Big Problem

I received this from a sweet friend:

One of your posts on the blog the other day really caught my attention, and, if it's okay with you, I'd like to share some thoughts/observations (the blog post on dating from July 1st): I happen to know a lot of girls and a lot of guys, and I'm not even that social. I often try and set them up, figuring I don't really know but who knows anyway, and my ideas are constantly rejected for one reason and one reason only. The girl is not a size this or a size that, or she doesn't look a certain way (very frum guys are often more crude with the details but I feel no need to report in ways which is not cleaner). The point is, I have had hundreds of suggestions of often pretty girls shot down for looks only by guys who are frum, often not that much to look at themselves (I know, beside the point, but it is more aggravating to me when someone who clearly does not take care of his body is so particular).

Further, I know wonderful girls who haven't been on dates in years aside from one or two because the guys will only go for certain looks. It's disgusting and, in my opinion, it's actually worse in our community than in the secular society. The rest of society is obsessed with physicality and we claim not to be, as we should, but the truth is that at least the modern and centrist/ right wing modern elements of the community use looks exclusively as the first criteria in dating. Not to say people marry for looks, but who people initially decide to date is based entirely on that. One very frum boy even told me his rebbe told him the more of shas he knew, the [here he used a word that describes the weather in August as opposed to the weather in May] the girl Hashem would send him. WHAT>YQ&&!!!??

But that's not the end of it. Girls of different stripes and backgrounds talk to me about this issue. I know one girl who inherently distrusts all guys now based on the fact that she thinks they're all motivated by physicality only and says she doesn't think she'll be able to have a normal sexual relationship when she does get married because her distrust of frum men has grown so high. I know another girl, frum and still is, who often dresses more promiscuously now than she once did saying, "I don't really believe in dressing this way but I can't change the society I live in and this is the only way I can really date men." I know another girl, also pretty frum that says she wears tznius clothing but tries to make sure it's as tight as possible so that men she might be dating won't be looking for other women because she doesn't trust them. MY POINT? If we think women are not noticing the attitudes of the men, they are. It is having an incredibly destructive effect on b'nos yisrael. It is messing with their minds, their views of relationships, self esteem, affecting their values and the way they dress. It has caused a crisis of faith for someone I know and it is not a peripheree issue yet no one is addressing it.

I apologize if this came across as a rant, but I feel that the leadership of our community has severely underestimated the ethical problem this signifies in our community. Even when people come to recognize the problem, they view it as a problem of men's values at most affecting women who cannot find a date. The truth is that it affects hundreds of women, ugly and gorgeous the same, by perverting the values that should be at the center of a healthy Jewish relationship and forever corrupting many women (and the more pristine "pure" ones seem to be falling harder in my estimation). Additionally, in my time as a psychologist I have seen an extraordinary number of affairs and the like among frum people (who look frum, act frum, and have relations with multiple partners). Often, looks and sexual urges are blamed. I'm just saying it's worse than people think and I think it may be the communities largest problem. Thanks for listening and I would like to discuss this. How did a whole society become this obsessed? How could one even begin to help?

Kol tuv.


Thoughts?

Shiurim on the topic of kedusha, here and here, and preparation for rosh hashana in hebrew here - it's never too early. Tomorrow Yaakov Zalmen ben Faige Rivka is having surgery - PLEASE Daven.