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

[onionsoupmix]

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

Comments

[introducingyael]

I dress tznius and express myself with my wardrobe and still find the whole thing satisying. I really think there are other mitigating factors behind the high ED rates.

[onionsoupmix]

But you are not trying to find a shidduch while looking like everyone else in your high school class. In many places, girls are required to not only wear the same uniforms, but have the same hairstyles- pony w/ a headband. You don't think the emphasis on externals contributes at all?

[introducingyael]

The whole situation seems like a serious lemminglike deviation from what we should actually be trying to do. While I can't personally take the whole problem on or even explain it, necessarily, I can tell you that should I get the chance to raise daughters, IYH, I would not send them to a school with such regulations, nor would I deal with a Shadchan with such untznius questions.

[introducingyael]

Girls who went through a religious high school and felt the pressure of getting married from age 15 onwards would definitely have a different perspective than those who came into the religion on their own accord and did not suffer through these pressures. It is a whole different perspective of the religion altogether. People start talking about marriage to these girls even before they ever thought about it themselves.

Daniel Cuperstein

[anonymous]

Is the incidence of EDs higher in the frum population than in the general population? Based on my experience, the focus on external beauty is no more prevalent in the frum world than the general population, and likely less prevalent. Does it exist in the frum world? Certainly - we are hard wired to care about external appearances. While there is definitely something distasteful about a shadchan/boy's mom inquiring about a girl's measurents, there is nothing uniquely frum about the a guy caring about that. Have you ever heard a group of non-frum people discussing a girl's body? I have (guys and girls), and it's generally pretty explicit. In general, I find it ironic when bloggers who are always criticizing the frum world for being repressed, and then criticize frum people for actually not keeping their normal human drives and concerns in check.

[anonymous]

I think in the frum world there is a discrepancy between reality and what they preach.

They do preach Tzniut, yes, but on the other hand, I am appalled at the criteria applied by young yeshive bochrim looking for a spouse.

The first remark a yound bocher I know made about a girl he dated for the first time was "Her legs are too fat" where upon the sister replied "but look at her mother, she is skinny", so the bocher agreed to go on dating and in the end, the couple got married.

...and the mother of the bride is really proud that her iron-hard diets after each child really helped her daughter to get married.

What is so abstruse for me is that the frum world does not even see what's wrong with this.

[onionsoupmix]

Is the incidence of EDs higher in the frum population than in the general population?

Yes, that was in the first sentence of the post...

Based on my experience, the focus on external beauty is no more prevalent in the frum world than the general population, and likely less prevalent.

yes, but the focus on body parts and conformity is incredibly more prevalent in the frum world. We have sefarim upons sefarim dicussing the minutae of women's bodies and what part of the collar bone needs to be covered. This results in women checking each other up and down to see if someone is really tznius, modern-tznius or slutty-tznius. That is where the emphasis on the body comes in.

[anonymous]

Really? You think frum men being interested in the female form is a result the frum world's obsession with tznius, and not just a typical, healthy, male attraction to females? By that logic, the less concerned a guy is with tznius, the less attracted he will be to the female form. Based on my observation, that is certainly not the case.

[hamaskil]

I was always wondering, what is the size of your inner beauty ? :)

[onionsoupmix]

My inner beauty is 36-24-36 :)

A few thoughts

[anonymous]

Well, I think the comment above titled "Freakonomics" is right on...and as an economist, I'm embarrassed to have written that sentence. A question arises in my mind, though: which girls have the eating disorders? Is it the dedicated true believers, the orthoprax, or the ones who will soon be OTD? In other words, is the prevalence of eating disorder related to something about the society, or is it related to stress of not fitting in

Re: A few thoughts

[anonymous]

Not only are frum men more hung up on weight, they are also more hung up on age.
Frum men my own age are rarely willing to date me seriously(I'm in my mid thirties), non frum and non jewish men are much more likely.

Just read the original article

[anonymous]

Some more thoughts from the article itself