It Was A Matter of Time

The trend in Orthodox publications and institutions to ensure that no photos of women or young girls are published has exploded over the past few years. More and more institutions and publications are bowing to this trend, and it has gotten out of hand.

Aside from the ridiculous need to blur the faces of young female children, one magazine recently went so far as to blur a section of a crowd shot from the protests in Egypt, an aerial picture that was (by definition) taken from well ABOVE and from quite a distance, where no faces or bodies were discernible in any meaningful way.

Apparently, when the Secretary of State has the nerve to be a female, she must be edited out of history: (courtesy of Yahoo News, surely picked up by other publications-wow! what a kiddush has...nah, I can't even finish it, though I'm sure SOMEONE will say it- if you google "hillary edited out" -{today 5/9} you will get almost 650,000 results in under ONE SECOND)

BEFORE:



AFTER:



So while the rest of the world debates whether Hilary was aghast versus stifling a cough, the Orthodox world just has to wonder why all those people were standing if there was an open seat.

LAst night I attended the the annual dinner from my kids school. It was a lovely event, but not only were the no girls over the age of 8 shown in the video, but why did they bother to honor couples if they had no intention of doing anything at all to honor the female half of the couple? Why videotape your honorees if all you will show is a man and his kids, and pretend you are honoring his wife?

But worst of all, do not honor four teachers for 25 years of service by quickly rattling off their names, and tacking their names in a LIST at the end of a video presentation as the lights go up. If you'd like to honor them? Have a separate presentation where you dim the lights, show their names -ONE AT A TIME-as the emcee announces each one and speaks about them for 30 seconds as someone on the Women's side PROMINENTLY presents them with their plaque.

Stop featuring women in magazines if you can't show us who they are. Stop honoring couples, and then ignoring the women or only showing photos of their husbands, and stop relegating young female children to a non existent role in advertisements, and children's publications (even worse is the ad magazines to lazy to blur the face, and just stick a post it note over a three year old's face).

Why do we wonder why boys in shidduchim (and their mothers-think: Stockholm Syndrome) think they are so much better than the girls they are meant to date. We've created a society were women are treated so poorly, and yet expected to do so much.

I once learned that the face need not be covered, because that is where the soul shines forth, what makes pictures different, and how long until we have to start wearing burkas?

I am so disgusted.