Women in the frum community are judged by many things, how well they can make a kugel, how many children they can have while they are still teenagers, how fast they can roll one of those huge strollers- to shull on shabbos morning, even how rude they can be while triple parking on Coney Island Avenue, but there is no way better to judge frum women then by her hair covering or lack of it- in which case she may be considered a member of the tribe in some communities while a shiksa in others.
By far the frummer the women is the less hair shows, in the frummest circles they decided to get rid of this problem by shaving their heads and giving them the Pakistani cab driver look with the use of turbans. These ultra frummies have eradicated hair from their heads, synthetic hair and real hair is gone, I have no idea if they shave their other hair- but I wont go there, judging from the way they smell when you get within 10 feet of them- I am confident that no one reading this blog will ever venture down below in the underground world of Hasidic pubic hair customs.
I have wondered a lot about the whole turban concept, especially how they stay upright in the rain. Do they make them with Teflon coating so that they are water resistant, or do they have windproof fleece liners to keep the cold out- since hair usually acts as a natural cold weather protector. Do the settlers in Israel have bullet proof turbans made out of Kevlar? Why don’t I ever see the shaved head ladies wearing shower caps in the rain, they are way more comfy and they are very good when running and we know how much frummies love to run everywhere.
Then you have the Modern Ultra Orthodox crowd, kind of like Chassidish Liberal, these ladies are the ones that probably still shave their heads- but they do don those nasty looking synthetic sheitles with the little hats on top to prove that the hair is not real. Of course I doubt tat anyone save for a drunken chassid would think that the plastic sheitle was real hair- but they still have to show how frum they are by proving their sheitle ith the addition of a hat. First of all why don’t the hats ever cover the full wig, second, why do these hat and sheitle combinations remind me of those nurses from all the World War Two movies with the little hats on top of their bob hairdos.
Like the turban-robe crowd, the small hat-sheitle combo ladies wear their bullet proof brown stockings with the seam up the back to make you want to look at their legs. The seam is almost like asking folks to turn their heads and wonder what goes on under the potato sack/robe you have on. It is also like the sheitle and hat combo another way to show that the stockings are not actually their legs. Although I would highly doubt that any Chassidish women have enough exposure to the sun to get such a golden brown tan line.
What is the point of a sheitle, if it looks better then the natural hair? Should sexy and sheitle even be allowed to appear in the same sentence? These questions are posed all the time in today’s world of sheitle hookers and Hot Channies. This post is not about halacha it is about stereotyping, and with that I bring you the wealthy frummies that have pony tails and bangs in their sheitles. Remember when every frum women had a mullet wig and that was cool? Well now it’s the sheitle that makes your hair look real, and at the same time never allows the women to grow gray hair.
These very expensive sheitles are reserved for women who like to stroll along Central Ave and Coney Island avenue strutting their stuff while their husbands are administrating nursing homes or something of the sort. They strut and we stare and everyone seems to be content, except for some bloggers maybe.
The normal sheitle wearers- pretty much every woman who does not fall inline with the charedim, and do not strut their stuff will at some point don the Rasta look alike hat called a snood. A snood is just a clever way of saying shopping bag that covers my hair. The problem with snoods are they reveal a taste of what is to come. Women who wear snoods are being extremely untznius- its almost as if they are wearing just a bra and no shirt. You cannot actually see the goods, but you know exactly what’s there. I tink Rabbis deemed it kosher because although snoods maybe untznius- they make the women look so undesirable that it must be kosher.
The lamp shade phenomena has recently hit modern orthodoxy where strongholds against women covering their hair are starting to shatter under the pressure of all the girls that come back from their year in an Israel seminary, brainwashed. They usually spend the first couple weeks in town getting drunk and laid and all the sudden they gain 100 pounds and become those type of girls that shuckel with full out intensity while burying their faces in the siddurs.
The influx of modern orthodox machmir women to the traditional strongholds of modern orthodox liberal has proven to be a boon to the hat makers of America. Many girls and women will not go to the sheitle or snood extreme, but they will don the lampshade of those scarves that tie up at the end. Even the old time liberal girls are starting to list
partial hair covering on their frumster profiles, probably for marketing purposes.
I think that Falls were created to make aging women feel good about themselves. First of all I cannot usually tell when the women has a fall or a head band on, causing me to misplace myself by hitting on married women (theoretically if I knew how to hit on women that is) and these women in turn feel great that some young buck is hitting on them and little does the dude know that under the fall is a full head of graying hair. Falls are like the hair club for men in a way, they mask the truth. I am not only the president I am also a client. Falls are interesting because they create bridges of commonness between the frum and modern worlds.
There of course are still the traditional feminist battle grounds where the debate of hair covering centers around demeaning women and not letting them get called up to the torah- I am sure this is one of the main topics discussed at JOFA(jewish orthodox feminist alliance) events. Of course these are usually the same folks that drive to shull on shabbos and fail to keep kosher out of the house. Places like the upper west side where hair covering is viewed as weird in many circles as is dressing tznius have kept up their walls against the rapidly closing in frummies that surround them.
Of course for some reason these same women that are so anti hair covering would be caught dead without wearing a piece of wedding cake doily on their heads while chatting it up in the women’s sections of many MO shulls. Some women even go as far as to don a yarmulke to offer their respects to the shull. These are the ultra orthodox reform types. The women who for some reason believe its disrespectful to enter a holy place without some on their heads. Of course they may be wearing a skimpy cocktail dress to go with the doily.
A friend of mine owns a hot pink wig and wears it to simchas and events all the time. It seems like not enough women have fun with the whole head covering scheme- they dread it and then they just live with it without realizing the potential fun they could have. Kind of like men who experiment with beards and mustaches. I of course am still not able to grow much more then one of those middle adolescent Lubavitch wispy beards- but if I could I would grow a huge goatee like that dude from Anthrax. I would also want to have those sideburn chops and maybe one of those wild west mustaches that roll up on the ends. Women ought to do the same thing, maybe a dread locked sheitle or some color. How about cool hats rather then lampshades and classic frummy hats. I know in the summer many frummy girls can be seen with over sized and over priced velvet baseball caps. How about sombreros or doorags, maybe even the whole gansta look with the towel under the baseball cap. It seems like the possibilities are endless yet women just throw on their dead animal sheitles and boring snoods. Even the turban crowd could improve, maybe they can start purchasing turbans from the Pakistani cab associations to make a new look or something?
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