Fancy pants, blond Jews

-It has come to my attention that Paul Gowder - the very same Paul Gowder - spent $125 on jeans. I'm not sure whether to read this as a belated victory or as the right idea but the wrong approach - I remain in favor of respecting self-presentation-through-dress, but am not sure expensive jeans are necessarily the way to go. Then again, since I've recently 'improved' my wardrobe via not one but two Gap dresses that are actually nightgowns, I'm not sure I'm one to give advice.

-In the course of my blog-post-long campaign against the concept of 'natural beauty', I mentioned that 'natural' is sometimes used to describe hairstyles, especially those of black women, that do not involve use of a relaxer, even when a given style is far removed from wash-and-go. The idea being, however painstaking the style, however far from the hair's natural color or shape the results, if the one politically-significant process did not take place, the look is natural, 'natural' defined not as accepting one's hair in its natural state, nor as liberation from grooming routines far beyond that of the average man, but as being true to one's origins or standing up to a racist past.

An example, then, would be Piper Miller's description of her hair as "100% natural" - even when dyed blond, and more surprisingly, even when straightened, so long as the process doesn't involve chemicals. I clicked on her interview thinking her hair, which in the photo is an obviously artificial shade of blond, but not straightened, looked fabulous. Natural? Only if that peroxide rained down from the sky.

This definition of 'natural hair' as something more about ethnic solidarity than about letting hair fall as it may is, now that I think of it, not unique to black women. Jewish women, if thinking politically about hair at all, are far more likely to identify going blond than hair-straightening as ethnic treason. Yes, there are blond Jews, straight-haired Jews, and then there's Alicia Silverstone, but of the many, many, many of us born 'white' but with neither, it is my sense that the Jewish woman's version of 'natural' - the look that's least likely to be accused as a manifestation of self-hatred - involves above all else keeping the color dark.

Why is bleach to Jewish women what relaxer is to black women? (Assuming it is, as I clearly am. Thoughts from members of either group, or interested third-parties?)

I'm guessing it's because of the Nazi obsession with blondness. I mean, doubtless the Nazis frowned on frizz, but their desire to kill off non-blonds is, to an extent, their legacy. That obsession, known to everyone with even a sentence-long understanding of that part of history, was best illustrated to me in a book I found at the Heidelberg university library, which had a photo of a young child sitting in what looked like a doctor's examining room, but instead of getting checked for an ear infection or whatever, he was having his race 'tested' via the comparison of his hair color with a range of tufts of different shades, sort of like the ones at salons and in drug stores that let you pick your color dye.

Of course, there's also the fact of shtetls having been in Poland and not Shanghai (not that there weren't/aren't Chinese Jews, and not to malign their importance to world Jewry), not to mention the Roth-Allen Two-Headed Monster, or the fact that once Jews are defined as 'white', all features that challenge this definition grow more salient. Or perhaps there are just more straight-haired than blond Jews in this country - that's certainly the case in my own family, but the only statistics I found on this were from a more eugenicist age, and could well have been philo-Semites looking to defend the Jews by exaggerating the number of fair-haired among us.

< where I get side-tracked > One sees this today as well - it's still supposed to be somehow an insult to point out that Jews in American tend to have dark hair. Those who believe it 'racist' to say that there is such a thing as 'looking Jewish' nearly always offer up as evidence that many Jews are not visibly so, and the ones they mention are, almost without fail, Jews who look whiter than Jews stereotypically look, as in, 'There's no such thing as looking Jewish because plenty of Jews are blond/don't have massive schnozzes/OMG Gwyneth's grandfather was a rabbi'. That many Jews also look less white than the stereotypical Ashkenazi-American - darker hair, less 'white' features - presumably doesn't help the cause, a cause that's - again - claiming to be anti-racist. Jews' persistence in going around and looking, in many cases, phenotypically-identifiable is seen by those of this mindset as unhelpful - Judaism's supposed to be a religion, not a race, blah blah, and so forth. As I've babbled here before, it's in no way an insult to atypical-looking American Jews - black or blond - to say that the bulk of us look like Sarah Silverman, give or take. < /where I get side-tracked >

Anyway, clearly, the desire to make hair blonder and straighter than was already the case cuts across ethnic lines - what interests me is the significance of these terms depending on the group, even among groups who tend to come by neither trait naturally, and, of course, the use of 'natural'.

-Final item on the agenda: For better or worse, I have perfected the Eiskaffee.

Adventures in Eiskaffee

As European countries go, Germany is not known for having a cuisine worth crossing the Atlantic for. But I'm about to put German cuisine above all others on account of one food alone: Eiskaffee. Yes, that, with no help (ok, spaetzles are quite nice), puts German cuisine in my mind above Italian, French, etc.

Let me explain.

Pretty much since arriving, I've passed a wood-paneled coffee place that looked so enticing, I was scared to go in. The sign reading "Eiskaffee" didn't hurt. Adding to the intimidation factor: one of my housemates had in fact entered, and was told that because they were so busy, it was black coffee or nothing. Hmm.

But I was determined! And other housemates, also anglophones, had claimed success. So, having finished reading another list-book earlier than expected, I decided that today was the day. Jo taught me my line, which I had memorized: Ich moechte einen Eiskaffee ohne sahne, bitte. After some hesitation, I entered and said my piece. Because I am fluent in all languages when it comes to understanding things said about foods I wish to consume, I understood quite well when the man behind the counter explained, in German, that the drink never comes with cream, anyway.

Missing from all this was a menu. There was a list of the prices of roasted coffee beans, but no sign of what coffee drinks were available, what was in them, or what they cost. Which was in a sense for the best, because had I known the price (4.90; yesterday's had been 3.40, and that was on a main street in town) before ordering, I might not have done so, but upon tasting the beverage/dessert/whatever it is, I was prepared to hand over my checking account and first-born.

How to even begin... It came in a tall, chilled-seeming, conical glass, with a straw as well as a long spoon. On top was cappuccino-type foam, but sweet. Below was a layered mix of espresso and what I'm guessing was some kind of brownie-dough ice cream. The way it all came together was just beautiful. Yesterday's Eiskaffee had been a mix of vanilla ice cream and espresso more delicious by far than any coffee-and-ice-cream concoction I'd ever attempted at home, but this...

Clearly the exchange rate will have to change dramatically if this is to be a post-book treat, rather than a post-list one (with 15 books, give or take, per list), but what can I say? I regret nothing.

Falafel etc.

Comment #131 of 131 on a Bitten post about canned beans: "125+ comments about the edibility of canned beans. Seriously? Please tell me that this is some kind of internet-based performance art exposing foodie ridiculousness."

Speaking of chickpeas, Jo and I just had some truly excellent German falafel. As in, falafel in Germany, not some German-cuisine interpretation thereof. The portions were a bit small, though, so we had to head to the eis parlor afterwards, where an eiskaffee was, at long last, mine. This was also the reward for finishing another 500-pager. Given how many books on these lists remain, looks like eiskaffee will be the word of the summer.