Last spring, when Dara Lynn Weiss wrote in Vogue about putting her 7-year-old daughter Bea on a strict diet, the media erupted in a volcanic froth. While childhood obesity is hardly an unpublicized topic, new debates raged over youths, dieting, and the seemingly extreme “Tiger Mom” approaches to weight loss. And I’m sure they’ll continue since Weiss’ new book, The Heavy, was published last month. Originally, I jumped on the bandwagon of criticism, but something in Weiss’ battles over weekly pizza days at her daughter’s school and 100-calorie snack packs rang true to my life. That’s because 15 years ago I was Bea, the fat girl in a group of privileged, skinny little girls.

Up until I was in second grade, I assumed I looked like all the other girls in my predominantly Jewish suburb, by which I mean thin. With nary an excess pound of flesh in sight in my svelte Hebrew school class, my girth was even more apparent, but I was blissfully ignorant. However, with each disappointed doctor’s check-up and Hanukkah party where teachers told me to stop taking so many latkes, I realized I was fat.

I stress the Jewishness of my upbringing not only because Jewish women have been shown to have higher rates of eating disorders, but because I believe there is a skinny subculture within the world of upper-middle-class Jewish American women. It’s difficult to articulate, but not for nothing did endless stereotypes emerge in post-war America about Jewish women loving Tab and jokes about their penchant for artificial sweeteners; look at Gilda Radnor’s JAP-py Rhonda Weiss singing about her love of Saccharin. There was a certain strain among us Jewish women obsessed with being thin. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that eating has been a key part of Jewish life for centuries, I believe there exists a counter-current of Jewish women struggling to become skinny.

Overeating was a part of my personal Jewish identity. Some of my favorite moments were—and still are—noshing on chopped liver as I help my mother clean up after our behemoth and beautiful Rosh Hashanah meals. And it wasn’t just that I associated delicious foods with Jewish celebrations. I grew up identifying with overweight Jewish women both real and fictional, like TV’s Rhoda Morgenstern and playwright Wendy Wasserstein.

At the same time, I don’t think it’s purely coincidental that the founder of Weight Watchers, Jean Nidetch, was a Jewish American woman, a fact I discovered at my first meeting in June of 1997. Weiss noted that at age 7, her daughter Bea was 4-feet-4-inches and 93 pounds; I was 4-feet-8-inches and 99 pounds. I stood on a scale in a boardroom with posters of lean fish portioned to the size of a deck of cards and scoops of yogurt the size of tennis balls. Though surrounded by women, I was the only one who hadn’t hit menopause, aside from my mother who sat holding my hand.

Like Weiss, my mother had been warned by the pediatrician that her daughter’s weight threatened her health. My mother battled with her weight at different points in her life, as had her mother. I come from a line of Jewish women with a loving, but also problematic, relationship with food.

Unlike Weiss, my mother let me drop the Weight Watchers routine by the end of that first summer; I had only lost a frustratingly small four pounds from painstakingly counting breads and eating just grilled fish and egg whites. I don’t know whether she let me stop out of the logistical necessity of caring for two other children, including a newborn, or an active decision not to add dietary isolation to the social isolation I already experienced. Nothing makes it clearer to a little girl that she’s fat than putting her on a diet that separates her from eating with friends.

While Bea may have nipped her weight issues in the bud at age seven, I would continue to struggle for the next decade/to this day. Weiss stressed the medical justification for her daughter’s strict diet, but I’m sure she was also motivated by what every woman with weight issues knows: Life is easier when you’re thin, and the fact that you’re healthier and more likely to live longer are the least of it. You get invited to more bat mitzvahs and more dates. Your butt actually looks good in pastel-colored Juicy Couture tracksuits.

Able to enjoy these skinny social benefits, perhaps Bea won’t have the same insecurities I carry to this day at a mostly (depending on my margarita consumption) size 6. I found my own rhythm for weight loss and maintenance in my late teens and early 20s, but I still feel overly aware of my flesh and fat. I don’t blame Dara Lynn Weiss for wanting to spare her daughter this emotional baggage.

But I can’t help thinking that, at 23, Bea will still feel the same way I do. As melodramatic, superficial, and petty as it sounds, being called fat and realizing you’re not like the other little girls stays with you. You don’t easily shake off the memories and self-doubts even if you can shave off the weight. As Bea was quoted in her mother’s article, “Just because it’s in the past doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

In the end, when that loneliness and insecurity return because you’ve gained an ‘only noticeable to you’ three pounds over spring break or your favorite shul dress won’t zip because you gorged on challah and hummus (a comfort food of mine), reminding yourself that people don’t think of you as ‘fat’ anymore won’t make you feel better. Only turning to your mother, or someone else you know that has loved you through thick-and-thin waist, will help.

(image via Shutterstock)

***

Like this post? Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new Jewcy stories in your inbox every Thursday.

The post My Jewish Love/Hate Relationship with Food appeared first on Jewcy.

For many Americans, Christmas Eve can be a time to go to church, sing carols, and be with loved ones. But, Dec. 24 also marks a lesser known, but just as memorable time of year for the Jewish singles of New York: The Ball, a time to squeeze into cleavage-baring cocktail dresses, do shots of flavored vodka, and hook up with other members of the Tribe.

Organized by LetMyPeopleGo (yup, that’s the real name), The Ball is billed as “the nation’s largest Jewish singles event.” Not to be confused with the Matzo Ball or the myriad others singles events for Jews that are held on Christmas and Christmas Eve, The Ball is its own unique set of debauchery for the youngest People of the Book, as well as the largest in the New York area. When I bought my first ticket to it, my mother beamed at the thought of me mingling with clean-cut, eligible Jewish bachelors. Little did she—or, at that time, I—know that The Ball is arguably the sloppiest gathering of Jewish singles looking to get some outside of an AEPi formal.
  


That first encounter was in 2010, one month after my 21st birthday. I was halfway through my senior year of college, and I was very ready for my first taste of the future post-college world of dating. Of course, that’s because I assumed it would be just like Sex and the City—complete with handsome older (Jewish) men, witty banter, and fabulously delicious cocktails that I’d never have to pay for.  



Yes, my expectations were fantastically, unrealistically high for a Jewish singles event, but it wasn’t as if I had expected to find my beshert, my destined Jewish soulmate, there. Okay, maybe a small part of me was hoping I’d find him. Like most of my Jewish friends, we prioritized dating a member of the tribe over anyone else, and a club on Christmas Eve seemed like it offered the best odds.



However, as we piled into the cab to Marquee, I quickly realized that nobody was expecting to find her beloved that evening—or do much talking. One friend announced that the girl who made out with someone first earned free drinks from the rest of us. Her co-worker added the same went for whoever hooked up with the most guys. There was a bounty on heads; apparently, we were going to be the New Orleans Saints of the Jewish singles scene.



Everyone had wised up to the fact that a giant Jewish singles event is the last place on Earth where you’d actually experience love at first sight. It was too loud and too crowded to even find the dear friends you came with. In this environment, you wouldn’t recognize your beshert if he fell from the sky and landed right in front of you stomping on a wine glass.



Within minutes of entering the club, I was standing alone as my fellow Jewesses had dispersed to flirt. I felt like I lost my voice and could only squeak against the blare of “Bottoms Up.” At that moment, I realized this was survival of the fittest; I was scared, lonely, and vulnerable. Switching my focus from romance to competition seemed like the best strategy for surviving the evening.



Minutes later, I was kissing the first guy who wrapped his arm around my waist. You could offer me a million dollars and a date with Andy Samberg to tell you his name or a single fact about him, and I still couldn’t. The same goes for the second guy I hooked up with that night. I can recall more identifiable features of the guard yelling at me for making out on the leather couches than my fleeting partner in crime.



And I didn’t, and still don’t, have, any regrets about my random make-outs. It was fun; I felt grown-up, sexy (yes, to my goody-two-shoes self, that was sexy), and most importantly, I felt emotionally unscathed. 



By my second year of The Ball, I was happy that hookups rather than romance were the only thing in store for in the evening. I was a few months into New York’s Jewish dating scene, and it left me with the desire to shield myself from failed expectations. I hadn’t ventured into JDate, but only because I couldn’t imagine paying a fee to engage in intra-Tribe dating when it already disappointed me so much. Unreturned texts, promising first dates that never led to seconds, and overwhelmingly crowded Shabbat onegs had only frustrated me. The right Jewish guy seemed too precious and, therefore, impossible to find in any of the five boroughs, let alone at The Ball.



So, to dampen any hopes for love, I treated the night as a game. I cooled my desires with competition, as I had learned the safest skill in romantic survival was to expect nothing great and nothing permanent. My second year proceeded much as the first, with the biggest difference being Artichoke Basille’s replacing McDonald’s as our post-Ball meal.



Yet over the course of the following year, I became more aware of how The Ball mentality was impacting my approach to dating. I was overly pessimistic and distant toward romantic prospects. I spoke about relationships as if it were implausible for their shelf lives to last longer than a week. A friend who’s attended The Ball with me every year called me out on this behavior. “It’s one thing to have a cautious mentality,” she said, “but yours is apocalyptic.”

It is with her words ringing in my ears that I contemplate buying a ticket for my third consecutive trip to The Ball. I looked forward to it every year, and not just because I enjoy the random, PG-13 hookups. The ritual of embracing my identity as a single Jewish woman, of owning an aspect of my life that the rest of the time I find myself either trying to change or having to justify, is liberating. At the same time, I wonder if another year is good for me. The ironic distant I cultivate at an event like The Ball isn’t so healthy to have year-round. And maybe now, I need to let my guard down a bit. 



My first time at The Ball taught me how to protect myself against the disappointments of dating and armor myself from the pain of attachments. Perhaps by abstaining from it this year I can undo just the right amount of that learning.

The post Finding Love, Or Just Another Makeout, at a Rowdy Jewish Singles Party appeared first on Jewcy.