The Secrets of Shiksa Appeal: a dating book that manages to offend everyone
on March 16, 2012 at 5:52 pmIf you are a single Jewish woman, chances are you’re doing everything wrong. You are probably too loud, too opinionated and poorly dressed to boot. Why else are your men fleeing into the arms of the Gentile women?
That is the world according to Avi Roseman (which is a nom de plume) who wrote the slim dating book, The Secrets of Shiksa Appeal: Eight Steps to Finding Your Shul-Mate. Ms. Avi, as she often refers to herself throughout the book (because she’s auditioning for the role of a white woman who is driven around by an African American man?), explains to Jewish women why “shiksas” (itself a derogatory term for non-Jewish women) are better at snagging “our” men. Cause you know, we own them. Circumcision is the Jewish equivalent to a dog peeing on the ground to mark its territory.
Mostly, our problem is our stereotypical pushiness, our big, loud mouths (in a past post, I observed that Jewish women might be uniquely endowed in that department, sort of), which men don’t like because because it doesn’t make them feel like Masters of the Universe. Or something like that.
Among the helpful eight steps she suggests to us ladies, top of the list is to “Shiksify Your Look,” by which Roseman means dress nice but not slutty. And by “slut,” she is not referring to the kind of woman who uses birth control. She means the women who dresses in outfits that are too tight or too short or wearing so much makeup that you loo like “five dollar hooker.” In fairness to prostitutes, I want to point out that they all probably charge way more than five bucks merely to keep up with inflation.
Now obviously this whole genre of book is clearly insipid and that any moderately intelligent person reading will find fault with at least a thousand passages throughout. You can open the book to virtually any page and be confronted with a bit of “advice” that unintentionally amuses or can be anecdotally refuted. Since Roseman herself doesn’t rely on any sort of rigorously investigated data, it’s only fair to rebut her with nothing better than anecdotes.
Perhaps in tearing down Roseman’s book, I’m not contributing anything helpful to the dating discourse. I can live with that. As I said from the start, this is not a dating advice website. Honestly, I’m the last person in the world that should be dispensing advice in this department. I am only here to entertain you.
Also, we all know that dating is a zero-sum game so if I help you out where will that leave me? Eating takeout while watching Better Off Ted on Netflix on a Friday night?
Actually that doesn’t sound at all bad for a loudmouthed, too-smart, five dollar hooker like me.
