At Passover, Powerful New Writing By Jewish Women On Body Image
Weighing in in the 1920s. Image by Getty Images
With holidays can come unsolicited body commentary from friends and relatives who haven’t seen you since you were (in their recollection, at least) a different shape or size. With this in mind, here’s some great new writing by Jewish women on body image:
Maris Kreizman introduces her brilliant personal essay on illness and inadvertent weight loss with the following disclaimer: “I wrote this piece in 2013. I was told to hold on to it, to wait until the anger dissipated. It never did.” Kreizman describes the unnerving experience of losing weight due to medication, in a society that celebrates weight loss — women’s especially — no matter the cause:
I was discouraged by some of the reactions I’ve received from well-meaning onlookers: the co-worker who motioned to my belly with a wink and said, “you’ve lost quite a bit of weight”, the neighbor who said, “Whoa, you got skinny! Nice work.” I love a good compliment, truly, but the state of my body is not a reflection of some inner determination or lack of cheese-eating. It only reflects that I was willing to make myself uncomfortable in order to take care of my mental health. I wish I had not had to do it.
Read the whole thing. And while you’re at it, you should also check out Hadley Freeman’s Guardian column exploring, as the headline accurately puts it, “[w]hat women really mean when they say they’re feeling fat.”
Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at bovy@forward.com. She is the author of “The Perils Of ‘Privilege’”, from St. Martin’s Press. Follow her on Twitter, @tweetertation
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
