I blogged the Details article last week (http://blogs.forward.com/binte... and some of the surrounding nonsense as part of an earlier blog too (http://blogs.forward.com/binte.... Just to get away from Nolan and Details specifically though, there are a couple of inherent difficulties in the vocabularies we use to discuss vacuous fetishized celebrity nonsense like those glossy magazine spreads. First we are to some extent caught up in the words that are in circulation in the world we are discussing. We can use JILF it is funny because of its newness, artificialness and irony but it still rankles at least a little and it's hard to argue that MILF — used however ironically — does not radically objectify women (specifically mothers qua mothers). Second, if we want to distinguish between Jewish men and Jewish women our range is limited. You often see "Jewish girls" or "girls" in general used to infantilize women as eye-candy or go straight to the other extreme of balabustas and tedious stereotypes of the Jewish mother (one can easily imagine the image of Rebekah Kohut on The American Jewess on this page being misused in that second way). So in the end, I think the term Jewess is caught in two battles. Does it want to be a general term that's accessible for people to misuse? That's the price of circulation in a sexist world at the moment, but is it a price worth paying and is it even a choice that Jewish women are still able to make (has the mare bolted?). And, on the other hand, does "Jewess" want to be an alternative term for a female Jew that then leaves "Jew" as a marker for maleness: Jews and Jewesses, lads and lasses, actors and actresses.
I blogged the Details article last week (http://blogs.forward.com/binte... and some of the surrounding nonsense as part of an earlier blog too (http://blogs.forward.com/binte....
Just to get away from Nolan and Details specifically though, there are a couple of inherent difficulties in the vocabularies we use to discuss vacuous fetishized celebrity nonsense like those glossy magazine spreads.
First we are to some extent caught up in the words that are in circulation in the world we are discussing. We can use JILF it is funny because of its newness, artificialness and irony but it still rankles at least a little and it's hard to argue that MILF — used however ironically — does not radically objectify women (specifically mothers qua mothers).
Second, if we want to distinguish between Jewish men and Jewish women our range is limited. You often see "Jewish girls" or "girls" in general used to infantilize women as eye-candy or go straight to the other extreme of balabustas and tedious stereotypes of the Jewish mother (one can easily imagine the image of Rebekah Kohut on The American Jewess on this page being misused in that second way).
So in the end, I think the term Jewess is caught in two battles. Does it want to be a general term that's accessible for people to misuse? That's the price of circulation in a sexist world at the moment, but is it a price worth paying and is it even a choice that Jewish women are still able to make (has the mare bolted?).
And, on the other hand, does "Jewess" want to be an alternative term for a female Jew that then leaves "Jew" as a marker for maleness: Jews and Jewesses, lads and lasses, actors and actresses.