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What if everything popular culture tells us about sexual gratification is wrong?
It seems that a growing number of religiously committed couples are taking a page out of the Playboy playbook to please their sexual partner. The results may surprise anyone who thinks that sexual satisfaction and a commitment to a religious life don’t exist in the same universe.
The New York Post reported recently on Orthodox Jewish women who otherwise cover themselves from head (with wigs and scarfs) to toe (with long skirts and long sleeves), deciding to treat their husbands to pictures of themselves in lingerie.
“I don’t care what religion you are—if you don’t keep your husband excited, someone else will,” says Malky, who asked the Post not to print her last name for privacy reasons. “It’s not against Halakha [Jewish law] to keep your husband satisfied,” Malky explains. The photos are taken by female photographers and sometime they supply lingerie since these women may not own any themselves.
Calling into the Dennis Prager radio show, an Orthodox woman from Los Angeles seemed intrigued by the idea. “I’m the center of his universe when it comes to our sexual life. I take that job seriously. . . . [My husband] should feel comfortable that his joy and pleasure is my priority just like mine is his. Why not?”
Prager agreed. “There is so much within marriage that works against excitement—routine, children, etc,” Prager explained, that anything that helps to keep sexual desire alive and well between a couple is “legitimate.”
Malky’s husband was thrilled she says. “His reaction was, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this is my wife.’ He was going through every picture over and over.”
One of the photographers says she is surprised by how open and adventurous her clients can be. Niki Broyn, who grew up in the Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park, says “there are plenty of Orthodox women who are frisky. Why not? It’s natural.”
Chaya Eckstein, Jewish religious boudoir photographer, adds a different perspective about what these photo shoots can do for the women who chose to expose themselves to her lens. “For frum (religiously observant) women, it can be extremely difficult to perceive themselves as beautiful. They’re always having babies or their friends are having babies and they can’t, and they feel their bodies are somehow damaged,” she says. “But everyone is beautiful in their own way, and by the end of the shoot, they can see themselves differently.”
And it turns out sexy photoshoots aren’t the only place where religiously committed married men and women can enjoy sexual expression and suggestion. There’s a growing market for frum erotica—that is sexually suggestive or even explicit novels (there’s even BDSM!) and stories about married, sexually adventurous couples.
And this isn’t just something that Jewish women are doing. According to Christopher, a Baptist who called into Prager’s show from Florida, his wife did a boudoir photoshoot for him that was especially powerful because his spouse tends to be the more conservative of the two. He said her willingness to do it for him “was an amazing demonstration of her love because it was out of her comfort zone.”
What’s counter-cultural about these women stripping for the camera isn’t the act itself but the fact that they are doing so within the otherwise high-walled confines of a married relationship that takes precepts of morality and modesty seriously. Whereas the culture argues that exposure is liberation, and that what you show of yourself—your legs, your shoulders, your bottom, your breasts—is the way to tempt and entice members of the opposite, or even same-sex. These women are saying yes to all of that but only when you are sharing yourself with one other person for life. If the bedroom is a strip club, your spouse gets exclusive access.
The post Sexy Photoshoots for Orthodox Jews? appeared first on Acculturated.
