photo by RuthAn important female biblical character with her own book. The Book of Ruth, read on Shavuot, tells the story of Ruth’s devotion to her mother-in-law, Naomi, and their return to Israel. Ruth’s story is often read as the first story of conversion. Ruth is the grandmother of King David. Silverman
I.
The King merry with wine ordered
Bring Queen VashtiIn the Purim story, she is King Ahashveros's first wife. In the first chapter of the Book of Esther, Quieen Vashti refuses to dance for the King and is banished. Long villainized, Vashti has been recently embraced by Jewish women as a contemporay feminist heroine for her defiance of the king. wearing a royal crown
to display her beauty to the peoples and the officials
For she was a beautiful woman.
Every woman is a beautiful woman.
And yet beauty is everything no living woman can ever be.
Twenty-five-year-old breasts, no sweat, no wrinkles.
Ready to be displayed, never tired of being judged.
ever ready to please, always smiling, always sexually available.
And Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command.
II.
The king’s officals advised
send beauty scouts bring pretty, unmarried girls
The harem keeper will dress them and beautify them.
let the girl who pleases Your Majesty be queen
and EstherHeroine of the Purim story and Megillat (the scroll of) Esther. She is married to the king by her cousin Mordecai and ultimately saves her people from execution. was taken into the palace
What is the possible point of a beauty contest?
To judge who is most loyal to an imposed definition of womanhood and beauty
To find the ideal female, who is rewarded for altering her natural appearance completely,
who is rewarded if she shows the considerable lengths she is prepared to go to,
to please men’s aesthetic sense, to mold herself into someone else’s Dream Girl.
And Esther arose and stood before the king and said, “How can I look on while my people are being destroyed?”
All bolded words from Megillat Esther; other text excerpted from a speech delivered in 1983 at the Myth California Beauty Pageant in Santa Cruz, CA, by activist D. A. Clarke (copyright 1983 D. A. Clarke). Published in Ma’yan’s Journey, Winter, 2001.
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