Theres ladies in this weeks Mishpacha

amother

RosePink

Thu, Dec 02 2021, 11:35 pm

amother [ NeonYellow ] wrote:

It's a fair question you are asking. The reason is that we do not see it as sensitivities or chumros. For those of us who prefer to not expose our children to secular media, magazines, books, etc... Many feel it is necessary to have tznius females included in reading material etc. Our girls should see women and be proud and confident in their role.

For example, there is a great book for kids called A Yiddishe kop, but where are the women and girls? There is even a family shabbos table without a mommy drawn... women are completely absent from the whole book in every scene. It's like a whole world without women.

Does this viewpoint make sense to you? The point is that we don't see it as being "frummer" to exclude pictures of women from frum media. In fact we see it as very detrimental.

Signed
A yeshivish mom who does appreciate chumros

I find the mocking on this thread disgusting.
You claim to be yeshivish, but I doubt you are yeshivish from the heim, because you are a bit misguided.
Signed someone yeshivish who understands why the mishpacha has no pictures and respects that policy.
Also someone who finds it abhorrent to mock other peoples chumros

paperflowers

Thu, Dec 02 2021, 11:43 pm

amother [ RosePink ] wrote:

NeonYellow didn’t mock anything. She articulated her viewpoint clearly in a respectful way.

Mishpacha’s policy of no pictures of women was a financial decision. They started it by default, but when they later asked a rav they were told there is no reason for the policy. I’ve always respected their policy because they can do what they want with their business, but there’s no chumros involved. That’s not mocking, it’s just the facts that mishpacha has disclosed.

amother

Daisy

Thu, Dec 02 2021, 11:56 pm

paperflowers wrote:

Yes.
And pretty much all the yeshivish people I know would be totally fine with tasteful pictures of women included in the magazines, especially the women's section (the Family First). I don't know too many yeshivish people adamantly opposed to, say, a family picture that includes the wife and/or daughters included with a biographical sketch of a rav. Or a small headshot of a female columnist. That's not where this chumrah is coming from. It started in Israel I guess and spread here because prior to 20 years ago women's pictures were included as a matter of course in American RW publications such as the Jewish Observer.

juggling

Fri, Dec 03 2021, 12:54 am

Ihatepotatoes wrote:

Every now and then they slip one in IMO. They are trying to gauge if and how strong of a backlash there will be, and since it keeps getting smaller and smaller (The backlash) I believe that give it a year or two and you'll have women in the Family First for sure. I think that you'll have female politicians in the main magazine as well.

You may be right. But my 7 y.o. daughter (who's small for her age, if it matters) sees pictures of kids in the junior magazine and begs me to submit a picture of her for the magazine, it's really crushing to have to tell her they won't allow her picture.

For the record, we are not insular. We allow secular reading material into our home, but of course the kids relate to the Jewish material as "our own". Until they don't. When they decide the Jewish magazines are not relatable, they'll connect more to the secular magazines. Great policy, huh?

amother

RosePink

Fri, Dec 03 2021, 1:00 am

juggling wrote:

Yes. Great policy because you allow secular materials. We don’t. (My kids actually have no interest in secular reading materials, they’re even more careful then I am)
Clearly they’re servicing a certain crowd like my family that appreciates their policy.
If you don’t like their business model ( a very successful one at that) start your own that services your crowd. Your standards are different, please don’t lower ours.

juggling

Fri, Dec 03 2021, 1:08 am

amother [ RosePink ] wrote:

I hear what you're saying. You don't think your girls mind being told they aren't allowed to appear in the magazine? You don't mind the message that sends them? If that's the way you feel, I can't argue with you. But I think, on average, it does more harm than good. Why can't there be wholesome Jewish reading material that doesn't alienate Jewish girls? What do you think you gain by leaving them out?

amother

DarkKhaki

Fri, Dec 03 2021, 1:12 am

amother [ RosePink ] wrote:

I've been on this forum for a few good years and this might be one of most snobbish posts I've ever read. You're saying that the other poster lied about being yeshivish, accused her of not being ffb (so less than?), called her "misguided," and also stated that she's incapable of understanding the policy (like you do.) My jaw literally dropped as I read it.
As a side note, I genuinely feel sorry for you and other women who would support a ban on women's faces, and by extension their own. A woman's face, which you could see any day on your way to shul, work or wherever, is more offensive than the internet apparently.

There's no basis for this in halacha. Banning women's faces comes from radical Islam.
Dvarim 28:14
And you shall not turn right or left from all of the words I am commanding you this day, to follow other deities to worship them.

Odelyah

Fri, Dec 03 2021, 3:30 am

amother [ Ruby ] wrote:

This is most definitely not the first time. The beautiful article about the women from Telz that ran around YK time also had a bunch of pictures of women. I loved that I could see pictures of the women I was reading about.

Yes! That article took my breath away. It was of a completely different caliber and as I read it I was like OK THIS is why I buy this magazine.

And to the poster who said something about if you're truly yeshivish from the heim, you aren't OK with tasteful pictures of Rebbetzins and Jewish women, I'm curious what kind of yeshivish heim you come from, and where, and how old you are, because as others have mentioned, the Jewish Observer which was the publication of Agudas Yisroel had appropriate pictures of women, from time to time, and I'm pretty sure Olomeinu, the children's magazine of Torah uMesorah did too. Artscroll biographies, universally accepted in the yeshivish world, also include pictures of women (sometimes photoshopped to cover elbows but that's a whole other discussion Smile

) I don't think every new thing people suddenly start doing qualifies as a valid yeshivish chumra. I think it may be a chassidish chumra, and the magazines thought it made sense as a business decision to erase women from their pages in order to appeal to as wide a customer base as possible, chassidish and otherwise. But then perhaps they've started to rethink that choice BH after the growing backlash of very tzanua, fine women who find this practice very extreme, offensive, and harmful.

signed,
a Yavne seminary alumna whose father learned in Telz, husband was a Rosh Kollel, and son is a talmid of Rav Tzvi Kaplan and now BH learns in BMG kollel.. my husband and I don't have smartphones, my skirts are always 4 inches min below the knee, I don't wear nail polish, I don't have a lace top (or front) sheitel, I've never even worn a band fall... you get the idea Wink

Raisin

Fri, Dec 03 2021, 3:42 am

amother [ NeonYellow ] wrote:

The Yiddishe kop does have a very few pics of girls iirc in some of the books. But its weird.

Here is an extract from an interesting article on chabad.org about the Lubavitcher Rebbe's perspective on this issue. (full article here https://www.chabad.org/theJewi.....e.htm)

“There Must Also Be A Girl In The Picture”
Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Around 1980, the Rebbe initiated a campaign to encourage children to take more part in the overall public activities and initiatives of Chabad, and become part of Tzivos Hashem, “The Troops of G‑d.” Many pamphlets were produced for this campaign, and the chassidim who were in charge of it founded a journal for children called The Moshiach Times. Several highly interesting editorial comments and corrections to this magazine were also made by the Rebbe. One of the later staffers of the journal, Dr. David Sholom Pape, compiled a series of these.14 He relates that on the cover of the very first issue there was a drawing of two rows of children—one of boys and above it another of girls, each child carrying a banner with a letter on it, which all together spelled the words ahavat Yisrael, “Love of a fellow Jew” (figure 1).

One of the older chassidim on the staff balked, and wondered if it was “modest and chassidish for boys and girls to be on the same cover.” The younger members of the staff argued that since it was a magazine for both boys and girls, it was indeed appropriate. To resolve the dispute, the cover was sent to the Rebbe for his instructions on the matter. The Rebbe, however, did not instruct the staff to remove the girls from the cover.

Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The matter arose again when the second issue was prepared for Purim, and the cover had a boy and girl in Purim costumes, dressed as Mordechai and Esther blowing bubbles in which were images of the mitzvot of Purim (figure 2). Again, objections were raised that such an image of a boy and girl playing together in proximity was against chassidic ethics; the previous cover had had the boys and girls separated in rows, but now the boy and girl were next to each other! The cover was again sent to the Rebbe, who simply returned it with a check indicating it was fine to print.

Figure 3.
Figure 3.
The third issue was designed for Passover and had a cover sketch of a boy looking into a stamp album, each stamp depicting one of the fifteen steps of the Passover Seder. The angle of the drawing and the size of boy’s head and the album left no room for an image of a girl as well. Since the other two covers had been sent in, this cover was also sent to the Rebbe for approval, and the answer came back:

Tzarich lihyot gam na’arah—“There also needs to be a girl.”

The artist redrew and redesigned the cover to add the head of a girl on the left side and the boy on the right side (figure 3), and by then a custom had been established to send the covers in to the Rebbe for all the issues.

A few years afterwards, in 1984, a cover was prepared by a well-known cartoonist for the Elul issue, portraying a boy returning home from summer camp to his room, carrying his sports equipment. The room is portrayed as filled with holy objects, equipment for a solider in Tzivos Hashem—a chumash, siddur, charity box, and so forth, and he is wearing a kippah and tzitzit. The cover was sent in to the Rebbe, who returned it with two comments: “The tzitzit should be seen” and “There must also be a girl in another corner.”

Elfrida

Fri, Dec 03 2021, 6:12 am

So I would say there are two reasons why this is not directly comparable.

First, these pictures were drawn, not photographs. That makes them one step less lifelike. They are also presenting a concept rather than any specific person. Mishpacha also has drawings of women - ranging from the purely cartoon style Kichel family to the fairly accurate portraits of the competitors in that cooking competition they ran a few years back.

Secondly, the picture were for (and of) children, which to vast majority are not considered provocative in any way. They have age limits, which always seem a lot more flexible for adverts, but Mishpacha also prints photos of little girls - though I admit they prefer boys.

There is room to draw a valid comparison in that representation of both males and females should be present. It's an area where full equality is not necessarily ideal, but that doesn't mean that women should be completely unseen.

Raisin

Fri, Dec 03 2021, 9:49 am

Elfrida wrote:

Chabad womens magazines do have photos of women. Magazines aimed at men, not necessarily. Kids magazines def have photos of girls.