Sunday Stereotypes

We often hear the story about the girl who fought against her culture’s typical gender roles. She broke away from her father’s grasp and leapt bravely, courageously, beautifully into a world that she had only read about it books and seen in the movies.

Usually she is running away from her middle eastern life in search of the western world; western society. In stories, the western world is made out to be romantic, exciting, and full of wonderful wonderful opportunity. Girls run away from their families to New York City in search of fame, success, and love. Their hearts are filled with naive excitement about the future, and a fictional (literally) amount of fearlessness.

But there are other girls. Other girls who live in the western world who

Her and her sisters bicker about the sunday chores. Everyone always wants to be the one to go down to the bakery and get the bagels for brunch because the owner gives them the leftover cookies from the day before. Those cookies were like heaven on earth. They were still gooey on the inside and had a thick dark chocolate glaze on top. But this time it wasn’t her turn to go to the bakery. Today she had to do the laundry.

Laundry day was the only day she really hated being Jewish. Sunday was always laundry day. Not just for her family, but for pretty much everybody on her block it seemed like. And although we all know that Brooklyn has a strong Jewish population, on laundry day, she felt very alone with her culture.

Let me explain why. For as long as she can remember, women in her family, including herself, had always abided by the Jewish dress code as articulated in both the Torah and the Talmud. “They were practicing modesty”, as her mother always said. And she never had any problem with this. She liked it. It was empowering for her to put on clothing that represented her people and her culture. But on laundry day it wasn’t empowering. From her family’s small backyard, every inch of the sky was covered with everybody’s clothing

It also means not having a scent; meaning no deodorant, perfume, and most certainly unscented laundry. As she hung her mother’s, father’s, brother’s, sister’s, aunt’s and grandmother’s clothing on the line they brought this air of dullness over her. Though she loved Judaism it bothered her that she couldn’t express herself as fully and as freely as she would like. It bothered her that when she lifted her nose she could smell clean cotton and flowers but when she returned to her own yard she was welcomed by the overwhelming stench of her father’s body odor left over on his coat because she could only use water and antibacterial soap to wash the clothing. It was pointless really. She was almost convinced the only reason laundry was on the sunday chore list was to make the list longer. But that is besides the