Standards of Beauty--part #1

What questions make the top ten hit parade of questions asked of a shadchan? One that always appears is "Is she pretty/good looking?"--"Is he nice looking/good looking?" This is actually as tough a question to answer as "What kind of frum is he/she?"

The standard quick answer when you can't come up with anything else is "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." There is a great deal of truth in this. What one person considers beautiful may not be what another one does. But it is not only individual ideals of beauty that can differ; different time periods and different cultures have differing ideals of beauty.

The Flemish baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens was the most renowned northern European artist of his day, and is now widely recognized as one of the foremost painters in Western art history. While most of his work was ecclesiastical in nature, he is equally famous for his series of portraits of women, some clothed, some not. What characterizes all of his portraits is that the women are "statuesque" in figure, lush even. Such was the standard of physical beauty in his day. Come to think about it, such was the standard of beauty in Western culture, and in some of Eastern culture, up until a short while ago. Women had figures, rounded figures.

I believe that it was in the 60s that a model appeared on the scene who would immediately be given the nickname "Twiggy." She was tall and, as she was described by virtually everyone, "scrawny." Her only "success" was being known as an oddity. Yet, by comparison to today's standard, Twiggy was "lush." The media has coined various epithets to describe today's look, among them "heroine chic." Today's standard is also described as "anorexic." Those who are trying to be kinder will call the look "pared down." As one cousin put it: "I came out of the concentration camps looking better then some of these girls."

We use a yardstick all right, but it contains only a few numbers--those from zero to 8, 8 being the outside limit. The preference is for the middle of that range.

Whose preference though? Men have been conditioned to want "stylish" and "put together," probably by their mothers and sisters, or other women of influence. Today, stylish is defined as coming in little numbers. Now, how to put this delicately. What they really, truly want is something else all together. Get them just that tiniest bit inebriated and phrase the question right and you will discover that there are certain parts of the female anatomy that appeal most to men, and they like those parts "lush." In short, what they "really" want is not what they say they want, or what their mothers tell them they want.

Yet there is a dichotomy that arises. Should their wife change from the size she was when she got married to a larger size, they are conditioned to see that as "getting fat." That they don't want. It is a sad commentary on contemporary society when a girl who is a size 10,12 o 14 or 16 is considered as "heavy," particularly when that girl is tall and that size. It is also a sad commentary when size trumps all the positive midos a girl can present.

An interesting university study looked at married women and weight gain. They asked respondents how much they weighed when they got married and what size they wore. Then they asked them how much they weighed five and ten years after they were married. They also asked about when children were born during this time period. One of the conclusions of the study was that women who started out the thinnest before marriage and who gained weight as seen at the 5 and 10 year mark, gained more as a percentage of body weight then those who started out heavier when they got married. To simplify, those who were a 6 before marriage ended up as a 12 to 14 at ten years as opposed to those who started out as a 12 and ended up as a 14 to 16. One of the authors of the study posited that the physical strain of bearing children--and caring for them--took more of a toll on those who were on the low end of weight when they started bearing children.

My mother has a saying from her mother: "mir farkoifen nisht kinder bam metre." We don't--and shouldn't--sell our children by the yard. You can apply that to the height of boys and for sure to the size of girls.

Notice how I have refrained from commenting that many of those men who have the decided preference for the "anorexic" look are themselves nowhere near the standards they apply to women. In fact, they would be puzzled if a woman rejected them because of their size. The comment would be "What does my size have to do with my midos? Sheesh, why would I want a girl whose big requirement would be my size?" Indeed.

When asked about size by a parent, or even by a single, I try to sidestep the question, even if the girl is the size "required." I don't ask my single women what size bra they wear, and I don't ask the single men what size underwear they wear--dress size is, to me, just as intrusive a personal question.

Could we please, please return shidduch making to a semblance of rationality? Could we please ditch the "Is she a 4?" questions and focus on what is really important in a shidduch?