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To kick off the current season of What Not to Wear, Clinton Kelly and Stacy London made over former child star Mayim Bialik. Bialik is 33 now, married, and a mom of two. Earlier this summer, Bialik talked with Celebrity Baby Blog about her life: "We do the EC thing, elimination communication. We bedshare. We are a natural living family. We make our own shampoo, our own granola, our own cleaning products. We’re a non-obnoxious green family I like to think! We’re generally kind of holistic."
In other words, she's not your typical Hollywood mom.
Bialik's crunchy green lifestyle had influence her style too -- or so it appeared when she was ambushed on a NYC street by WNTW's Clinton and Stacy. Bialik was wearing long skirts and over-sized shirts and men's shoes. Like so many new moms, it appeared that she had given up and given in. The bloom was off the Blossom.
Stacy and Clinton made Bialik over, in what was a fairly typical WNTN episode (aside from the fact that the subject was a former TV star who once played a kid with an overly active fashion sense). At the end, Bialik looked like herself but more polished, more elegant, and more sexy.
And that's the bit that Bialik took issue with.
This week, in an essay in Tablet, an online Jewish magazine, Bialik writes about her WNTW makeover. She is gracious and funny and honest -- and critical of the way TLC overlooked the things that mattered to her in their editing of the episode. She writes, "The WNTW producers asked if I have any clothing restrictions. Deep breath. 'I don’t wear pants,' I told them. 'I prefer skirts.' You see, I am what I guess you’d call a Conservadox Jew. I started embracing certain aspects of Jewish modesty, or tzniut, before my second son was born, and although I know many Orthodox women who don’t observe tzniut, the boundaries and framework of privacy it provides appealed to me."
Bialik goes on to explain how she came to embrace tzniut in her everyday life, and what it represents for her. She describes her early Judaism studies, undertaken in preparation for her marriage, as "almost anthropological—I was curious as to how Judaism viewed marriage and sexuality, but I did not really intend to increase my level of observance." But as time went on, Bialik says, she found herself embracing the dress code of traditional Judaism, and feeling empowered by her choices.
During the days of the sheva brachot, the seven traditional feasts celebrated in the days after the chuppah ceremony, I tentatively covered my head with scarves and crocheted hats, trying on my new status as a married woman. Beyond wearing a ring, my lifestyle didn’t have a means of representing the change from single to married, and I was cautious about challenging the feminist ideals I’d previously embraced. But I liked feeling a physical representation in my new life as a married woman. In synagogue, I began covering my head with tichels (decorative scarves) from trips to Israel—just as my Orthodox cousins who I used to consider submissive and trapped in an archaic lifestyle taught me to wrap them—and fashionable hats. No flowers allowed. Too Blossom-y.
As my life progressed, tzniut became a bigger part of it and I started appreciating what it means to keep your sexual appeal for yourself and for your partner. I came to see that not everything that makes me beautiful, sexy, or desirable needs to be on display.
On the set of What Not to Wear, however, Bialik and the producers did not see eye to eye. She was presented with mannequins wearing pants, despite explaining that she didn't wear them; one of her final reveal dresses was sleeveless. Bialik said, on camera, that she would not wear the sleeveless dresses without a sweater of some sort, and that above-the-knee skirts were not something she would wear. None of those statements appeared in the edited version that aired on TLC.
Bialik is not critical of WNTW or TLC, or of Stacy London and Clinton Kelly; in fact, she is incredibly gracious about the opportunity they gave her, telling Celebrity Baby Blog that "They really accommodated all the things about me that are so quirky fashion-wise, and gave me sleek. They kept saying sleek, sophisticated, modern and not frumpy. That’s what they were going for."
But Bialk also makes an important point, not so much about her
