Dear overweight readers of my blog, I am not poking fun at overweight people, I myself have some love handles- and if I were a hipster and wore tight jeans I would have a huge muffin top though I wouldn’t have crumbs on top. But basically I am picking apart a letter sent by an overweight girl who is rejected by a prospective match because of her picture.
While in Baltimore this past shabbos I picked up one of those free frummy magazines with all the ads for sheitles and leather esrog carriers. Every frum community has one or many, Monsey has a while bunch of them and all they are good for is when you run out of toilet paper and don’t feel like using the sand paper they try and pass off as paper towels. The one in Baltimore happened to have more then just ads and wasn’t the size of a playbill from a Broadway play. I also stumbled across a very funny article entitled Dear Bachur by a women or girl named E.G. Edelson.
Dear Bachur basically starts off as a letter by this girl who wants to go out with this one bachur.
“I am young woman looking to find my bashert- as you are. I have good yichus, my parents have adequate means, and I attended a good high school and seminary. I have a degree and a good job (uh oh she works) I have a good sense of humor, like to do chesed and love children. I am very busy with my parents and job, but try to find time to go to an occasional shiur.”
Now that sounds like a great girl, not my kind of girl by any means, but she is looking for a bachur and I haven’t been a bachur since I was called up to the torah for my bar mitzvah. What can be wrong, maybe the table cloths aren’t white, maybe they don’t sing the right tunes for lecha dodi? Maybe she didn’t do well at playing kosher land in pre-1A? The letter goes on…
“The shadchun relayed all this information to your parents, who shared it with you and he said you would be happy to meet me. But you wanted to see a photo….”
I never ask to see a picture, because I assume when I say I am an avid cyclist, hiker and spend more time hugging trees then anything else, its my way of saying I want someone physically active and in god shape. Not necessarily a stick, but someone who is active almost every day.
“It was soon after we sent the photo that we received your reply. No thank you!”
I wonder if it was a naked picture?
“Yes I know I am overweight, but I’m not ugly, in fact most people think I am pretty.”
Obviously not this dude, and by the way, most people will never tell you the truth if you are ugly- it’s just not human for people to tell you that you are nasty. Unless they are scumbags.
“I’m trying to lose weight, but it isn’t easy, and it doesn’t yield immediate results. My friend lost a lot of weight really quickly- and she nearly died of anorexia. I don’t want to be like that, I want to stay healthy.”
I wonder if she knows that Obesity kills way more people than anorexia?
The letter goes on to talk about mussar and having a loving wife and all that jazz. Kind of like the song that says “If you want to be happy for the rest of your wife, get an ugly woman to be your wife” Lipa should definitely adapt that one. I did like the last line and she’s right, but of course there is more.
“Am I wrong to feel slighted at your rejection after only a glance at my earthly shell?”
“Earthly Shell” What are you Aryeh Kaplan or something? That is a great line, but you are right and wrong. Hvaent you ever heard the famous Rabbi Orlofsky line that All men are horny pigs? Men may have more mitzvos, but women are on a higher spiritual level, hence you don’t hear of many frum men complaining about shidduch rejection because of being overweight. Women just don’t care as much as men do, from what I have seen at least.
“Physical beauty is transitory, pregnancy, household work and age leave their mark on even the most attractive of women.”
Trust me, my father noodges me all the time to date women half my age, even after I tell him that the laws have changed since 1955.
Then there is a new letter entitled Dear Parents of Bachur. Man this girl is desperate, she sound like me with a previous girlfriend of mine, but I was madly in love and trying to get her back, this is before they even found out she didn’t go to the right day camp at age 6.
“I know that you want only the best for your son. But if I may be so bold, (this is like on frumster after the tenth rejection) I am a bit confused by your priorities. You proudly send your son off to a yeshiva where he can immerse himself in kedusha, yet you are using secular criteria to determine the eligibility of a potential shidduch. The secular world looks at the outside beauty. As Jews we believe in looking deeper.”
First off I agree and disagree, doesn’t the torah comment repeatedly on the beauty of Sarah, and the matriarchs how they were so stunning and all that jazz. I am sure there are lots of mentions about hotties in the scripture.
What I really want to know is this, this girl sounds insane. Why on earth she would want to date some guy who’s parents just rejected her because she had a little bit of a muffin top? Seriously, if I was going to date some girl and she said she wouldn’t date me because she didn’t like the fact I was a little rough around the edges, would I go and try to seek her out. Especially if her parents were doing the dirty work, do you want to be apart of family who is judging you how you don’t want to be judged. It sounds counterintuitive to me.
The woman who wrote this letter is now happily married.