Hello Reyut Community!
We’re sorry for our absence, but we are back in blogging action. Over the last few months we have had many
family events, including Ari’s rabbinical ordination which brings him to New
York City. (Mazel Tov Rabbi Lorge!) So
we are truly now bi-coastal, he will be blogging to you from NYC and I from Los
Angeles.
I was watching a video the other day of a Dustin Hoffman interview. For those who haven't seen it
yet I encourage you to watch. He is
discussing what it was like to make the 1982 hit movie, Tootsie, that most
people consider a comedy. Hoffman
however, does not view the film in that genre.
The movie for him evolved into a commentary on society’s views on female
beauty and the value of women if they are not beautiful.
Hoffman was disappointed because the make-up crew made him
into a woman, but they were unable to transform him into an attractive
woman. When he realized that what he saw
was as good as it gets he became emotional:
“Talking to my wife, I said I have to make this picture, and
she said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because I think I am an interesting woman when I
look at myself on screen. And I know that if I met myself at a party, I would
never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill physically the demands
that we’re brought up to think women have to have in order to ask them out.’
She says, ‘What are you saying?’ And I said, ‘There’s too many interesting
women I have…not had the experience to know in this life because I have been
brainwashed. And that [Tootsie] was
never a comedy for me.’”
Hoffman’s
interview has gone viral recently not because it is a new concept, (the unfair
expectation of an idealized form of beauty placed on women) but the honesty he
brings. He never truly understood that
to be female didn’t come with the attractive card, and if you are female and
don’t fit into the stereotypes society says is beautiful then you are less valued. The shame that he feels is something we can
all relate too because even though everyone has felt shunned at one point in
their lives because of how they look, we have also shunned others or made
assumptions based on looks.
This
interview gives us the opportunity to reflect on the beauty standards we place
on women and at the same time how we play a part in them everyday knowingly or
unknowingly.
