Life

Prime Ribs: Zarin v. Babs; Marc Jacobs v. His Mom

Jill Zarin, top, and Barbra Streisand Image by Getty Images

By Elissa Strauss December 22, 2011

Some not-so-endearing news from our favorite Jewish fashion designers: Marc Jacobs tells Vogue that he hasn’t spoken to his mother in over 20 years (my mom launches a re-unification campaign if we don’t speak for two days), and Donna Karan gets in trouble for her new ad campaign set in Haiti. Hat tip to Jezebel.

Jewish mother Jill Zarin may have dealt with her share of divas on the “Real Housewives of New York,” but she still wasn’t prepared for Queen Bee Barbra Streisand. Radar reports that shortly after Zarin posted a video online of Streisand performing at a recent benefit for the Israeli Defense Forces, she was contacted by Streisand’s lawyers to take down immediately. “Someone from Barbra Streisand’s company just called my store to tell me to take down my YouTube video or they will sue me. Is that nuts? Sorry guys. I took it down!” Zarin wrote.

The Jewish Women’s Repertory Company, which produces work with all-female casts for the Los Angeles Orthodox community, is out with a new show, “Me and My Girl.” As The Los Angeles Times notes, this is one play where the actresses get the good parts.

In New York magazine, Amy Odell argues that Sasha and Malia Obama “should be kids, not fashion plates.”

Over at Double X Jessica Grose points out an interesting set of statistics in the National Marriage Project’s new “State of Our Unions” report. It turns out that 58 percent of mothers say they want to work part-time, and only 33 percent say they want to work full-time. Nearly 80 percent of fathers, on the other hand, say they want to work full-time, and 20 percent say they want to work part-time. So much for the end of men?

The New York Post writes about actress and blogger Mayim Bialik’s transition from acting, to science, and then back to acting. Apparently she is the most-authentic geek on “The Big Bang Theory.”

The ascension of female comics has, sadly, been met with ascension of nearly naked female comics in men’s magazines. Carol Hartsell, the Huffington Post comedy editor, tells the funny ladies to put their clothes back on.

The American Society for Muslim Advancement has started an online petition to stop companies from pulling their advertisements from the TLC show “All American Muslim,” which follows Muslim families living in Dearborn, Mich. Lowe’s pulled itsads after yielding to pressure from Christian groups like the Florida Family Association, which called the show propaganda and manipulative.

The petition states:

We ask that you work to stand up against the bigots of the anti-Islam/Islamophobia industry, whose most concerning complaint is that the show is intent on humanizing American Muslims — as though humanization were not an American value.

Elissa Strauss has written for the Forward over a number of years. She is a regular contributor to CNN, whose work has been published in a number of publications including The New York Times, Glamour, ELLE, and Longreads.

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