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By Karen Levin
June 17, 2005
I'll admit to being somewhat vain.
I enjoy clothes and makeup and shopping, and always like to look my best, especially when I'm at my government ministry job in Jerusalem. As a big fan of BBC's 'What Not to Wear" program, featuring fashion advice and criticism from two experts named Susannah and Trinny, I was especially excited to come across their book entitled "What You Wear Can Change Your Life."
Even though I thought the title was just a bit, well ... pompous, I promptly ordered the book. When it arrived, I devoured every word of fashion wisdom.
I was wrong about the title.
It was not overblown. What you wear can change your life. Stick with me and I'll explain.
The book, like the show, demonstrates ways to enhance your best features and minimize your flaws, and shows you how to dress for your body type. And almost always, Trinny's and Susannah's advice was absolutely correct.
The book also features a chapter on colors, and the importance of choosing the right tones of clothing and makeup. That was when I discovered that, although I was pretty much doing all the right things in terms of issues such as skirt length, I had been seriously off ?base in my color choices. My familiar pastel pinks and lavenders and black were doing nothing for me. It turns out that I need warm colors; yellow, russet, orange. "Imagine glowing like a field of Van Gogh poppies," they wrote, or something to that effect. I don't have to book in front of me so I hope they will excuse me for not getting the quote exactly right. "Yes," I said to myself, "I too, wish to glow like a poppy field!"
I decided that I would give orange a try. I started out small; an orange cardigan sweater. Well, I had to hand it to those girls, they were right again. The orange sweater lit up my complexion, brought out my highlights, took five years off my face. I got compliments every time I wore it. I was sold.
Orange would be my new black. Armed with that resolve, I went out to do my spring wardrobe shopping before getting caught up in preparations for Passover. Yes, I do my spring shopping early. Imagine being caught on the first warm day of summer wearing something from last year? That would never do. To my delight, the shops were also glowing like poppy fields. With the zeal of the true convert, I grabbed up tops, blouses, and a fab skirt that my 14-year-old daughter covets, in every shade from pale melon to sunny citrus orange. I couldn't wait for warm weather.
Here's where it gets tricky. The color orange has also been adopted as a protest symbol by the opposition to the disengagement plan. It is certainly an innocuous, esthetic way to express disagreement. Now, I honestly don't know if the disengagement plan is a good or a bad thing, but I can tell you what my guess would be. It's difficult to see any real advantage to it, especially since the Prime Minister, who won the election with a landslide by running on an anti-disengagement platform, has not bothered to explain his complete policy reversal to us, his constituents.
But my views on the disengagement are not really the issue here. The point is that in order to implement the disengagement, the government of Israel is slowly but surely crushing dissent, individual freedoms, and the basic rights of the citizens of a democracy.
Am I exaggerating? You be the judge. Recently, a group of high-school girls were prevented from approaching the Western Wall. Why? They were wearing orange shirts and bracelets. A group of Americans on a solidarity visit were threatened and harassed on arrival at Ben Gurion Airport. They were told that it was because they were wearing orange. A goodwill delegation from India, on a visit to the Knesset, was forced to relinquish orange scarves before they were allowed in. As I said earlier, I work for a government ministry. Is the day coming when I will not be allowed to enter my workplace in my fab orange skirt?
Last Friday, my husband was harassed by a policeman while manning an information table in front of our local shopping mall. The information table contained literature explaining opposition to the disengagement and had orange ribbons, tee shirts and other items available in exchange for a voluntary donation. The policeman told my husband to shut down the table since he did not have a license to run a business. The information table has been in place for several weeks now, and obviously did not bother the municipality, which is in fact responsible for regulating business in our town. Nevertheless, my husband complied, and removed the table.
In the meantime, the policeman took my husband's identity number and entered it into a computer. He now knows where we live, work, where our daughter goes to school, and anything else he wants to. My husband asked the policeman if it was legal to simply hand out literature without "selling" anything. The policeman's answer? "For now."
My husband reported this incident to the young man in charge of organizing the information table. The young man was not surprised. He himself, he related, had been prevented from entering Jerusalem's Central Bus Station because he had been wearing an orange tee shirt. To put it another way, a citizen of this country was denied basic freedom to move about and to utilize public transportation services because he was wearing an orange tee shirt. In the end, he managed to convince the guard to let him through. He was lucky. For now.
Is this what we are coming to? Will we soon no longer be free to disseminate an opinion, to engage in open debate, to express opposition to a government policy in any form? It is frightening to contemplate. And ordinary people like me are becoming afraid. Afraid of being harassed, of being arrested. Afraid to wear our favorite color. Afraid to wear a color!
Whether you are for or against the disengagement or completely indifferent, is this the kind of society you wish to live in? A society that actively denies specific groups the right to express their political opinions? Where ordinary people can be harassed for wearing a certain color? And what is the average citizen supposed to do about it?
Any advice? Trinny? Susannah? Anyone?
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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