HalfSours

I virulently disapprove of the eroticizing of butt-cleavage. It is, aside from the wrathful jellyfish, the least appealing part of any Tel Aviv beach. Every time I see a sexy lady drawing attention to herself in that way I wonder if she also thinks toilet plungers make cute accessories.

As an expert aesthetician (10 college credits in photography), I can certify that a person’s body, in the public realm, is most alluring when it is left mostly unrevealed.

Too much exposure to a good thing can lead to its ultimate under-appreciation (think Seinfeld in syndication). I find that this is a general truism for nearly every good thing in life. In fact, at the moment I’m typing this I can’t think of a single exception.

Women in the Western world have dressed progressively more revealingly since the middle of the last century. The fashion industry, not to be degraded to anything less than a community of true artists, has always sought to push the envelope. Artists, I find, have this drive to be so in your face, that you’re often left in need of a handkerchief to remove the smear marks left behind.

If we are constantly stimulated by revealing, sexy persons around us, do our senses not become frayed and numbed? If, what is meant to be erotic is so ubiquitous that has becomes commonplace, how can it possibly hold the same power?

Time was that a woman dressed just so could stop traffic. Today, undaunted by that diminished possibility, we have billboards with nearly naked women on practically every major roadway.

And so sexuality has become less sexual.

Do we really want to live in a world where nothing, not even the G-d given blessing of sexuality, is sacred?

Even for some of the biggest packers and pushers of sexuality, like Victoria’s Secret CEO Sharen Jester Turney, the over-exposure has become ad nauseam.

Apparently, You Can Be Too Sexy

I have a pearl of wisdom for my lady readers. The clam of inspiration spat it toward me in a Jerusalem hotel lobby. When it came, CK and I were in mid-conversation. CK’s face crinkled like he smelled something he wished he wasn’t. I looked to him for support as I fought to keep my bottom lip from dropping agape. It became apparent that the birthrighters were off for a night on the holy city’s club scene.

That’s alright and fine. I’m not pitching a sequel to footloose. Instead I’d like my audience to picture a young woman dressed so appallingly that it made me fear for my G-d- fashioned soul simply for being audience to it. I am absolutely convinced that the article of clothing she was trying to pass off as a dress was, in fact, constructed as a shirt. I DO NOT EXAGGERATE. Directly below the hemline were flaps, folds, and creases which I and everyone else in the hotel would have preferred not to become familiar with. We were literally millimeters away from the line of demarcation between her butt-cheeks and the lower half of her body. As on a full moon it was possible to actually identify the cavernous area devoid of light because of the shadow her butt-cheeks had cast upon it. CK commented that he could see the split hairs of her pubic hair. I trumped him in trauma by disclosing that I could hear the frazzled ends rustling against each other and shrieking out for conditioning. It ruined our appetite for birthright sponsored cocktails. As an open minded liberal heart I would never want to impose my sense of morality or fashion on others. However I feel, as someone who has spent more time b’aretz since birthright, personally responsible to roll this along to my audience:

The same way an Indian sheds a tear every time we leave Styrofoam litter in an American forest, a young haredi boy sheds his peout and writes a long letter to Santa Claus when a Jewess leaves her dignity up in the room of a Jerusalem hotel.