A naked playboy model in Hasidic Williamsburg

May 24, 2019 A naked playboy model in Hasidic Williamsburg

Posted at 19:36h in Gender, On the tours, Outsiders-Looking-In by Frieda Vizel 4 Comments

DISCLAIMER: This post contains R-rated content. 

This happened in Hasidic Williamsburg: Playboy model Marisa Papen traipsed through the neighborhood, in the heart of its busiest areas, in the nude. For a photo shoot. There are a bunch of pictures on her website of this orchestrated photoshoot stroll. There’s also footage of a confrontation with some Hasidic men and the cops.

According to this photographer’s post:

“Marisa’s goal is to raise awareness about the global suppression of women by the hand of religion.”

“Inspired by the suppressed souls that we witnessed in the ‘One Of Us’ documentary on Netflix we decided to move forward on producing a fine art series about the community.”

I am trying to wrap my head around this. I’m not so much interested in the drama that went down with this photoshoot. There is a video of Marisa and company getting chased by Hasidic men who are screaming hysterically and panting and reporting that she was walking around the streets nakkit (lol!!??) and we see the cops during the last few minutes. It’s a bad film with little to see, just a predictable clash between a provocateur and shocked-aroused Hasidic men. We hear that someone says titties with a Hasidic accent. It’s a panic. You can imagine, surreal if ever. Does life get more absurd?

What I cannot understand is how this is doing anything about the suppression of women by the hand of religion. Let’s follow the logic here. The lady playboy goes out with a camera crew and flashes the expertly trimmed down-there to young Hasidic men who are shocked and traumatized. Okay. So she did that. Then what? How does she hope to get from this moment of pornographic sacrilege in March 2019 to the great liberation, wherein all Hasidic women proudly go about shopping on Lee Avenue with nothing but a Kate Spade bag and Bugaboo stroller? What’s the plan, pray tell? How will the cure come of this peculiar treatment involving a photo shoot, a good hat, and fancy shoes, and presumably, pickles from Flaum’s?

Nutty people exist. But Marisa’s stunt isn’t the act of a mentally ill person who forgot to get dressed before going out for appetizing. She is doing it to get attention and approval. She’ll get it — the story has already been picked up by a handful of bemused media outlets. The stories often criticize Hasidim for their reaction, not her. Because there is an implicit okayness to behavior when it is dressed up (haha) as concerned with the rights of women. It is given a sort of cultural stamp of approval. Or at least the Internet and Twiterrati won’t descend upon her. Because her motivation is noble. It’s against the suppression of women.

Yeah, only here’s the problem. About the suppression of women, it is not. What an Orwellian, empty use of words. She just appropriates real causes for cynical personal gains. Outside of her calling it righteous, there is nothing to show that it is. From everything we can see, she is concerned with her own photos and vanity. It’s totally transparent. We don’t dare say that we see right through it. We give tacit permission because supposedly the cause is good.

Walking naked in Williamsburg for the liberation of women is the absurd example of a much more banal genre of profitable enterprises under the cloak of concern for women. There is a whole industry of publications that appropriates real feminist causes for pop culture ends. It’s in all the stories of the woman who “escapes.” Western culture loves these stories. In books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, you name it. This includes the Netflix documentary One of Us, which is as skewed and dishonest and as concerned with women as an evangelical anti-abortion documentary. It makes sense that it inspired this nudity stunt. And there are many books about religious women who heroically self-determined by throwing off the shackles and leaving. I’m thinking of titles like ‘The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, the Naomi Ragen series, Deborah Feldman’s Self-flattering Unorthodox, Leah Vincent’s Cut Me Loose, and probably a few others in my library. Even Judge Ruchy Frier, the ultra-Orthodox judge and something of a media favorite, is in this category. Her story is celebrated by the New York Times not because she is Orthodox, but because while she is Orthodox, she’s also bought into the modern idea that a woman’s value is found in her career accomplishments. In essence, Judge Frier escaped while staying. Her story has a fresh twist, but the same underlying problem.

What all these stories have in common is a complete and total disrespect for the life of the everyday religious woman as she values it. It scoffs at motherhood, domesticity, family, and female friendships. It tells us that the Hasidic woman is living life wrong. That she isn’t living until she escapes for twenty-first-century capitalist striving. In this narrative the secular culture is always by definition liberating, the religious culture is always oppressive. The girl who leaves her faith and roots is always brave, the woman who gives her all to her children is a sufferer of the patriarchy. Those who escape are accomplished, those who stay are nothings.

The story never considers that some women might not share in this hierarchy of importance. It ignores that not everyone wants to walk around in the March cold with their cooter getting frostbite while mixing a confusion of personal ambition with zealous proselytizing. It decides what kind of sacrifices are meaningful. It’s winter and you’re cold? Well, keep going, all the more heroic fight for the cause! The more you suffer to prove your feminist liberation, the more the suffering oppressed will be liberated. Everyone suffers, sure. But secular-feminist suffering is noble. The suffering of women who live differently is not.

The “Her Escape” story arc is not feminist. It is the total erasure of women’s lives when they don’t match our modern values. It is to impose meaning on someone else’s life. Real support for women is to try to understand the nuances of the challenges and triumphs of a religious woman and to respect what she wants, not what we want.

The genre is profitable though. There is always an audience for a coming-of-age tale of self-determination. It’s no surprise that Deborah Feldman’s book is being adapted as a TV show by Netflix. The story sells. And as long as it sells, there will be half-talents regaling them.

Audiences know that the motives behind these self-proclaimed activists are insincere, but they shrug, because — well, the story is still good. It makes secular society feel better and right. It makes secular society feel like it is emboldened, powerful, attractive, sure of itself. Look at us secular woman, strutting so free. Strutting so proud. Meanwhile, no one is allowed to say the obvious: that it’s crazy. That the empress has no clothes, and it’s goddamn nuts.

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Besides feeling slightly nauseous about the way feminist causes are co-opted, I’m also so bothered by the nude provocation itself. Pulling such stunts can do real harm. I feel sorry for these naive teenage boys. I know many people would comment about how lucky they are, (yuk) but it can be so damaging. I also am bemused that we should further the liberation of women by introducing men on the first occasion to the most unlikely female body — one that very few women will see in the mirror even at their best, never mind after many children. Hasidic men and women very rarely get to see what normal female bodies look like. They see models and celebrities and porn personalities, but they don’t see the vibrant diversity of boobs and butts that make up my Orange Theory Gym dressing room. It pains me that Hasidic people don’t realize what normal bodies look like. So to show as a model of female sexuality a body that is so unrealistic and creates so many insecurities among the rest of us plain-bodied. It is so harmful to women. Oh, the irony.

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On a happier note: Whenever someone on my tour tells me they feel terrible for Hasidic women, I can now suggest that they strut naked in Williamsburg to make a difference. If you see a sixty-year-old IRS employee from Chicago going about in the buff on Division, and a forty-year-old mother from Melbourne without clothes shopping on Flushing, know that they are liberating women and it’s all peachy from here.

Update:

You can buy one of the photos for more than $18,000. I’m gobsmacked!

Related:

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