If you had to choose a spice to represent you, what would you choose? I’m going with cinnamon – warm and comforting and a little spicy.
Yes, this is reference to an item I came across regarding a new collaborative cookbook which features a dish or spice in the opening spread to represent each author, in lieu of printing their (female) faces. The usual social media pillow fight ensues…
The Frum Female Photo Wars are not so simple. Is the very image of a woman — any woman — provocative and offensive? I don’t believe that it is. Is the slippery-slope-where-do-we-draw-the-line argument valid? It doesn’t satisfy me because it replaces thoughtful judgment with indiscriminate reactivity (pixelating children’s faces?) at the expense of potentially valuable opportunities. I think there are many appropriate venues where the image of a woman can, perhaps should, be included. I was so moved when Mishpacha included photos in an article about the women of Telz during the Holocaust. More, please!
I can also understand and respect women who decline having their faces featured in venues I would consider entirely appropriate. They get to choose how or whether their image is used. I mean, after a decade-plus of Bais Yaakov instruction — everyone has the right to live their sensitivities.
Many things can be true at once. I believe the image of a woman can uplift and inspire. I believe the image of a woman can illustrate and humanize. I take an unapologetically anti-shidduch pictures stance.
If women in other contexts get to choose how their image is used, so do I.
A system that deprives people of choice is toxic, no matter how many sweet words about hishtadlus or how many apologetics about making exceptions “for the right reasons” anyone says. The choice to live your sensitivities, to live according to what you know to be your own best interests, based on your experience of being you — that has to be yours.
If the broad argument against sharing pictures of women in any context is that it is a breach of tznius (a perspective with which I disagree but can respect), how has our community managed to justify an exception on such a vast scale for something that doesn’t even pretend to be anything but objectifying? I find the hypocrisy intolerable.
I hope when these nice ladies have sons in shidduchim, they will remember how they feel about photos of women.
