Jewess with much attitude (and talent) Roseanne Barr wrote in this recent New York magazine article about the rampant sexism that exists in Hollywood even two decades after she tried to take down those barriers with her television show “Roseanne.”
Barr rightly takes credit for developing and starring in “television’s first feminist and working-class-family sitcom (also its last).” Now, as she points out in the piece, “all over the tube you will find enterprising, over-medicated, painted-up, capitalist whores claiming to be housewives. But I’m not bitter.”
Roseanne is the kind of feminist who leads some to think feminism is always preceded by the word “angry,” but she’s also the kind of woman who makes the kinds of waves that change things, at least a little. She’s also the kind of feminist who has embraced plastic surgery, though the photo of her with the New York magazine story shows a woman who appears to look her age.
Looking her age puts her at odds with many of the women I saw this past weekend on a jaunt to Los Angeles.
The Sisterhood Digest:
• Haaretz profiles Tzvia Greenfield of Meretz, the first Haredi female Knesset member. Greenfield, a peace activist and mother of five, says she is troubled that Orthodox women today are expected to bear more children than they were in decades past: “Large families thirty years ago was six children; now there’s 13 or 14 — from one wife.”
• The new issue of 614 is all about Jewish women in comedy; it features an interview with Fran Drescher, and an essay by Sisterhood contributor Rebecca Honig Friedman, in which she opines on this question: “When is it OK to laugh at, or with, Jewish women?”
• MyJewishLearning is in search of a name for its soon-to-be-launched Web site geared toward parents of children ages 0-5. Email nameoursite@myjewishlearning.com with your ideas. The person who suggests the winning entry gets a $500 American Express gift card. That will buy you half of a Bugaboo stroller. Happy brainstorming!
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