muslim world (and larger and larger pockets of Europe) talks about Jews. We’re vilified and dehumanized. Told we should be wiped off the face of the Earth. No offense.




And so when Miss California, Carrie Prejean, garbled her way through an anti-marriage-rights stream-of-consciousness bit at a recent Miss USA pageant, it didn’t surprise me that hatred could look so lovely in an evening gown.

The denial of gays’ rights is so accepted in our culture that it’s only natural to hear mention of it nonchalantly tossed off after the swimsuit competition.

“Marriage is between a man and a woman.”

Sounds as reasonable as “America wouldn’t be involved in the Middle East if it weren’t for those powerful Jews.”

Both are said and said often. Usually in the same exasperated, what-can-you-do-about-it tone. And both chill my blood.

Even more frightening is how some of my Jewish friends have sided with Prejean and her ilk. One otherwise reasonable family member of mine even said, “Gays should have rights, but only up to a point.”

“Up to a point? So, like they should they be allowed to walk on the sidewalks but only if they’re wearing a yellow star on their clothes? That kind of point?”

Of course, Prejean has every right to believe what she believes and espouse what she believes, however ineloquently. But we all have a duty to call out that belief for what it is: hateful.

Miss California USA pageant officials sorta kinda tried to do just that, saying, “In the entire history of Miss U.S.A., no reigning title holder has so readily committed her face and voice to a more divisive or polarizing issue.”

(Prejean has become a spokesmodel for National Organization for Marriage, a group that justifies suppressing gay American’s civil rights by saying, “God said to.”)

Disappointingly, though, instead of taking a principled stand against Prejean’s anti-civil rights quotes, pageant officials tried to knock the queen off her throne over a few topless photos.

Donald Trump “reviewed the pictures carefully” (tough job that guy has), and decreed that Prejean gets to retain her crown. He cautiously avoided discussing his views on same-sex marriage, but defended Prejean’s comment, saying, “She gave an honorable answer. She gave an answer from her heart, and I think for that she has to be commended.”

I understand the argument that some religious leaders still consider homosexuality a sin – and that’s, no doubt, what Miss California meant when she said her sentiments were “what I was taught.”

But those same religious leaders would recognize that hatred is a sin. The denial of civil rights is a sin. Espousing views that insight violence and dehumanize a great swath of God's creation is a sin.

At least, that's what I was taught.

An Open Letter to My Mother

Get off Facebook.

True, Facebook allows you to reconnect with former
co-workers. It lets you and your girlfriends share pictures (those who have
figured out how to upload pictures, anyway). And – yay! – you now have a forum
to tell the world exactly how you feel about Michael Jackson. 

But, Mom, please find another way to do all this. Get a
cable access TV show. Host coffee klatches. Staple flyers to utility poles.
Whatever you do, stop using social networking sites. (You may still use e-mail,
but please keep forwarded messages about killer tampons and men who hide under
women’s cars at night to a minimum.)

I’m sorry, but Facebook is not for you. You don’t get my
sense of humor. You have different definitions of decorum. And you’re kinda, a
little, driving me and Sis crazy.

Not a week goes by that Mom doesn’t call to complain about
some “outrageous” thing she’s seen or read on Sis’s Facebook page. The
conversation usually goes something like this:

Mom: “Some guy wrote to her something about she had crabs,
and she said, ‘I got it from your dad,’ or something. I don’t know. Who is this
guy?” 

Me: “Get off Facebook.”

Mom: “Did you see that she put on her Facebook that she’s
engaged? What does she think? That’s funny? I am so angry.”

Me: “Get off Facebook.”

Mom: “Did …”

Me: “Get off Facebook.”

Facebook equalizes the social playing field. Young, old,
friend or “friend,” everybody is invited to the party and can blather, banter
or rant with equal impunity.

But, Mom, that’s not a good thing. Your comments are often
baffling and wrong (Zev compared your car to a Transformer not a transmitter).
And just because Facebook opens a window into the candid inner workings of
adult kids’ lives doesn’t mean that parents should peer in.

When you visited us in college, did you stay a respectful
distance from our dorm rooms, or did you loaf about the residential hall TV
lounge at 4 a.m., doing bong hits with the RA and trading recipes for peanut
butter nachos?

There is a healthy separation that needs to be maintained
between parents and adult children, without which kids will never fully form
into adults – and parents will get totally grossed out. 

(Mom, you didn’t really want to see that picture of that
dude with his hand on Sis’s ass, did you? Nope. But now you have and you’re
fuming about it.) 

Thus far, Mom, you’ve ignored my campaign. But somewhere
inside you have to know that the melding of your social world with your kids’
is not a healthy thing. Did your parents know everything you were up to in your
20s and 30s? Considering we’re talking about stuff that happened in the 70s,
I’m going to guess the answer is “No.” And that’s a good thing.

So, please, Mom, please, please, get off Facebook. If you
don’t do it willingly, I assure you the Free Market of Societal Norms will
eventually correct this problem and a new, harder-to-penetrate social network
will spring up in place of the overly saturated FB. 

In fact, I get a sense it’s happening already. The other day
Mom took a break from her usual complaints about Sis’s Facebook page to ask,
“What is Twitter?”

My Dirty Little Secret

Here's a dirty secret: I haven't washed my hair in five days.

I would. I have nothing against
shampoo. But I can’t wash my hair because I no longer know how. 

At some point during puberty,
my nice, normal wavy locks took a twisted turn. I woke up one morning
to find a mass of matted, frizzy poodle fur atop my yiddishe kop, and
I had no idea what to do with it.  

Naturally, I did everything
wrong: I brushed it. I blow-dried it. I applied product after product
to it to make it look less… less… Jewish. But nothing worked.
Like a bat mitzvah present I couldn’t return, I was stuck with it. 

Kids being the tolerant beings
that they are made me feel totally comfortable with my new look by endowing
me with such loving nicknames as “Cave Woman” and “Yeti.” 

Around this time, I read about
a hairstylist named Ouidad who billed herself as a curly hair expert.
A dubious distinction, I thought. How hard is it to be queen of hair
that looks perpetually messy? Still, hearing about her helped me embrace
my twisted tresses. 

I never became a curly expert,
but I did make peace with the weird stuff growing out of my head, and
I learned a few tricks (bye-bye hairbrush!).Over time, I came to see
the fuzz, the fuss, the finger-in-the-outlet mess as a fate I could
learn to live with.

Then I rediscovered Ouidad.

The woman I read about a lifetime
ago has opened a salon in Santa Monica.

I went. I got cut. I got styled.
And now I can never wash my hair again. 

After "slicing" my hair, Kate
styled my locks in some magic way she described as “Rake and Shake”
that sets each curl apart like a precious little gem. I have no idea
what, exactly, she did, but I am now convinced that on the Seventh Day,
G-d did not rest. He created the Rake and Shake, and He saw it was good. 

Using hair clips and advanced
calculus, she separated my tresses into little tribes across my scalp.
She then wiggled her fingers through each of them in a manner resembling
someone ringing a bell, misting and blotting and geling as she went.
When I told her that I doubted I’d be able to recreate this method
at home, she tried to allay my fears. 

“Don’t worry,” she told
me. “I’ll give you a book.” 

A book? Is there nothing our
people can do without text? 

Sure enough, when I was done,
Kate handed me a book explaining how to wash, dry and “Rake and Shake”
my hair.  

I’ve powered through medical
journals, legal briefs and Pynchon. But I can’t comprehend a manual
explaining how to wash my own hair. And it comes with pictures! 

So, for the last five days,
I’ve sacrificed a clean scalp for sculpted curls. And I’m going
to keep going until I can no longer get away with it.  

Sure, it’s taken me back
to the dark days of pubescent insecurity. Once again, I’m a greasy mess who doesn't know how to deal with the DNA heirloom on top of my
head. 

But at least this time around,
my confusion looks fantastic.

Look Who's Shoving For Dinner

Among the childhood episodes Zev will likely recount to his inevitable future therapist, I imagine “the thing at the diner” will come up a lot.

“I’m sitting there between my mom and dad,” he’ll probably begin. “And mom’s furiously cutting up a goat-cheese and Kalamata omelet on my plate while dad is trying to shove half a buttermilk pancake down my throat.”

“Uh-huh,” the therapist will say, her mind wandering off to visions of fabric swatches and yacht interiors.

“And they’re each piling it on, Mom with her lox scramble and Dad with his sugar-coated blueberry muffin.”

“Hmm.”

“My mouth is opened and stuffed like a garbage disposal, grinding away all these incompatible flavors while my parents battle for the bragging rights to cultural dominion.”

After Hubby converted, we thought we had worked out all the ethnic kinks: Any kids we had would, of course, be raised Jewish. All trans-Atlantic travel would include a stop to Israel. And, it should go without saying, no Christmas trees.

But there are subtleties to mixed marriages that we had never considered – bittersweet subtleties that play less on our ideologies, and more on our tongues.

Hubby is a thirteenth-generation American, raised with no religion, but plenty of divinity (as in, the meringue cookies his Kentucky-bred grandma used to make). He grew up with caramel cakes, milk chocolate and breakfasts sweetened with all the syrup this proud nation’s cornfields could produce.

I, meanwhile, am a first-generation daughter of Israeli immigrants who carted cream cheese and olive sandwiches in my lunch box along with sliced cucumbers and tomatoes. I prefer fish with the head still on it and had never tasted a s’more until the age of 27 (I didn’t care for it).

When we were dating, Santa Claus and haftarah portions made each of us seem exotic to the other, but our cultures were not nearly as foreign as our cuisines. There are five taste sensations: salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami. (Umami is that indescribably wonderful taste of savory, meaty, delicious food. Think mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, and anything cooked with monosodium glutamate.) Hubby’s taste preferences lean toward the teeth-coatingly sweet while my tongue tends to wander to the rich, sophisticated spectrum of umami.

 

For years, Hubby and I have gently ribbed each other for our perceived “strange” taste in foods – I’d threaten to kiss him after eating an olive and he’d subject me to big pancake breakfasts.

But after Zev came along jokes turned to competition: Whom did Zev take after the most? Yes, he has his dad’s lips and his mom’s nose, but what we each really want to know about is his tongue. Does it take after the pedestrian sweet side or the discerning umami side? (I know, I know, but if Hubby wants fair, he can write his own column.)

At the impressionable age of 3, Zev has not yet decided his culinary identity – he’s as happy dousing his food with hummus as with ketchup. We’re trying to play it cool, but as our recent feeding frenzy at the diner demonstrated, we desperately want to know which side of the table Zev will choose. The love of food, after all, is the love of life – who doesn’t want to share that with their child?

Neither of us has bad-mouthed our spouse’s taste buds, but I fear that Zev is starting to realize that the fissure in the united front of our parenting runs right through the kitchen. Never mind his aching tummy, what is our endless jockeying of sweet and savory going to do to his psyche?

“And in the end,” I’m sure he’ll say to that future therapist, “I feel like, whatever flavors I am more drawn to, I’m letting one of them down. Like I’ve delivered some decided blow to my parents’ personal culture war. I feel sick to my stomach – and not just because I’ve eaten my weight in breakfast foods.”

“Yes,” the therapist will nod, adding, “Our time is up.”

Having unloaded his neuroses, Zev will walk out of the fluorescent light of the shrink’s office, blinking in the afternoon sun. He’ll get into his car and drive somewhere where he can unwind and collect his thoughts.

I can only hope now that it’s a Chinese restaurant.

Speechless

I must have re-written my condolence card 500 times.

“I wish there were something I could do…” Too hopeless.
“I’m so sorry for your loss…” No. Sure it’s true, but it sounds so impersonal.
“This is horrible…” Yeah, that’s a great opening line. Why not just say, “Sucks to be you” and tie it to a bottle of gin?

When the aliens land, let’s hope they don’t mistake the rolling green hills of a cemetery for a landing pad. Because if they do, their first impression of us will be that we’re a stupid, stupid species.

After someone dies, we have clearly defined rituals – crystal clear instructions about what to do: Order a quick burial, sit shiva, recite the mourner’s kadish. We know how to mourn, but we have no clue what to say to those in mourning. And so, inevitably, we say all the wrong things.

When my father passed away 13 years ago, I sat aghast as one of my
mom’s friends told my then 12-year-old sister that the pain Sis was
feeling “will never go away.”

“It will just get worse. Every day.”

The woman – a psychologist, I feel compelled note – then rambled on and
on about how she has never gotten over her own father’s death and how
Sis’s loss would be like a giant hole in her heart for the rest of her
days.

I’m amazed she didn’t underscore her point by handing my sister a rusty
razor blade and bottle of sleeping pills. Saying “it’ll get better in
time,” might have been reductive, but telling her she’d never be whole
again doubled her losses – first she loses our father, then she loses
all hope. We throw dirt on the caskets, do we really have to throw mud
on the bereaved?

I was furious at the woman (and still haven’t quite forgiven her), but
less than a year later, I was confronted with my own awkward moment of
post-death wishes. A co-worker was in her office, next door to mine,
when she learned that her mother passed away. I heard her sobbing and
rushed next door. When she told me the news, I stood dumbstruck.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Thank you,” my colleague said.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m so …” it went on and on like this for several minutes before I
realized what I was doing. I was at such a loss for words that I kept
repeating the few I could think of. Finally, I left the poor woman
alone – truly sorry for forcing her to play bereavement volleyball.

So, when a friend recently lost her newborn twins, I was determined not
to say the wrong thing. Everyone around her was making all the usual
funeral faux pas: “They’re in a better place.” “Everything happens for
a reason.” “This will pass.”

My friend was getting more and more agitated. She was clearly touched
that people came out to support her and her husband, but did they have
to say such patently stupid things? When it was my turn to approach
her, I just grabbed her hand and let her dampen my shoulder with her
tears. She spoke to me of her anger, of her numbness, her shock, her
confusion. I spoke little. Just hugged her and stroked her hair.

I didn’t end up finding the right words to say in a bereavement card,
so I didn’t give her one. Words may be my living, but in the end, I
discovered the only right thing to do was to shut up and listen.

The Rabbi Is Mightier Than The Pen

I told myself not to look over. Don’t turn your head! Don’t do it!

The rabbi was seated next to me in the audience at a recent lecture. He needed a pen, and I lent him one. Now, as the lecture was wrapping up, I could tell the rabbi was getting ready to bolt. I could also tell, using my superior intuitive powers, that he likely forgot that he had borrowed my pen.

Would he make off with it?

Simple non-verbal communication, of course, could provide the answer. A quick turn of the head, would allow me to get a visual read on my pen – was he holding it out for me, or stuffing it into his pocket? He would see my silent gesture, and respond in kind: Raised eyebrows (oh! I’m sorry, I forgot. Here you go.) or a wink (one step ahead of you.) would tell me all I’d need to know.

Either way, I’d get my pen back and everything would be cool. So why was my brain telling my neck to play dead?

Don’t turn your head!

I have recently made peace with the idea of seeing a doctor who is my age, and I long ago accepted that I could hire a lawyer whom I’m old enough to have babysat. But I can’t get comfortable with the idea of having a rabbi as a peer.

My whole life, rabbis were always older than my parents – even when
they weren’t. They were wise, never goofy or surprising. And they all
talked in that same uniquely rabbinic cadence: Introducing thoughts
through questions, with the emphasis always on the interrogative and
the last word of the sentence (So, WHY are we afraid to let the rabbi
see us looking at our PEN?).

Other cultures believe their clergy to be uniquely chosen by God, with
some special, divine powers. Ours says any schlub who wants the job,
can have it. Still, I have always conferred a kind of superiority on
rabbis. In my heart of hearts, I know they’re just people, but they’re
people who have dedicated themselves to the study of Torah, so they’re
automatically deserving of my respect – or at the very least, my
ballpoint.

So when the rabbi (who I think is a few years younger than me) was
about to pilfer my pen, my first thought was, “Let it go. He’s a rabbi.”

My second thought was, “That’s a really good pen.”

Uni-Ball Grip. Four bucks for a pack of two. Makes my handwriting look
positively sophisticated. Maybe I could just lean forward a bit, and
see if that would make him take notice of me – thus inspiring the
thought, “Oh, I’d better give back this pen.”

Didn’t work.

I had no option, then, but to either say goodbye to the pen or act like
a grownup, and face an only-slightly-awkward social situation involving
a Person Of Authority. I thought it over, imagining the kind of woman I
want my son to know me as. I considered the fact that I have seen this
rabbi give voice to a puppet on numerous occasions; I mustered my
resolve, and I made my choice: Goodbye, pen.

But then something happened. Without thinking about it. Without meaning
to, I turned my head! It was as if a little involuntary voice in my
brain kicked a message to my neck, saying, “Hey, moron. He’s a
rabbi, not George Clooney. Get the pen back.”

The rabbi laughed, when he saw my eyes light on the Uni-Ball – he had
used the metal clasp to clip his notes together, a sure sign of
premeditated pen-napping. He handed it back to me.

“WERE you worried I was going to steal IT?” he asked.

There was no hiding it anymore. Against my better nature, I had broken
down one of my last little mental blocks and treated the rabbi as a
peer. A rabbi is a person? Now, I know I’m a grownup.

“Yeah,” I laughed, taking it back. “I did.”

Pretty Astounding

  Zev’s classroom recently presented his teachers with a tile inscribed with the psalm “A Woman of Valor.” You know the one: “A 
woman of valor, who can find? Her value is far beyond pearls.”

It’s a nice poem, but not one that was ever recited in my house 
growing up. Praising a woman for her domestic and mercantile skills? Sure. We’ll get to that right after Benny Hill.

As Zev and I left the school, we spotted another preschooler in the yard, and Zev stopped to watch her play. This girl was about 4, a year older  than Zev, with flowing brown hair and the most mesmerizing green eyes I’d ever seen on a child.

“She’s pretty,” I said to my son, whose staring seemed
to suggest the same. I smiled sweetly at her, but the girl wasn’t going to have any of it.

“No I’m not!” she protested. “I’m human.”

“Yes,” I said, trying not to laugh. “You’re a
pretty human.”

“No,” she corrected, a little too loudly. “I’m 
smart.”

She huffed off, insulted and seething. I felt like calling after her, “Jury’s out on that one,” but I thought better of it.

I have no idea what it’s like to raise a daughter in this era of  half-naked high school reality stars. It’s true that girls are under
too much pressure to look a certain way. I probably could have benefited from hearing more about the importance of brains and less about the loveliness of looks, growing up.

But I doubt that teaching a child to refuse a compliment is the wisest 
way to counteract all that. Even the “Woman of Valor” enjoys  adoration: “Her children rise and praise her, her husband lauds  her.”

I like my friend Taly’s approach, which was to tell her infant daughter, “You’re so pretty. And you’re good at math.”

It was a joke when Adi was in diapers. But now that she is pushing 5 --
  and is both beautiful and brilliant -- it seems to have worked as a kind of prophesy. I wonder what kind of prophesy being a Not-Pretty
        Human will turn out to be.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that we Jews have been
training our daughters to be Not-Pretty Humans forever: “A Woman 
of Valor” makes a point to say that “charm is deceptive and
        beauty is vain.” (Only Jews would come up with a love poem that 
says, “Sweetheart, you may not be much to look at, but you make
great candles.”)

It’s no wonder we grow up confused. The world isn’t going to stop judging us on our looks, even if our parents don’t. Maybe
it’s time we throw some pretty in the mix. Add some rouge to the rocket scientist. Definitely slap some lipstick on that Valorous Woman and let her -- and our daughters -- know that being pretty and being brilliant aren’t mutually exclusive.

Having the best of both worlds sounds pretty good to me. We are, after 
all, living in post-feminist times when a potential Commander-in-Chief 
can wear Army boots as easily as Christian Louboutin heels. Why wouldn’t 
we teach our daughters to embrace that?

I decided to ask the Human’s mother that question; I watched to 
see whom the girl would run to so that I could make eye contact with her
  mom. But Mrs. Human was busy thumb-typing on her Blackberry and didn’t
look up. She had missed the whole exchange and running across the playground to explain it her might have come across as creepy. Our preschool feminism
tete-a-tete would have to wait.

Instead, I watched Mrs. Human shuffle blindly toward the playground gate, tapping on her Blackberry while Not-Pretty skipped beside her. It bears noting that Mrs. Human is also quite beautiful. And as ignorant as she 
was of her daughter’s self-image, I’m sure whatever she was
typing was very smart.