Fenrir the Wolf & Samson: Fairy Tales & the Bible

I've spoken often of a course I could give on Fairy Tales (and Mythology) and the Bible. Noted author Neil Gaiman has recently released his retellings of Norse myths, appropriately titled Norse Mythology. His collection is eminently readable, and in the tale of Fenrir the Wolf, Loki's son, readers will recognize strong similarities to our Samson story. I've reproduced Gaiman's retelling of the story below.

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Excerpted from Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, pages 97-106 

When they had brought the third and smallest of Loki's children back from the land of the giants, it had been puppy-sized and Tyr had scratched its neck and its head and played with it, removing its willow muzzle first. It was a wolf cub, gray and black, with eyes the color of dark amber.

The wolf cub ate its meat raw, but it spoke as a man would speak, in the language of men and the gods, and it was proud. The little beast was called Fenrir.

It too was growing fast. One day it was the size of a wolf, the next the size of a cave bear, then the size of a great elk.

The gods were intimidated by it, all except Tyr. He still played with it and romped with it, and he alone fed the wolf its meat each day. And each day the beast ate more than the day before, and each day it grew and it became fiercer and stronger.

Odin watched the wolf-child grow with foreboding, for in his dreams the wolf had been there at the end of everything, and the last things Odin had seen in any of his dreams of the future were the topaz eyes and the sharp white teeth of Fenris Wolf.

The gods had a council and resolved at that council that they would bind Fenrir.

They crafted heavy chains and shackles in the forges of the gods, and they carried the shackles to Fenrir.

"Here!" said the gods, as if suggesting a new game. "You have grown so fast, Fenrir. It is time to test your strength. We have here the heaviest chains and shackles. Do you think you can break them?"

"I think I can," said Fenris Wolf. "Bind me."

The gods wrapped the huge chains around Fenrir and shackled his paws. He waited motionless while they did this. The gods smiled at each other as they chained the enormous wolf.

"Now," shouted Thor.

Fenrir strained and stretched the muscles of his legs, and the chains snapped like dry twigs.

The great wolf howled to the moon, a howl of triumph and joy. "I broke your chains," he said. "Do not forget this."

"We will not forget," said the gods.

The next day Tyr went to take the wolf his meat. "I broke the fetters," said Fenrir. "I broke them easily."

"You did," said Tyr.

"Do you think they will test me again? I grow, and I grow stronger with every day."

"They will test you again. I would wager my right hand on it," said Tyr.

The wolf was still growing, and the gods were in the smithies, forging a new set of chains. Each link in the chains was too heavy for a normal man to lift. The metal of the chains was the strongest metal that the gods could find: iron from the earth mixed with iron that had fallen from the sky. They called these chains Dromi.

The gods hauled the chains to where Fenrir slept.

The wolf opened his eyes.

"Again?" he said.

"If you can escape from these chains," said the gods, "then your renown and your strength will be known to all the worlds. Glory will be yours. If chains like this cannot hold you, then your strength will be greater than that of any of the gods or the giants."

Fenrir nodded at this, and looked at the chains called Dromi, bigger than any chains had ever been, stronger than the strongest of bonds. "There is no glory without danger," said the wolf after some moments. "I believe I can break these bindings. Chain me up."

They chained him.

The great wolf stretched and strained, but the chains held. The gods looked at each other, and there was the beginning of triumph in their eyes, but now the huge wolf began to twist and to writhe, to kick out his legs and strain in every muscle and every sinew. His eyes flashed and his teeth flashed and his jaws foamed.

He growled as he writhed. He struggled with all his might.

The gods moved back involuntarily, and it was good that they did so, for the chains fractured and then broke with such violence that the pieces were thrown far into the air, and for years to come the gods would find lumps of shattered shackles embedded in the sides of huge trees or the side of a mountain.

"Yes!" shouted Fenrir, and howled in his victory like a wolf and like a man.

The gods who had watched the struggle did not seem, the wolf observed, to delight in his victory. Not even Tyr. Fenrir, Loki's child, brooded on this, and on other matters.

And Fenris Wolf grew huger and hungrier with each day that passed.

Odin brooded and he pondered and he thought. All the wisdom of Mimir's well was his, and the wisdom he had gained from hanging from the world-tree, a sacrifice to himself. At last he called the light elf Skirnir, Frey's messenger, to his side, and he described the chain called Gleipnir. Skirnir rode his horse across the rainbow bridge to Svartalfheim, with instructions to the dwarfs for how to create a chain unlike anything ever made before.

The dwarfs listened to Skirnir describe the commission, and they shivered, and they named their price. Skirnir agreed, as he had been instructed to do by Odin, although the dwarfs' price was high. The dwarfs gathered the ingredients they would need to make Gleipnir.

These were the six things the dwarfs gathered:

For firstly, the footsteps of a cat.
For secondly, the beard of a woman.
For thirdly, the roots of a mountain.
For fourthly, the sinews of a bear.
For fifthly, the breath of a fish.
For sixth and lastly, the spittle of a bird.

Each of these things was used to make Gleipnir. (You say you have not seen these things? Of course you have not. The dwarfs used them in their crafting.)

When the dwarfs had finished their crafting, they gave Skirnir a wooden box. Inside the box was something that looked like a long silken ribbon, smooth and soft to the touch. It was almost transparent, and weighed next to nothing.

Skirnir rode back to Asgard with  his box at his side. He arrived late in the evening, after the sun had set. He showed the gods what he had brought back from the workshop of the dwarfs, and they were amazed to see it.

The gods went together to the shores of the Black Lake, and they called Fenrir by name. He came at a run, as a dog will come when it is called, and the gods marveled to see how big he was and how powerful.

"What's happening?" asked the wolf.

"We have obtained the strongest bond of all," they told him. "Not even you will be able to break it."

The wolf pupped himself up. "I can burst any chains," he told them proudly.

Odin opened his hand to display Gleipnir. It shimmered in the moonlight.

"That?" said the wolf. "That is nothing."

The gods pulled on it to show him how strong it was. "We cannot break it," they told him.

The wolf squinted at the silken band that they held between them, glimmering like a snail's trail or the moonlight on the waves, and he turned away, uninterested.

"No," he said. "Bring me real chains, real fetters, heavy ones, huge ones, and let me show my strength."

"This is Gleipnir," said Odin. "It is stronger than any chains or fetters. Are you scared, Fenrir?"

"Scared? Not at all. But what happens if I break a thin ribbon like that. Do you think I will get renown and fame? That people will gather together and say, 'Do you know how strong and powerful Fenris Wolf is? He is so powerful he broke a silken ribbon!' There will be no glory for me in breaking Gleipnir."

"You are scared," said Odin.

The great beast sniffed the air. "I scent treachery and trickery," said the wolf, his amber eyes flashing in the moonlight. "And although I think your Gleipnir may only be a ribbon, I will not consent to be tied up by it."

"You? You who broke the strongest, biggest chains there ever were? You are scared by this band?" said Thor.

"I am scared of nothing," growled the wolf. "I think it is rather that you little creatures are scared of me."

Odin scratched his bearded chin. "You are not stupid, Fenrir. There is no treachery here. But I understand your reluctance. It would take a brave warrior to consent to be tied up with bonds he could not break. I assure you, as the father of the gods, that if you cannot break a band like this- a veritable silken ribbon, as you say- then we gods will have no reason to be afraid of you, and we will set you free and let you go your own way."

A long growl, from the wolf. "You lie, All-father. You lie in the way that some folk breathe. If you were to tie me up in bonds I could not escape from, then I do not believe you would free me. I think you would leave me here. I think you plan to abandon me and to betray me. I do not consent to have that ribbon placed on me."

"Fine words, and brave words," said Odin. "Words to cover your fear at being proved a coward, Fenris Wolf. You are afraid to be tied with this silken ribbon. No need for more explanations."

The wolf's tongue lolled from his mouth, and he laughed then, showing sharp teeth each the size of a man's arm. "Rather than question my courage, I challenge you to prove there is no treachery planned. You can tie me up if one of you will place his hand in my mouth. I will gently close my teeth upon it, but I will not bite down. If there is no treachery afoot, I will open my mouth when I have escaped the ribbon, or when you have freed me, and his hand will be unharmed. There. I swear, if I have a hand in my mouth, you can tie me with your ribbon. So. Whose hand will it be?"

The gods looked at each other. Balder looked at Thor, Heimdall looked at Odin, Hoenir looked at Frey, but none of them made a move. Then Tyr, Odin's son, sighed, and stepped forward and raised his right hand.

"I will put my hand in your mouth, Fenrir," said Tyr.

Fenrir lay on his side, and Tyr put his right hand into Fenrir's mouth, just as he had done when Fenrir was a puppy and they had played together. Fenrir closed his teeth gently until they held Tyr's hand at the wrist without breaking the skin, and he closed his eyes.

The gods bound him with Gleipnir. A shimmering snail's trail wrapped the enormous wolf, tying his legs, rendering him immobile.

"There," said Odin. "Now, Fenris Wolf, break your bonds. Show us all how powerful you are."

The wolf stretched and struggled; it pushed and strained every nerve and muscle to snap the ribbon that bound it. But with every struggle the task seemed harder and with every strain the glimmering ribbon became stronger.

At first the gods snickered. Then the gods chuckled. Finally, when they were certain that the beast had been immobilized and that they were in no danger, the gods laughed.

Only Tyr was silent. He did not laugh. He could feel the sharpness of Fenris Wolf's teeth against his wrist, the wetness and warmth of Fenris Wolf's tongue against his palms and his fingers.

Fenrir stopped struggling. He lay there unmoving. If the gods were going to free him, they would do it now.

But the gods only laughed the harder. Thor's booming guffaws, each louder than a thunderclap, mingled with Odin's dry laughter, with Balder's bell-like laughter...

Fenrir looked at Tyr. Tyr looked at him bravely. Then Tyr closed his eyes and nodded. "Do it," he whispered.

Fenrir bit down on Tyr's wrist.

Tyr made no sound. He simply wrapped his left hand around the stump of his right and squeezed it as hard as he could, to slow the spurt of blood to an ooze.

Fenrir watched the gods take one end of Gleipnir and thread it through a stone as big as a mountain and fasten it under the ground. Then he watched as they took another rock and used it to hammer the stone deeper into the ground than the deepest ocean.

"Treacherous Odin!" called the wolf. "If you had not lied to me, I would have been a friend to the gods. But your fear has betrayed you. I will kill you, Father of the Gods. I will wait until the end of all things, and I will eat the sun and I will eat the moon. But I will take the most pleasure in killing you."

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Please compare this story to the one about Samon and Delilah in the Book of Judges, Chapter 16.

I am most interested in the similarities and differences between the two tales.

In the case of Fenrir, he is a wolf with the attributes of a man. He can speak and reason as a man. In the case of Samson, he is a man who has the attributes of an animal. As a consecrated Nazirite, his hair is long, unbound and wild, uncut. He is extraordinarily strong and powerful.

Fenrir's strength comes from an unholy place, the union between Loki (a god) and a frost giant. In contrast, Samson's strength comes from his devotion and allegiance to the Lord.

Samson is undone because he loves Delilah and her loyalties lie with her Philistine people. In contrast, Fenrir is undone because he cannot resist pride (showing off his strength) and he is betrayed by Tyr, his childhood friend, and Odin, father of the gods.

It takes four tries for Samson to finally reveal the secret of his strength (and for Delilah to cut off his hair) while it takes three tries to successfully entrap Fenrir. The fourth try is unusual in the Samson story as such stories typically fit the trope of three.

I didn't write this part of the story, but Fenrir's mouth is jammed open with a sword to prevent him from biting down and harming others. Similarly, Samson is blinded (to humiliate him, but perhaps also so that he would not be able to find and harm others if he were sighted).

At Ragnorak, Fenrir will succeed in killing all the gods. In the Samson tale, once Samson's hair has grown back and he entreats God, he brings down the entire Temple of Dagon around the Philistines' ears.

What I think is fascinating is that Fenrir's tale focuses upon an unjust betrayal (from his viewpoint) as he has not actually harmed any gods yet. It also teaches about how pride can lead to one's downfall. Granted, Fenrir's trust in Tyr is also a problem, but it is not the main problem. In contrast, Samson's tale is a critique of Samson in that he trusts the wrong person (Delilah). He has already fought against the Philistines and thus they are justified in considering him an enemy. In his case, it is love that leads to his downfall. In Norse mythology, the Fenrir tale is another tale of the gods' cunning and trickiness. In Judaism, the focus is on the flawed nature of Samson as a judge. Where the emphasis in the story is placed is important as it helps stress what each worldview finds to be most significant. The Judaic emphasis is on the flawed nature of man, his tendency towards seduction (or short term gratification), but how even he can be redeemed. There is no such moral in the Fenrir version. There, cunning and trickiness win out in the short term, but one day Fenrir will have his due.

Analyzing Myths of Female Beauty: An Alternative Approach To Teaching Tzniut

Those of you who have been reading my blog since its inception remember my upsetting experience at my Bais Yaakov school when it came to tznius. The main problem with the way tznius was taught in my high school had to do with the following fact: it worked based on two premises, only one of which proved true.

The first premise was that wearing certain clothing had the power to make you feel a certain way. The second premise was that wearing clothing that was deemed untznius made you feel dirty, exposed or otherwise unpleasant. This was illustrated by a session with our Mechanechet where she had us put on certain clothing (I believe on top of our uniforms) and then asked us to talk about how we felt in it.

In my case, it was true that wearing certain clothing had the power to make me feel a certain way. The problem was that wearing clothing that was deemed untznius didn't make me feel dirty, exposed or unpleasant. Rather, it made me feel attractive, sexy and powerful. I knew that the teachers felt that I should feel dirty or exposed in this clothing, and somewhere in the back of my mind there was even an urge to try to feel as I should. But the larger part of me- the part that didn't feel ugly, but felt confident- won out.

Tznius as it is currently taught has a lot to do with the word should. The phrase "Kol Kevudah Bat Melech Penimah" gets tossed around a lot. The meaning of the sentence is "The honor of a princess is within" - the implication being that it is within rather than without. We are told that we are daughters of God, princesses of Hashem. Just like a princess dresses herself in royal robes rather than rags, we too are called upon to dress in an attractive, presentable way, but not in a sexy, provocative manner. We are told that dressing in a sexy way is simply another way of being trashy. We are told that wearing such clothing should provoke uncomfortable feelings within us.

I think an alternative approach to teaching tznius would be to look at women and women's clothing through a media-critical lens. Many of my students are bombarded with media and its images throughout their day, whether on the Internet, their cell phones, billboards, magazines they read, books they devour or TV shows they watch. They toss off the easy comment, "Oh, the media doesn't influence me- I'm too smart for that" but are then shocked when presented with information regarding what the life of a model is really like, or the process a model's face undergoes before it reaches a billboard.

In the book The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It, author M. Gigi Durham presents five myths that are present in today's society. The myths are based around the following ideas:

1. If You've Got It, Flaunt It
2. Anatomy of a Sex Goddess
3. Pretty Babies
4. Violence is Sexy
5. What Boys Like

Durham explains that she is a feminist, and the premise of her book is based on the idea that children are inherently sexual. She believes that "sex and sexuality are normal, natural, and at best, wonderful aspects of being alive, and that the diverse range of expressions of sexual feelings can be both inspiring and valid" (11). However, the mainstream media mishandles and distorts girls' sexuality in "ways that actually limit and hamper girls' healthy sexual development" (12).

Durham is a pro-sex feminist, which means that she believes sex needn't be "taboo or hush-hush" but rather a "normal and healthy part of life, even of children's lives" (22). She's noticed, however that:

The turn of the new millennium has spawned an intriguing phenomenon: the sexy little girl. She's an all-too-familiar figure in today's media landscape: the baby-faced temptress with the preternaturally voluptuous curves, the one whose scantily clad body gyrates in music videos, poses provocatively on teen magazine covers, and populates cinema and television screens around the globe. She's become a fixture in Western pop culture: we all know her various incarnations, from Britney Spears to the sex-kittenish cartoon girls of anime, from Brooke Shields's child prostitute in Pretty Baby to JonBenet Ramsey's beauty queen persona and the Australian preteen sex symbol Maddison Gabriel. She's been celebrated and censured, and she serves as a symbolic flashpoint for raging debates about gender, sexuality, the definition of childhood, and the criteria for social standards of acceptance. (24)

Perhaps one reason for the fascination with the sexy little girl "is her tricky double role in contemporary society- she is simultaneously a symbol of female empowerment and the embodiment of a chauvinistic 'beauty myth.' She invokes the specter of pedophilia while kindling the prospect of potent female sexuality (24)," Durham suggests.

Durham notes that most contemporary conversations about sex in the media come down to a good/bad dichotomy where you are seen as either for sex or against sex (32). She argues against this, saying there needs to be a middle ground between supporting "fundamentalist Christian Joyce Meyers and pop singer Shakira as sexual guideposts in the media arena" (33).

Then she makes her brilliant point, one that is certainly not understood by many people in America, let alone the students I teach:

What has become clear- yet is not widely understood- is that media images of sexuality are quite specific, and are driven by a variety of factors, the most important of which is the for-profit structure in which they operate. As a consequence, the version of sexuality that proliferates in the mainstream media is not aligned with progressive politics, though the rhetoric around it offers the illusion that it is. (33)

Throughout the course of her book, she offers many examples of this claim, but perhaps the easiest one for all of us to relate to is that "Cosmopolitan magazine, a publication famous for instructing young women to please men sexually, describes its audience as 'fun, fearless females'" (33). Because of the rhetoric used, the "very conservative vision of sex celebrated in these arenas is strongly linked with sexual emancipation and even feminism" (33).

So now let's take a brief look at the myths.

1. If You've Got It, Flaunt It

The New York Times profiled "a group of accomplished teenage girls: they were varsity athletes, academic achievers, classical musicians and volunteer workers, all at once" (63). But they readily admitted that it was much more important to them to be 'hot' than 'smart.' The question is- what does hot mean? 

[H]otness or sexiness is relentlessly linked to particular images in Western popular culture. For example, in a recent issue of Seventeen, the top-circulating teen magazine (which is read by girls as young as ten), a photo fashion spread titled 'Sexy and Seventeen' featured a series of slender Caucasian models in clothes that revealed their underwear- sweaters unbuttoned to expose brassieres, models wearing only a top and panties or a camisole with tap pants. The "sexy" headline linked the body displays with desirability. 'Dare to bare' urges a headline in Teen Vogue that features teen girls in minuscule mini-skirts, their body-baring bodaciousness contrasted with a little girl wearing a frumpy mid-calf-length plaid skirt. The message there is that exhibitionism is daring, while conservative clothing is childish and boring. "Viva glam!" crows an ad for M.A.C. cosmetics, in which a buxom model poses in tiny strips of cloth that barely cover her curves, again celebrating semi-nudity as the path to glamour.  

[...] 

Music videos- by both male and female artists- almost inevitably feature semi-clad women and fully clad men, and the lyrics establish these women ad desirable and sexual. This pattern has been documented in a number of research studies, and at the time of this writing, the top three videos on MTV- 50 Cent's "Ayo Technology," T.I.'s "You Know What It Is," and Maroon 5's "Wake UP Call" - all contain images of female strippers performing for fully dressed male viewers; all of the representations of women in these videos conform to the porno version of sexuality that involves skimpy clothing or stripping and sexual servitude to men, while the lyrics establish the men's voracious desire for these women.  

[...] 

In these representations, sex is purely physical and based on female exhibitionism; this physicality can trigger high emotion, which is often violent (a subject discussed later in this book); but the women's sexuality never translates as anything other than a stimulus. It has nothing to do with intimacy, mutual respect, or love, ideas that have become virtually unthinkable in the arena of contemporary sexuality. The construction of the myth of female sexuality in music videos connects sex directly with female body displays and male desire, and disconnects it from "softer" emotions like tenderness or affection.  

-Pages 74-75

As Durham puts it, "The core message is not hard to recognize: if you're female, your desirability is contingent on blatant body display."

2. Anatomy of a Sex Goddess

Try this on your own- what does a 'perfect girl' look like? Close your eyes for a moment and think about it. Most likely, you came to the answer that I get when I ask this question, and that the author of the book always gets: "She would look like Barbie."

Barbie has been recast as a feminist these days; in the progressive New Moon magazine, twelve-year-old Abby Jones writes, "One of Barbie's slogans is 'Be who you wanna be'. You can buy Teacher Barbie, California Girl Surfer Barbie, Pet Doctor Barbie, and many others. In the Barbie movies, Barbie is smart, strong and courageous." Like Abby, I'm all in favor of Barbie's dizzying array of career trajectories, fo the ways she has overcome her mathophobia, and of her recent forays into tattoos and piercings. But it's also clear that Barbie's body stays the same throughout all of her incarnations: translated to human scale, in a now-infamous formulation, she would be a 5-foot 9-inch woman with an 18-inch waist, 36-inch breasts, and 33-inch hips, and she would weigh 110 pounds. That's too skinny to menstruate, according to one medical analysis of the doll. She may even be too skinny to stand upright. And it's still the ideal girl's body, the exemplar for all races, classes, and nations. Recent studies have shown that preteen girls still longingly described Barbie's body as 'perfect.'  

[...] 

But being thin is not enough: thinness must be coupled with lush curves in the "right" places- the breasts- in order for the ideal to be achieved. And these body characteristics don't normally tend to coincide: when weight loss occurs, breast size tends to decrease. Most fashion models stand 5 feet 10 or taller and weigh less- often much less- than 140 pounds. They are expected to fit into a dress size between 2 and 4. Men argue that stick-thin fashion models are not sexy or attractive, but Playboy centerfolds are similarly atypical in their physical characteristics- with vital statistics of 34-23-34 and weights significantly less than those of other women in their age group.  

In addition, almost all photographs in fashion and beauty publications and, increasingly, almost all video images of models are technical wonders of the digital age. The models themselves are pale shadows of their media images, which are airbrushed, edited, and altered so as to create flawless facsimiles of femininity. They are a far cry from the real world: according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average American woman is about 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 163 pounds. The model- the adored ideal- is both a genetic anomaly and a fabrication of technology, constructing a physical type that is unattainable for almost all girls and women. 

~Pages 96-100

So who benefits from this? Certainly not women- who are comparing themselves to constructions of media and technology, not to real people. Not men- who either look longingly at these unattainable models and wish one of them was their girlfriend, or who end up with wives who have body-image issues. But there are multiple industries that do benefit.

[T]he ongoing pursuit of the ideal body is an expensive proposition. Diet pills and products, gym memberships, stylish clothes to flatter the figure (and become instantly outmoded), high heels to make legs look longer, plastic surgery to inflate the bust and suction the fat, anticellulite creams and potions- the products required to attain the Barbie body are myriad and costly. Multiple industries depend on girls' yearning for the Barbie body: the fashion, diet, exercise, cosmetic and plastic surgery industries all generate multibillion-dollar annual profits. These are the very industries that advertise in the media that promote this ideal body.  

And advertising is the lifeblood of the media, its major source of revenues. It is advertising, not subscriptions, that generate profits for the media. Seventeen magazine earned $101.9 million in advertising in 2006, while the Web site Teen People had advertising revenues of almost $77 million. The Coty cosmetics corporation spent $19 million in 2005 to advertise products targeted to fifteen-to-twenty one-year-olds. To post a single ad for four weeks on MySpace costs between $80,000 to $300,000-and the site's annual advertising revenues are estimated at $250 million, primarily because of the high proportion of young users. Health and beauty products contributed $1.63 billion to prime-time TV in 2006. 

Corporations from food manufacturers to lingerie retailers spend literally billions of dollars every year advertising to the youth market. This extensive network of interrelated corporations would collapse if girls and women stopped their pursuit of the "curvaceously thin" body. The media must promote the Barbie body in order to attract advertisers; advertisers must promote the Barbie body in order to sell the products needed for its attainment. The media and the fashion and beauty industries work hand in glove, driven by a common profit motive. The relationship is symbiotic; if one of these components were to fail, it would have a negative impact on all the others. So the relentless glorification of the Barbie body persists.  

-Page 101

3. Pretty Babies

The American media ideal of female sexuality has been getting progressively younger over the years. In the middle part of the last century, our icons of female sexuality were downright elderly by today's standards: Marilyn Monroe was twenty-seven when she immortalized the seductress Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; Elizabeth Taylor was twenty-four when she sizzled onscreen in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Sophia Loren was twenty-three as the sensuous Abbie Cabot in Desire Under the Elms. These film sirens were legally and physically adults; their much-admired bodies were women's bodies- voluptous and fully developed. Their bodies would not meet today's standards of sculpted masculinity and narrow-hipped leanness. They looked too much like mature women to have present-day appeal in an era of the Lolita Effect.  

[...] 

This emphasis on youthfulness as the mark of beauty and desirability has led to the increasing use of very young girls as models in fashion and advertising, often in very sexually suggestive contexts. Most catwalk models today are between fourteen and nineteen years of age, and some are as young as twelve- like Maddison Gabriel and Gerren Taylor, who was not yet in her teens when she began modeling for such haute couture houses as Betsey Johnson and Tommy Hilfiger. Victoria's Secret model Adriana Lima began modeling at twelve, and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Laetitia Casta started at fifteen.  

[...] 

A series of Louis Vuitton print ads featuring seductive topless photographs of preteen girls appeared in major mainstream magazines a couple of years ago: they went wholly unremarked. A recent Newsweek article described Halloween costumes in little girls' sizes that include fishnet stockings, corsets and "Chamber Maid" outfits marketed as "sexy" and "hot." And an Australian billboard for Lee jeans featured a teenage model wearing hotpants, exposing a breast, and sucking on a lollipop. 

Actually, in this last example, the model was eighteen, but posed and made up to look at least five years younger. This is a different twist on the same idea: that ideal female sexuality is youthful, or even childlike.  

~Pages 117-118 

Why does this matter? In the words of the author, because "these depictions, and their ultimate conclusion, do nothing to foster a healthy, balanced understanding of sex as a normal part of human life that is best experienced in adulthood" (119). The author says this, not out of any religious or moralizing point of view, but because it has been proven that young children cannot understand the consequences of sexual activity and properly protect themselves (physically, emotionally and otherwise).

4. Violence is Sexy

Images of violence against women are pervasive: on billboards, in magazines, on television. A magazine ad for the upscale Dolce and Gabbana clothing line features a man having sex with a woman, while other men stand around watching. The scene implies a gang rape. The models in the ad are beautiful, and they look intense and turned on. The woman does not appear to be afraid. The gang rape is implicitly justified.  

An ad for Cesare Paciotti shoes shows a man stepping on a beautiful, red-lipsticked woman's face. 

An ad for Radeon gaming software depicts a topless young woman with the product's name branded on her back: the brand is red and raw. 

When I show these images in my classes, the students say they are "sexy." I ask them to imagine a puppy, or a little boy, in these situations: they are shocked. The images of violence are arousing only when the violence is aimed at girls.  

~Page 148

Durham cautions us that debates about sex and violence in the media always hinge on the issue of causality- the media does not cause people to go out and commit violent acts. Durham agrees that this is true and argues that the media does something much more insidious- it creates myths. They are our cultural mythmakers, and the myths supply us with "ideas and scripts that seep into our consciousness over time, especially when the myths are constantly recirculated in various forms" (148). These myths are "sugarcoated; they are aesthetically appealing, emotionally addictive, and framed as cutting-edge and subversive. But violence against women is neither edgy nor subversive: the violent abuse of women has been around for a long time" (149).

5. What Boys Like

In the pages of teen fashion and beauty magazines like Seventeen and CosmoGirl, tips on getting boys to notice and "crush" on girls are skillfully intermixed with the product placement that characterizes girls' magazines, so that the advice on buying jeans, accessories, and cosmetics is seamlessly linked to the relationship guidance that purports to help girls negotiate the complexities of love and sex. "Girls are empowered to be informed consumers of boys," as one analysis of these magazines concluded. The pleasures of self-adornment and consumerism are yoked to the central goal of achieving happy heterosexual couplehood. These magazines are oddly anachronistic: they offer a prefeminist vision of a girl's life, where girls require male admiration and attention and can gain it by learning to fulfill male pleasure in very traditional ways: by paying breathless attention to boys' needs and then offering services that provide for them. These services are often highly traditional ones: primping, cooking, and supplying limitless emotional support without expecting any in return. These kinds of activities seem hopelessly retrogressive when you stop to think about them, yet, as the sociologist Dawn Currie observes, girls insist "that the sexualized representations and expressions of femininity in contemporary magazines embody a new wave of women's emancipation."  

It's difficult to see where the emancipation comes in. The concept of a mutually pleasing relationship, in which both partners work to understand the needs of the other, is conspicuously absent from these media. And there are no corresponding magazines or other media for men or boys that exhort them, month after month, to learn how to please girls and women. Love and attraction are one-way streets, in the scenarios offered by these popular magazines.  

~Page 160

This last myth should be troubling to girls who want a mutually loving/ giving/ respectful relationship with boys, to homosexuals who don't see themselves or their sexuality represented by this type of media, and really to any human being.

I would argue that the best way to teach Tznius is to teach your students to do myth analysis. Don't present them with this information firsthand and let them read it; rather, pose questions to them. What does sexy mean? Who is the arbiter of sexy? Where do we get our ideas about what sexy connotes or implies? Look at print magazines. Who is pictured on the cover? Who isn't pictured? What words is this person put next to? What would you think about this picture if those words weren't displayed right next to them? Once you've begun to talk about the myths, the question becomes: what is the motivation behind the myths? The answer, of course, is profit. Then the question becomes:  how are we being coaxed into spending our money on the advertised products? The answer is that "the strategy is to create ideals that are impossible to attain and then suggest to audiences that they are attainable if the right products are purchased" (191). As Durham puts it, "there's no hint that sexuality is an inherent human trait, that both people and animals are de facto sexual, and that sexuality expresses itself in multiple and many-dimensional ways. No: sexiness must be bought" (191).

Once you've identified the myths, you can ask your students about their values when it comes to sexuality, intimacy and their bodies. You can also, if you wish, introduce Jewish values into the discussion. What you want to do is show your students that "the highly corporate, profit-motivated, mass-circulated images are the conformist positions. True rebellion lies in challenging, dissecting, and thinking through them- and then living your life according to your own values and ideas, not those of corporate media" (191).

It may be that your students' points of view will not align with your own, or with those of traditional Jewish values. But at least this way you have provided students with the tools to critically examine and question the media that informs their lives, to question whose definition of sexuality and beauty they choose to live by, and to question what it means to them to be female in today's world. Is the most important thing about them, as females, their physicality? Adele is famous for saying that she makes music "for your ears, not your eyes." In fact, her 2013 Oscar gown was elegant, fashionable, bared no skin and completely tzniut! Maybe your students' definitions of beauty will be more similar to hers than to the interpretations offered by most of our world today.