Handsome Is As Handsome Does, Part 1: Slender and Pale?

In The Schmaltz Diet Part 1, I wrote that, by shtetl standards, my novel’s heroine is too thin. The good news for her is that her betrothed has the same problem--only in reverse. Towards the end of Chapter 1, when he walks onto the scene, we learn that "physically, he looked altogether too robust …"

Wait a minute. Too robust? If shtetl women are supposed to be robust, why not shtetl men? 

Here's a short answer: in the words of Estelle Roith (in The Riddle of Freud: Jewish Influences On His Theory Of Female Sexuality),

"… the shtetl ideal of male beauty was one that emphasized ... physically passive preoccupations: pale complexion, weary half-closed eyes, long beard, and pale delicate hands."

… in other words, "You bring the groom, slender and pale."* Take it away Tzeitel, Hodel, and Chava:

* Fiddler On The Roof gets a lot wrong, if you're interested in historical accuracy, but here Harnick, Bock and Stein are right on the money. In fact, Daniel Boyarin, in his Unheroic Conduct, has a section called "'Give Me A Bridegroom Slender and Pale': The 'Effeminate' Talmudist as Erotic Object for Women"

Now, here's a longer answer: It's actually way more complicated than that. They may have called it the Pale of Settlement, but the fact is, pale was already on its way out. At the end of the nineteenth century in Jewish society, there were several competing ideals of male beauty. 

Without going into what they were yet, let's just agree, this was undoubtedly confusing for all concerned. But it's probably not a coincidence that the situation arose when it did. Let's scratch the surface of what was going on at the time. Leaving aside the shtetl world for a second, Russia in the 1860s, '70s, and '80s  saw  …

Dostoevsky

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Kropotkin

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Bakunin

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S. Degayev, secret police

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Tolstoy and Dostoevsky writing a half-dozen masterpieces (maybe not strictly relevant, but … how do you not mention it?)


Chekhov, Turgenev and Leskov close behind


The serfs liberated (good) and mired in poverty and alcoholism (bad), the merchant class rising up, and the noble class sliding downward


Anarchists and communists like Bakunin and Kropotkin and Alexander Herzen forming new political movements every other minute


A war with Turkey that left Russians feeling first triumphant, and then humiliated

Tolstoy

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Chekhov

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Herzen

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Turgenev

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Leskov

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G. Sudeykin, secret police

 

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Attempts on the life of the tsar (the last of them successful)


And the formation of a terrifying secret police corps (which, by the way, plays a role in The Tsimbalist.)

Tsar Alexander II. You might think he's only wearing a mustache. Evidence to the contrary comes from one of Youtube's most unusual offerings, a Circassian Chanted Curse called "Fork-bearded Tsar"

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A smart aleck might be tempted to suggest that, amidst all this flux and ferment, there was only one force for stability and unity in the whole Russian empire, only one thing bringing all men together. 

That's right. They all wore beards.

Sort of like in Brooklyn …

Joking aside … for the Jewish subset of beard-wearers, things were no less rich and chaotic than they were for other Russians:

There were reformers running rampant, some who wanted Jews to assimilate--maybe even wear shorter beards! 

 
Yiddish literature, Hebrew literature, Yiddish Theater, with heavy doses of European influence, budded and blossomed.

A class of wealthy industrialists emerged. 

There were pogroms.

Meanwhile, young Jews were hot for the same ideas that were lighting a fire under other young Russians. But that didn't keep some of them from subscribing to other new beliefs: that maybe Jews should defend themselves, that Russia's Jewry should abandon its centuries-old passivity, that Jews needed their own homeland.

Is it any surprise that all this had an effect on ideals of masculine identity?(And did I mention other considerations, like what role gay men may have played in shaping the male beauty ideal in the shtetl, or why there were so many stories about young shtetl women masquerading as boys?)

There's a lot to talk about there. In the next one or two or three installments of Handsome Is As Handsome Does, let's talk about it.

Changing beard styles: Israel Brodsky, famous Kiev millionaire, sugar king, and philanthropist ...

and his son Lev