Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Thanks, Vice. But Israel’s Female Soldiers Aren’t Just Pretty Faces.

Thank goodness for Vice, purveyor of useful information. After all, if it weren’t for their recent publication of Mayan Toledano’s photographs of Israeli women in the IDF, we’d have absolutely no idea that a woman continuing to be, well, a woman while in the army was actually an act of protest.

Toledano is an Israeli-born, New York-based artist. As Mayaan Goldman wrote for Vice in the outlet’s first feature on Toledano’s photos this past March, when the artist started photographing women in the IDF, “she was looking to redeem a small piece of her teenage girlhood during which she served as a soldier herself and was stripped of all cultural ‘feminine’ symbols.” (This is Vice paraphrasing Toledano, whose own voice isn’t included.)

In this most recent piece, an unattributed blurb explains that Toledano’s photos showcase “female Israeli soldiers whose girlishness and teenage boredom act as a subtle but undeniable form of protest.”

Forgive us, but isn’t that saying that if a teenage girl acts like a teenage girl while she’s in the army, she’s engaged in an act of subterfuge? Why wouldn’t the same analysis apply to teenage boys, or, for a matter of fact, any type of human? That’s not to say that Toledano’s concerns about the erasure of identity in the army aren’t important or valid; they absolutely are.

By treating the photographed women as if their continued woman-ness is a radical act, Vice fetishizes the significance of their work; it doesn’t matter that she’s defending her country, it matters that she looks gorgeous while she’s doing it. The publication’s framing of the photograph also distracts from the issue of how soldiers deal with the onslaught of psychological destabilization that can be brought on by service, and it treats female individuality as an issue of physical appearance, nothing more.

Consider, on top of all that, that this is the second time Vice has published Toledano’s photos from this series in six months, with no change in their commentary on the images. There’s only one reason to do so: the first time, the article was hot. If that’s true, and Vice is using Toledano’s photographs for clicks, well, what was that about fetishization?

Women in the IDF are already subject to rampant stereotyping and sexual harassment. Treating them as pretty creatures doing a tough job does them no favors. Treating them as humans trying, in deep and various ways, to maintain their humanity under intense pressure? Now that could be useful.

Talya Zax is the Forward’s summer culture fellow. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

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.

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. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.