I'm Jewish and look like the ideal Aryan spawn when my hair isn't dyed brunette, as is the case now. I've never tried to conform myself to the stick-thin beauty ideal because I realized very quickly my build would not allow for it and concentrated on academics instead. My best guess is that, maybe, since most of the families seem to be hard-working, highly educated, upper middle class, there might be a tendency to stick to Jews/partners that fit the same bill and thus it becomes more prevalent because these tendencies are linked to the high achieving? No? Okay, I was just trying to guess.

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Photogenic ability is not beauty in itself. I rarely look at a photo and think a woman is beautiful because I don't know her. She can look pretty or attractive but not beautiful. Beauty for me is a the whole package, a good balance of confidence and humility, easy smile, kindness - this is beauty to me.

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Teenage girls in general have eating disorder issues, so Jewish teens are more likely like their adult counterparts to have ANY mental illness, and so it is manifested in this particular mental illness at a time when we are all very body conscious.

Or maybe I'm trying to rationalize how both my sister and I had them growing up as Jewish teenagers.

The thing is, though, I was at a party last week with 6 girl friends, all different backgrounds, and we realized 5 of us had at one point had an eating disorder.

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I can't control my parent's expectations, what they want to be, the fact that I am expected to be the best, but I can control what I eat.

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Jewish people--especially in the older generation, I think--tend to criticize and nitpick their family members. This has a lot of positive effects (driving us to succeed in school and our extracurricular activities) but a lot of negative effects, too, including low self-esteem. Given that eating disorders are often triggered by a negative comment about the person's weight, it makes perfect sense that there would be a high prevalence of eating disorders in the Jewish community.

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Especially with our hips. Because, let's face it, big boobs can be a huge assent (pun only kind of intended). But big hips -- well, instead of being an erotic symbol of femininity, hips are the standard of "fat" in the US.

Pair that with anxiety over our noses and our hair (although, lucky me, I got golden California waves and not the dark brown JewFros the rest of the women in my family have -- thanks Oma!), and you've got fertile breeding grounds for serious eating disorders.

Also, I don't know if anyone here watches Scream Queens (I hadn't until a few evening ago), but I caught an episode in which Sarah, the one (and obviously) Jewish contenstant, was arguing with another girl in the competition, who said this VERBATIM: "Do you know how ugly you are, and how Jewish you look?"

It was the single most disgusting thing I've seen on TV in a long time.

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I believe that in the Jewish community there is a certain pressure to look perfect, be the smartest, and, of course, become a doctor. As someone who struggled with all three, I can attest that there is a cultural pressure to "be your best" that sometimes comes across in an off way. I know I'm rambling, but this post hit close to home, as I've often wondered whether or not my relationship with food and exercise would have been so screwed up if I'd grown up somewhere other than Long Island.

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