When Art Is Only Skin-Deep

By Ofer Aderet May 31, 2011

Crossposted from Haaretz

Einat Dan spent three full weeks preparing for the Beauty Forum, a major cosmetics fair held late last week in Leipzig, Germany. For five hours, she applied makeup from head to toe, fainting twice from all the excitement and tension.

In the end, the 38-year-old Israeli model took first place at the Beauty Forum, marking her seventh first-place win at an international beauty competition. Dan claimed the prize for her work with body art. She drew a picture of Queen Elizabeth on the front of her body; on her back, Dan drew a geisha in a kimono. Usually Dan’s boyfriend helps her with the body art, but this time she did it alone, since her boyfriend also participated in the competition, finishing third out of thirteen contestants from all over Europe.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

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 polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO