I had the idea to compare Bravo’s “Princesses: Long Island,” the Jewish-tinged reality show about aspiring Real Housewives, to Amy Schumer, the Long Island-born stand-up comic and star of Comedy Central’s “Inside Amy Schumer.” The idea was to talk about how misguided these Princesses were, and about how depressing it is that their goal in…
Disney has come under fire for “feminizing” and “sexing up” Merida, the spunky Scottish princess of the Pixar film “Brave,” in order to add her to its much-maligned princess collection. Martha Kempner describes the abortive makeover perfectly: Disney changed her hair from wild curls to silky tresses that cascade suggestively over one shoulder. Her simple…
Could it get any worse? On June 2nd Bravo will debut a new reality show titled “Princesses: Long Island,” starring half a dozen spoiled women in their late 20s, all of whom are Jewish, according to the show’s publicist. If the series can be judged by the promo, they will give the already-offensive term Jewish…
On the recent episode of Lexicon Valley, a podcast on Slate about “the mysteries of English,” podcaster and NPR On the Media host Bob Garfield caused quite the controversy when he took on what he finds to be an incredibly irritating verbal tic among young women. “It’s almost exclusively among women and young women at…
Before Kristin Wiig, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey were earning laughs on Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner graced the stage of studio 8H as one of the original queens of comedy. Whether as the frizzy-haired Roseanne Roseannadanna, the hard-of-hearing Emily Litella, or the unintelligible Baba Wawa (a parody of Barbara Walters), Radner, who would have…
Shoshanna might be a new kind of Jewish American Princess, but in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg, “Girls” creator Lena Dunham revealed that she originally conceived of Marnie (played by Allison Williams) as another sort of Jewish stereotype: “A neurotic, stressed-out, like, tiny, high-achieving Jew.” Judd Apatow, she said, coached her toward…
Within her first two minutes on screen, it’s evident that Shoshanna Shapiro is a Jewish American Princess. From perfectly coiffed hair to a pink Juicy Couture tracksuit to her admission that her parents are paying $2,100 a month for her Nolita apartment, Shoshanna, one of the four protagonists on the HBO show “Girls” — which…
The opening scene of Anna Solomon’s new book “The Little Bride” is one of the most harrowing that I’ve read in a novel. The reader meets 16-year-old Minna Losk in a dank basement where she is ordered to undress and then inspected like an animal. Orphaned at 11 and sent into indentured servitude to a…
דער רוימישער אימפּעראַטאָר פֿרעדעריק דער צווייטער האָט געזוכט אַן ענטפֿער צו דער פֿראַגע אויף אַ וויסנשאַפֿטלעכן אופֿן.
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