S/o Please help me be less judgemental to "In towners"

LovesHashem

Mon, Sep 18 2017, 7:06 am

Bizzydizzymommy wrote:

I did not read the thread , just the OPs post. I'm sorry you had this experience. I'm sure you have been very hurt by this and rightfully so. What's weird is that I remember that OOT girls were the "cool" and "popular" girls. Both in camp, highschool and seminary. They were always looked up at and everyone would vie for their attention.
It seems like you were surrounded by insensitive people and it had nothing to do with in town or out of town.
In regard to the adults. I find that if you don't fit into a box nowadays you are just not part of the in crowd, whether you are from out of town or from in town. I grew up in Brooklyn and live in Monsey. I'm not your typical run of the mill gal, so I'm perceived as "weird" or "different", but I take it as a compliment. Sometimes when we feel insecure about ourselves we tend to assume what other people are thinking of us . It's not that they are necessarily thinking that of you.

I'm very secure with myself. I have no idea what these people think of me nor do I care. I am not friends with them. But I interact with them daily and I don't want to be negetive. EX. acting rude myself and feeling anger towards them for the way they talk to me.

amother

cornflower

Mon, Sep 18 2017, 1:09 pm

I didn't read the entire thread only the OP. Yes, I understand her totally. There is a lot of arrogance and looking down if someone doesn't fit their mold exactly. And it starts with the kids. They are already staring from half a block away when they see someone a tad bit different. And that is wrong. I'm not saying everyone is like that, I've met some very nice individuals......

I'm forever grateful that I did not grow up this way and had to go to these schools and try to find my way. I'm happy with my life experiences BT and all.....

OP I've distanced myself and have my own very small crowd of friends. We will never fit in, even if we look and try to act exactly the same way. They have a way of "smelling" out who is different.

amother

Indigo

Mon, Sep 18 2017, 2:26 pm

Funny thing is I dated prob over 100 guys, and I always said I want to marry an out of towner. But of all the guys, the few I met from Brooklyn were always so normal! And I'm not even from Brookyn myself! So I finally went ahead and found me a Brooklyn boy!

My in laws daven in the nicest shul, ppl are so nice. And I find that because ppl are on the street more, they're friendly and responsive. Different than Lakewood or Monsey for sure!

I think its just sometimes ppl feel weird or whatever, and then things get all awkward. But on a general wavelength, I think Brooklyn is really nice. There are ppl with hangups everywhere. I mean, so many ppl, someone's gonna be having a bad day, u know?

hotzenplotz

Mon, Sep 18 2017, 10:19 pm

amother wrote:

All I will say is this: no girl from Detroit or Atlanta would fail to include her city and state if she includes her home address on her shidduch resume. Girls from those "intown" places do it all the time. Like we're supposed to know that the East 19th Street she lives on is in Crooklyn? I'm guessing she's from Schnooklyn, at any rate.
. The house numbers in Manhattan don't go that high, and if she were from Pittsburgh or LA she would have said so. There's probably an East 19th Street in half the cities in the US but those in town girls, bless their little hearts, as far as theyre concerned there's only one and it's in THEIR town and to heck with anyone who doesn't know it.

Do you realize that you are being condescending and demeaning?
Do you realize you are outright mocking a community?
Is this supposed to make me think that out of towners are kind and have middos?
Are the humans in the state of Atlanta or Detroit any less human when it comes to their own
idiosyncosies?

hotzenplotz

Mon, Sep 18 2017, 10:41 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

I honestly think it's a cultural thing, New Yorkers in general are just ... different. I used to work in Manhattan, and people there are just rude, aggressive, and not nice, and if you're not wearing the right clothes, you're nothing. I am not talking about the Jewish part of Manhattan, but it does rub off. Also, in New York, if you want to get anything at all you have to push... and push hard.

When I moved to Lakewood so many years ago, I couldn't believe the difference in culture. Again, I am talking about the non-Jews. The cashiers smile at you and make small talk, random people on line with you will commiserate about the weather - and in general, the pace of life is just so much slower, and nicer.

I honestly think it's a New York thing.

Mommyg8
For your intelligence, this kind of behavior can come to lakewood within another decade or so.
small towns have evolved into cities since the time of Adam Harishon. A sought after region brought an influx of people and turned into a cosmoplitan place. (The old timers were of course intimidated but this is the stark reality of how cities were always built)
If you read old shaalos utheshuvas from the 1600s and 1700s you can get a glimpse of just this scenario
Budapest, Prague, Cracow, Warsaw, Vilnius, Vienna, Frankfort, Berlin. They all started out small town, slow paced, even as farmland.. Bingo! It was a desired location for economic/refugee reasons and it attracted the masses.
Please note: Every city in the whole wide world from China to Germany to Paris; cities plotzing with people have a similar mentality. They do not walk around helloing everyone for they will come home with laryngitis. City People since beginning of creation have dressed more sophisticated. This is human nature. You can enjoy the fashion if you choose too and you can also feel good about your own style of dress at the same time. If you read Rashi on the meraglim feeling like ants, you get the idea: Think good about yourself, and you will feel okay if someone else looks bigger (or better dressed).

amother

Hotpink

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 12:46 pm

To Mrs. LovesHashem:

Any person who can post a line with the word Hate is questionable in my eyes. To use the word HATE on your co-religionists! Now what do we expect from the [gentile]? if we are self hating Jews.
Please read and reread the Meraglim story with Rashis commentaries. They were the first self hating Jews!
Dont you realize that you are just as offensive or maybe even more offensive than the New Yorkers you so dislike!
and I do not buy this bubbemaase about Israeli culture being different. Israel is a big Jewish population with plotzing city centers that are culturally and economically equivalent to the bursting Jewish communities of intown NY. At the same time, it has communities that have similar mentality to the OOT communities as the USA.
PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE EVERYWHERE!
this is not to discount your pain growing up. I was there too. Nobody wanted to be my friend, period. I grew up never knowing the feel of a girl wanting to spend time with me...

LovesHashem

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 1:12 pm

amother wrote:

Wow, you sound more angry than I do. I was exaggerating, and yes should not of used the word. But things slip it, things are hard, and I was half venting. No, realisticlly I do not hate most in towners, or even the majority...or even the ones who treat me like garbage. I hate the mentality of the minority of people I described who happen to be in towners.

Sheesh. You need to chill.

Last edited by LovesHashem on Tue, Sep 19 2017, 2:10 pm; edited 1 time in total

Fox

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 2:02 pm

hotzenplotz wrote:

Please note: Every city in the whole wide world from China to Germany to Paris; cities plotzing with people have a similar mentality. They do not walk around helloing everyone for they will come home with laryngitis. City People since beginning of creation have dressed more sophisticated. This is human nature. You can enjoy the fashion if you choose too and you can also feel good about your own style of dress at the same time.

This is the type of misunderstanding that feeds ill will.

The majority of OOT communities are not in small towns -- they are in major metropolitan areas. And, no, we don't traverse the business districts of our cities greeting random strangers. However, we acknowledge or greet our next-door neighbors should we see them on the street. We say "Gut Shabbos" or at least nod a greeting when passing an individual or small group.

The type of people described by the OP are not sophisticated. In fact, they're remarkably provincial.

Let's take fashion, for example. I am far from a fashionista in real life, but I do follow the fashion press somewhat and I enjoy learning about achieving style and elegance in real life, however ephemeral that goal seems to be.

I was last in Brooklyn in February, and I noticed that every other lady was carrying a specific style of handbag. Now, whatever my failings in other areas, I know my handbags. This particular style is regularly lampooned in the fashion world. It is also more expensive than several other styles/brands that are very well-regarded.

If the ladies in Brooklyn had independently decided that they liked the style and didn't care what fashion gurus say, then I'd say, "Go for it!" However, I suspect most of them have absolutely no clue why a particular handbag silhouette is better or worse or why certain materials create a more polished appearance. They aren't really "enjoying fashion." They're simply mimicking their friends. And if their friends decided to buy sweaters with three arms, they'd go mincing down the street with empty sleeves dragging behind them.

Sophistication requires self-awareness. It requires being interested in and curious about the world around you. It involves developing an eye for sensory appeal and a degree of wit. The advent of mass transportation and Internet mean that you no longer have to live in a geographical area in order to develop a degree of sophistication. When I think of the most sophisticated people I've ever met, I think of a group from Iowa City, IA, I once encountered.

Bottom line: there are plenty of excellent reasons to live in Brooklyn or NY in general. But nowadays, living in NY gives you no particular advantage in becoming more sophisticated, erudite, or cosmopolitan.

amother

Firebrick

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 2:05 pm

hotzenplotz wrote:

Dear Ice breaker:

Funny, our extended family of girl cousins dressed up Purim as different frum communities in the tri state area in an atmosphere of fun and ahavas yisrael.
We had a balabuste from the
Five towns
Flatbush
Passiac/Bergenfield
Willy
Borough Park
Crown Heights
and guess what they each have a typical unspoken dresscode. The girls as young as ten can spot the difference!!!!!! Please use you Ayin Tova that as you enter the streets of Boro Park!!!

This sounds like an excuse for stereotyping. I'm not seeing the ahavas yisroel here.

amother

Aubergine

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 2:23 pm

hotzenplotz wrote:

If you must know I happen to have been born and educated in New York County. I have a kid in shidduchim who doesn't want anyone from Brooklyn and I see why. I lump Lakewood and Monsey in with Brooklyn because these are the girls who expect the oilam to know everything about their hometown. They're much worse than Manhattanites who think the universe stops at 96th Street and the Hudson River. I should know who "Rabbi Greenberg" is --she goes to his shul and of course he's the only shul rabbi on earth named Greenberg. He doesn't even need a first name. It should be obvious to anyone who counts that if she lives on Lexington Avenue she's in Lakewood. What sort of idiot doesn't know that?

Yes I mock. The mockery is deserved. Brooklyn Lakewood and Monsey are hick towns, not the center of the world. The humans in Detroit and Atlanta have seichel. They know that their resumes are going to people from all over, maybe even outside the US, not just to their next door neighbors. I'll be frank with you. When I get a resume from a girl who posts her address without city and state, it goes right in the reject pile because I can see right away what her attitude is: only my community counts.

33055

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 2:43 pm

Fox wrote:

YES! I know exactly what you mean.

Everyone is wearing their sheital in tight curls. Elsewhere this is a trashy look. Right now there is a meme going viral mocking toots look.

"My method for curling clients' hair is creating ugly ringlet-type curls that I then brush to make beachy beautiful waves,' she said.

'I was laughing and joking with [my roommate] about how bad they look before I brush them,' she added.

Playing on the stereotype of the classy girlfriend and the trashy 'other woman', Payton created a meme around the images."

https://goo.gl/images/Uu6vu4

Before this everyone had these really heavy bangs they kept flipping. I went to PTA and was amused watching the constant almost universal flipping by grown-up matrons. I wanted to film it and then play it at a high speed.

amother

Hotpink

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 2:48 pm

Fox wrote:

PLEASE NOTE; Chicago has a square mileage of 234 with a population of 2,700,000 aprox.
Brooklyn has a square mileage of 97 with a population of 2,700,000 approx.
They may both be metropolitan but with a different density.

amother

Hotpink

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 3:24 pm

Attention FOX:

amother wrote:

My immigrant Chinese neighbors can easily distinguish their fellow Chinese neighbors from which quarter of Beijing they originate by mannerisms, hairstyles and clothing. Would you mock the Chinese? Or is it only ok to mock us? Is it because we are your Jewish peers that you choose to mock us??
Why is it ok for Paris to make fashion code and it is not ok for Brooklyn to make a fashion code? Is it because they are gentiles and you respect their right to influence fashion culture but you dont respect our right to make fashion culture?

Fox

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 3:43 pm

amother wrote:

PLEASE NOTE; Chicago has a square mileage of 234 with a population of 2,700,000 aprox. Brooklyn has a square mileage of 97 with a population of 2,700,000 approx. They may both be metropolitan but with a different density.

Yes, but that's because we keep all our water in one place -- gives us a little more room to spread out!

Of course, based on population density, Brooklyn (37,000 per square mile) is a bucolic paradise compared to Manhattan, with 67,000 people per square mile. Dhaka, Bangladesh, has a whopping 114,000 people per square mile, but no alternate-side parking.

Very Happy

allthingsblue wrote:

Fox, which style handbags?

No comment. I try not to be the Kim Jong-un of handbags, lobbing missiles at people who have the means of massive retaliation -- to wit, comments about my Paula Young shaitels! Very Happy

Fox

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 4:14 pm

amother wrote:

My immigrant Chinese neighbors can easily distinguish their fellow Chinese neighbors from which quarter of Beijing they originate by mannerisms, hairstyles and clothing. Would you mock the Chinese? Or is it only ok to mock us? Is it because we are your Jewish peers that you choose to mock us??

Why is it ok for Paris to make fashion code and it is not ok for Brooklyn to make a fashion code? Is it because they are gentiles and you respect their right to influence fashion culture but you dont respect our right to make fashion culture?

There are two contradictory arguments being made:

Argument 1
Brooklynites/NYers are naturally more sophisticated, stylish, or trendy in their dress because they live in a large metropolitan area that also happens to be a major fashion industry center.

The rebuttal to this argument is that fashions and trends in the Jewish community don't necessarily represent the influence of the fashion industry, for both better and worse.

Argument 2
Like all ethnic/religious/cultural subgroups, Brooklynites/NYers develop their own aesthetic that reflects their geography, culture, and values. Styles and trends in Jewish NY are not necessarily related to what anyone else is doing.

The rebuttal to this argument is that if that's the case, the kind of people described by the OP would have no particular reason to feel superior unless they're taking civic pride way too far. We all come from somewhere, and presumably that "somewhere" has its own aesthetic.

------------------------------------------
If you follow either argument through to its logical conclusion, it doesn't end well for these folks.

If they look down on others because they believe themselves to be more sophisticated and with-it, then they are factually wrong. If they look down on others because they believe their Jewish Brooklyn/NY aesthetic is inherently superior, then they are provincial rubes who coincidentally live in a high-density zip code.

As I mentioned in my first post on this thread, the majority of Brooklynites are solving this paradox by not judging others based on geographical origin or minor stylistic differences. When the minority of holdouts expresses disdain for anything OOT, they are simply advertising the fact that they are sadly behind the times.

happy12

Tue, Sep 19 2017, 4:57 pm

Dear aubergine.
It is regretful that your child does not want someone from one specific place. It means your child is close minded and stereotyping people. There are plenty of nice people in brooklyn with great middos.
On my block of about 25 families I can not think of one person who is what you say stereotypical brooklyn. Every one of us would fit perfectly into out of town communities.
It's amazing how right before rosh Hashanah people can be judgemental.
As a side point - I do buy my children clothes in target and walmart and my last carraige was a graco. I don't keep up with the Cohen 's and I raise my children with middos. They are raised to respect everyone even non jews and otd jews.