Jewesses: Officially Hot

Details, you guys! We’re in Details!

That’s right: a leading men’s magazine, one which sets the standards for mainstream hetero male sexuality, has acknowledged publicly that Jewish Girls Are Hot. According to author Christopher Noxon, we’re no longer the Janeane Garofolo to our best friend’s Uma Therman. We, friends, are the leading ladies.

This is quite the coup for us, who – as Noxon accurately reports – have been deftly maneuvering our way around the Fran Drescher stereotype and the backhanded “but you don’t LOOK Jewish” compliment for decades now.

But before I launch into my analysis formally, I should say that my first reaction to this article was that it’s just Details being Details, looking for an excuse to show pictures of hot women under whatever guise they can. The Jew angle is a little new, sure, but they’ve certainly featured Mila Kunis and Scarlett Johansson enough to make it clear that they’d still be happy to bang a member of the tribe (always a giver, Details).

However, this article examines the love for Jewish women a bit more closely, and subtly (if not accidentally) suggests that there’s something a little…more to us. See if you can figure it out from one of the magazine’s quotes from porn star Joanna Angel:

"I embody a lot of Jewish stereotypes. I have a Jewish nose and Jewish hair," Angel says of her black mane. "I also own my own company and feel guilty all the time."

Notice that? Angel is funny. And smart. And in fact, all of the women that author Christopher Noxon cites are self-made, self-defined hotties; girls who sell the sex that they’re into, rather than the sex that they hope you’ll be into. Angel, for instance, made her name by blazing the trail for a different kind of porn star (link definitely NSFW). Then you have “Claire,” who “runs Kinky Jews, a four-year-old group that mixes piousness with spiked heels and partner-swapping.” And of course, our very own Jamie Sneider, who made her own sexy, Jewish-food-themed calendar.

The article also notably fails to mention any Jewish hotties who fit a more traditional mold, like model Bar Rafaeli or newcomer Esti Ginzborg. It’s almost as if Noxon is making the point that what makes Jewish girls hot (and hot we are) is not just our ravishing looks, but our attitudes, our wit, our minds – in fact, our very Jewishness.

Now, however on target the article is about the sheer magnificence of Jewish girls, it's still peppered with references to Judaism that are just a little bit off. This shouldn't be too surprising, since a simple Google search reveals that this Noxon character is not a Jew (although it bears mentioning that his wife and kids are Jewish).

The piece begins with his haphazard reference to Orthodoxy without making it clear that he's talking about Orthodoxy: 'Rabbis exhort their congregants to get busy on Shabbat, telling them it's a "double mitzvah."' (Really? Where was this frisky Rabbi when I was in conservative Hebrew school?) and his nonchalant lip service to what I believe he means to be a Holocaust reference “and indeed there can be something creepy about the desire to dominate a Jewish chick.”  Then finally, there's the comment that “Jews are comparatively cool about sex,” and Bam! That’s where we get into straight fetish territory.

On his website, Noxon claims to have plenty of Jewish friends, as well as a Jewish family, and yet he's starting to sound like the guy that imagines us all hiding behind our thick black bangs, chain-smoking in the dark and listening to Bob Dylan and understanding the music better than he ever will, and in fact understanding the world and sexuality and life better, man, because the years on our calendar begin with the number five. Yeah, that’s kind of a fetish. A flattering fetish, to be sure, but a fetish nonetheless. As I’ve argued before (and so it must be true!) Judaism is no more accepting of experimental sexuality or flamboyantly female sexuality than any other organized religion.

But, we do have a tradition of questioning things. Questioning rules, questioning authority, questioning, questioning, questioning. And so it holds that we ladies, many of whom are the daughters of 1970’s feminism, would turn our questioning minds towards the traditional role (or lack thereof) of sexuality in Jewish culture, and experiment with it in a whole new way.

As Details points out in a related article, it’s not the first time that Jewesses have been sexy. In fact, we have a noted and distinguished legacy of hotness, dating all the way back to Esther (I’d argue it actually goes back to Rachel, that seductress by the well, but that’s just me). So this trend, if you can call it that*, represents a new generation of Jewish girls bringing sexy back, and applying our highly valued mental capabilities** to the non-traditional: porn, pop culture, gender roles, and sex. It’s something we’d be doing anyway; the fact that Noxon noticed it and Details published it is simply lox on the bagel.

*All this being said, I’m still not convinced that Noxon has stumbled on a trend so much as he’s done an interview with Joanna Angel and then provided a few other references. Regardless, the idea had Details editors sold, so maybe there is something to it (and that something might just be that Noxon writes a mean pitch).

**I thought that maybe I was stereotyping here, but then, ask yourself this: have you ever met a stupid Jewish girl? I mean, really think about it. Because I don’t think I have.