BY Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal
Back when my daughter was in elementary school, I accompanied her class on a field trip to Snow Valley. I noticed a group of older girls dressed in long black skirts, giggling as they attempted to navigate the bunny hill in traditional modest dress.
I initially assumed they were Muslim kids, perhaps from the Edmonton Islamic Academy. But as I got closer, and overheard some of their conversation, I realized the girls were actually students at the Menorah Academy, Edmonton’s private Orthodox Jewish school.
At first, I confess, my reaction as a secular feminist and common-sense Canadian mother was one of righteous indignation. How absurd to keep 21st century girls in 19th century dress. How ridiculous to expect anyone to learn to ski while dressed in a full-length skirt. How sexist to take away these young women’s freedom and power by trapping them in such costumes. And how creepy to send girls this young the message that their bodies were so disturbing, so sexualized, that they had to be draped in black cloth, even on the ski hill, in the name of modesty.
“My Jewish grandfather had a word for that kind of thing,” I fumed to my husband later. “Mishegas, craziness! My grandfather didn’t flee the shtetl for Canada so that his granddaughters and great-granddaughters could dress like medieval peasants, and I’ll bet their grandparents didn’t either.”
But once I stopped ranting and starting listening to my own words, I realized I was quite wrong.