this way, but what she’s arguing for is more modesty:
I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?†I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,†she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,†she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.â€Â
When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husbandâ€â€the kids are not allowedâ€â€the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all dayâ€â€in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.
She must feel, I thought, so hot.
Compare that steaminess with a conversation I had at Northwestern, after I had talked about the effect of porn on relationships. “Why have sex right away?†a boy with tousled hair and Bambi eyes was explaining. “Things are always a little tense and uncomfortable when you just start seeing someone,†he said. “I prefer to have sex right away just to get it over with. You know it’s going to happen anyway, and it gets rid of the tension.â€Â
“Isn’t the tension kind of fun?†I asked. “Doesn’t that also get rid of the mystery?â€Â
“Mystery?†He looked at me blankly. And then, without hesitating, he replied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sex has no mystery.â€Â
And, you know, maybe a burqa?
C’mon, baby, flash me a little ankle . . . please? I’ll still respect you.
So edgy. So raw. So liberyawnating.
(Muffy and her friends image from Pandagon)
I’ll still beat you in the morning, baby.
I’ll agree with you on that one Dan. “Liberyawnating” it is.
The fact that she shows her hair only to her husband doesn’t mean that other women don’t.
In fact unless he goes through Jerusalem with a bag over his head, he is going to see enough to stuff a king size mattress.
That sound you heard, was Naomi Wolfe reconciling herself with dhimmitude. “Hey, this chador fits pretty nicely. Plus that Omar… wow, what an Alpha male. You see all the light tan earthtones he wears? Sure, when I get out of line he smacks me… but I deserve. Really, I do.”
Hmmmmm. I don’t know that I’d go that far, Al. I wonder if we could get karaoke video of her singing “Midnight at the Oasis,” though.
On the bright side, she’s not running around brainwashing people with her Zionist hair rays. So there’s that.
It’s a matter of choice versus compulsion. Choosing to reserve all your sexuality for your husband is one thing. Being forced to wear a sheet is another.
Really, though, I don’t think one needs to go to the extreme to be modest. It’s not as though all American women have embraced the Paris/Brittany skank-a-thon habit of coochie flashing.
Is it a habit, or merely a practice, Carin?
Carin – You are right. That whole coochie flashing thing has not really caught on yet. We continue to hope that it catches on, at least with the hot ladies
For a while, I thought it was pandemic.
I will not submit but if I don’t, my comment won’t post.
I guess I can understand the impulse, but why dhimmitude? If Wolf is so keen on guys who never have the chance to look at any other women, why couldn’t she get a convict pen-pal or hang out by the docks like a sensible woman?
I just can’t help but think if all women were covered we would eventually wind up with something like this.
Someone should ask her how she feels about Christian women who choose not to cut their hair and to wear long skirts wherever they go.
B Moe, as I sit here I can tell you that link is not banned in Red China.
Or it wasn’t two minutes ago
In that case, I’d find it extremely hard to argue against the burqa, along with, perhaps, combat boots for the implied hairy toes. I think I need to go bleach my eyes now.
With the sexual revolution thingie not working out as planned, and biological clocks exploding all over the place, libertines must seek shelter in the shadows. Sex-as-god didn’t pan out in the long run, so now contemporary liberalism has to blame its immaturities on distraction.
This is pretty old, is it not? I seem to remember reading something like this quite a while ago.
…with bonus mystery spice, just for Naomi
Yeah, whatever Naomi – forty-five minutes of the treatment women get in most third-world cultures, and you’d be wishing for Harold Bloom’s hand on your thigh.
Although I have to admit – the fact that she finds that stuff kind of hot may give a bit more credibility to her campaign to alpha-ize Al Gore. It may also explain Gore’s totalitarian tendencies.
Rumor has it that Maureen Dowd still can’t get a date. Do you suppose a Hefty leaf and Trash bag would solve the problem?
Isn’t that a goal worth striving for ?! Surely, we can all agree on that
The one on the right looks like Rosie’s left nut.
furriskey, the Great Firewall of China site said that I was banned there.
If not, there are a billion more people that I can annoy.
Great news.
Odd it took feminists this long to work out that being a cheap slut doesn’t exactly boost women’s value or significance to anyone.
Naw. I’m thinkin’ a handful of C-notes and a can of Crisco is more like it…
B Moe,
You could warn a person, now I feel a need to poke my eyes out. I might need a lobotomy to clear the mental image.
method47 I don’t care which method just make it go away.
It’s not as though all American women have embraced the Paris/Brittany skank-a-thon habit of coochie flashing.
The fact that anyone other than prostitutes, Sturges Cycle Sluts, and used up whiskey-voiced 50 year old women in bars are doing it does not speak well for our culture.
You speak for yourself, Mr Taylor…
If it’s just me say so, but when I read Naomi’s discription of young, fresh trimmed-up snapper I felt a mildly woodish reflex tighten the front of my jeans. Not full wood discomfort or anything like that, Naomi narrating insured that, but for a brief moment I swear I felt a slight tightening in the denim.
Young beaver. Happy beaver. Wet beaver meets warm towel. Just soaped and washed and cleaned. Pat dry. Pat dry the coiffed just cleaned beaver. Washed, budding, refreshed, oh so rosey fresh. Sans Naomi’s tangly thatchet of weeds. Not anywhere on a springtime fresh beaver. Wild curly locks, never. It’s so young and clean it giggles. Happy to be a beaver. To be clean. Young. Fresh. Smiling. With a sassy haircut.
To the one on the left: Is that a vestigial penis, or is she just glad to see me? And notice how the one on the right manages to pull off that 2-day-old pastrami sandwich look that is so en-vogue in the cheaper magazines in the adult section?