Promoting promiscuity?

The perils of public transport are too much to bear for some of the delicate flowers of northwest London.  Golders Green and Hendon have a seedy side and many anxious parents insist on driving their daughters to and from school to shield them from the sort of people they are likely to meet on the bus en route to one of the religious schools in the area.

I have a different approach - stick our kids on the bus and let them see how the other half lives: girls with skirts up to their pupik [belly button], with pallid skin and  multiple earlobe piercings, smoking nervously and looking pathetic hanging onto the shirttails of smelly, gangly and pimply boys. This has to be the most effective antidote to any frum girl's aspirations to be 'normal.'

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The pink blackberrys

Frum women dangle. Their car keys, usually attached to photos of their children and grandchildren, their house keys, iPod, supermarket card and gym locker tokens are all hanging off them. In one hand they are holding clunky wallets brimming with credit cards, dry cleaning receipts, parking tickets and cash. In the other, they are clutching onto an important database of sociological data currently held on the SIM card of their mobile phone. Find the phone and you will unlock all the important numbers a woman needs to know: shaytel macher, kosher butcher, mikvaot, rabbi, my cleaner and her sister in Poland

However, one item sits on the other side of the electronic mehitzah - the Blackberry. This symbol of manly achievement eludes most frum women, for it symbolises corporate power and importance. It means you've got a well-paying job.

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Smart is out, mediocre is in

"These clever girls," a friend said to me the other day, "they're taking it too far now. My son isn't going to want such a clever one. It's not going to be so easy for her to settle down, make a home..." 

"My daughter is doing brilliantly at university," said another.

"But I don't know what good it's going to do. It wouldn't hurt her to be a little less clever....at least in public."

For the first time in Jewish history, mothers are encouraging their daughters to underachieve. They shouldn't be too pretty, too smart or too competent for fear of scaring the boys away. It's particularly nerve-wrecking for Orthodox mothers who are concerned that their daughters are pricing themselves out of the marriage stakes with all their accomplishments. "With a PhD under her sheitel," thinks the anxious mother to herself, " a man is going to worry that my daughter will never be happy changing nappies and making kugel."

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Mothers and fathers

Sports day next week.  Followed by the end of year concert. Hot on the heels of graduation day. And they expect me to go to each event. Couldn't I just send a tired, badly dressed, breasts sagging, blow up life-sized doll that I could remotely contol to wave and cheer when one of my kids appear? It has to be a more effective  use of my time than actually being there. 

Fathers have it easy: they are not allowed to attend the concerts at my daugter's school due to the religious code of the school (to which we freely signed up, so I shan't moan). They cannot watch the mothers' race on sports day for fear of seeing real sagging breasts bobbing up and down across the 100 metre finishing line.

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What is it with religious women and Sex and the City?

The text message on my phone the other day read: "Come and see Sex and the City and raise money for underprivileged kids.at the same time." 

Hundreds of religious women are flocking to see Sex and the City. 'It's a charity thing,' said one. 'It's just a bit of fun,' protested another. Seems to me that the money collected might be better spent on a bit of stomach stapling for these SATC doppelgangers from the London suburbs of Hendon and Hampstead Garden Suburb.

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