Comments | onionsoupmix: Please Bring a Photo of Your Inner Beauty for the Shadchan.

onionsoupmix

Please Bring a Photo of Your Inner Beauty for the Shadchan.

Jan 03, 2011 22:47

In 1996, Sacker studied ultra-Orthodox and Syrian Jewish communities in Brooklyn and found that 1 out of 19 girls was diagnosed with an eating disorder - a rate about 50 percent higher than the general U.S. population.

From here.

That whole article is so incredibly ironic in light of the kiruv machine's continuous insistence that following the laws ( Read more... )

women, shidduchim, tznius

Comments 45

oneironstring January 4 2011, 04:02:24 UTC

Eating disorders are usually related to issues of control. Maybe the strictures of orthodoxy are leaving girls/women with no other way to rebel and assert their autonomy than to refuse to eat ( ... )

onionsoupmix January 4 2011, 04:15:10 UTC

bra size http://www.imamother.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=860015&highlight=bra#860015

oneironstring January 5 2011, 03:10:54 UTC

Can't open the link. I got banned, remember? :-)

fetteredwolf January 4 2011, 04:29:21 UTC

Growing up Charedi, I knew plenty of young Charedi women with eating disorders. They tended to be the oldest in their families, had a lot of responsibilities. When you are the oldest of 8, 10 or 15 kids you are basically a mom to some of them and in the case of the girls I knew, it was very definitely an issue of control. (For one of my friends, it started when she, at age 11, became the primary caretaker of her severely autistic baby sister)

Thread 5

(The comment has been removed)

lostreality January 4 2011, 14:38:05 UTC

hey me too! :) Eating disorder (restricting myself to like 3 rice cakes a day) and self cutting, all when I was a teenager who didn't believe in religion anymore, but was terrified of my parents finding out about that. So right around when I started living a double life.

It seemed to have all cleared up right around when I became financially independent of them, hrmm...

When I was in college my first sociology paper was about self cutting, eating disorders, and how groups with less control over their lives have higher prevalence of these issues.

ruchel January 4 2011, 12:12:24 UTC

I don't know. I don't notice very frum girls, or religious Muslim girls, to be so thin at all, and definitely many are far from thin.

Wanting to show a picture of the girl or the boy seems fine to me, though in my experience it's not everyone who asks, especially from start.

I have never heard of dress size and doubt any shadchan would want to pass such question in my world. Bra size, not even in dreams. It wouldn't even mean anything to the boy, and to those who would get it (the mother) it doesn't bring anything, unless she's looking for a wife for herself.

Of course beauty is desired. But I would rather be fat or ugly in the frum world (be it in school or in shidduchim).

Many places enforce tznius but allow for personal style in clothes, hairdo... actually even the shtarkest place I've visited here did.

onionsoupmix January 4 2011, 13:03:45 UTC

why would you rather be fat or ugly in the frum world?

ruchel January 4 2011, 18:02:01 UTC

Because I've seen the treatment of both in the two worlds...

ruchel January 5 2011, 06:19:44 UTC

so have I. And If I was fat I would definitely choose the non frum world.
In the non frum world you have many more opportunities and many more environments that will value for who you are and not for what you look like. Your professional or academic environment for one. If you do your job well and get along with the other people, you will be valued.
Your dating life will be much better too, because men would get to know you as a person and might very well be attracted to you, whereas in the frum world the ONLY thing they know about you is that your fat, and who your parents are.

Thread 7

Ever read Freakonomics? anonymous January 4 2011, 14:13:06 UTC

It's interesting to look at non-monetary matters with the eyes of an economist, and ask: "What incentives are at work, and are they producing unintended consequences ( ... )

Re: Ever read Freakonomics? bringing_peace January 4 2011, 18:04:12 UTC

well said!

It's Complicated shevh January 4 2011, 15:18:23 UTC

Here's an article about a documentary a friend of mine produced: www.yuobserver.com/media/storage/paper989/news/2008/11/24/Features/Hungry.To.Be.Heard.Listening.At.Last.Orthodox.Jewish.Film.On.Eating.Disorders-3559915-page2.shtml ( ... )

Re: It's Complicated onionsoupmix January 6 2011, 02:06:31 UTC

I could not get the link to work. Do you think EDs are an issue of not having enough control over your life or more about living in a controlled environment?

Re: It's Complicated shevh January 6 2011, 18:47:26 UTC

Isn't that the same thing? In both situations you are just asserting control. If you don't have enough, you do it through not eating. If your life is too controlled, you still want to exert your own control. So I guess I would say, taking control over yourself. But this can happen in environments where everything is controlled for you, or where everything is out of control.

Re: It's Complicated onionsoupmix January 7 2011, 02:48:35 UTC

I guess I mean something different.

In one situation, the person has no control. She is in a tightly structured environment and has no control over her life, so she tries to exert control over the one area that she can control, what she eats. It is an act of assuming ownership over what happens.

In the other situation, the person has a lot of control. She is, in fact, used to controlling every aspect of her life, from which shoe she puts on in the morning to what she is allowed to say after hamapil at night. So if she wants to adjust what she looks like, she will just control what she eats. It might decrease anxiety if she follows a particular ritual. It is less of an act of assuming ownership and more of a continuing pattern of anxiety-decreasing behaviors, as in with many OCD rituals.