For Purim, every woman wants to be a queen

Every woman dreams of becoming a queen, if only for a day. That’s exactly why Purim was invented

Reuters | Published: 02.23.07, 21:32

For the average woman, her wedding day is one of the high points in her life. This has nothing to do with everlasting love, to finding her second half, or to the happiness she expects from her children. The truth is that it’s all about the dress: yards and yards of fabric in shades of white, cut and adjusted especially to fit her, at a cost that would be the entire annual budget for a small African country. That’s happiness.

To explain this you have to go back to Purim. Between the ages of two and 10 the female sex exhausts all the Purim costume possibilities relating to kingdoms. It starts with Esther, the classic queen, and moves quickly to the following:

A fairy (Photo: Visual Photos)

The queen of queens, the queen of the fairies, the queen of night and day, the queen of hearts, the chocolate queen, the book queen, the flower queen, the vegetable queen, the rug queen, the poster queen, the dust mote queen, the queen of, the queen of, the queen of.

As she approaches the age of 10 the average girl realizes (with great sorrow) that she’s passed the age. Then she switches to a totally different series of costumes that lack status and power, and are generally connected to the well-known saying that “I have nothing to wear.” The adolescent girl is forced to dress as a hippie, a punker, or anything else that involves a lot of makeup, sunglasses, lots of chains, and asymmetrical earrings.

But deep down, every year, no matter how cool our costume, what we really want is to be a queen for Purim.

So this year I say to all the deposed queens: What is Purim, if not a holiday when you should fulfill your fantasies? Pay attention to what you read in the megillah: a Jewish woman from among the exiles from Judea becomes the queen of Persia, a Jew wearing sackcloth and ashes becomes the king’s advisor, and abovel them all an anti-Semitic politician and his large family hang from a tree.

This is how it all began, and the tradition must continue. No matter what you thought, originality is not in the spirit of the holiday; it’s just a later commentary by modern reformists. In the shtetls of Poland or in Marrakesh in Morocco there wasn’t a single female without a crown. I call upon all women to put the crown back on your head. Go today to your local costume store and buy a puffy dress with lots of glittery, shiny fabric and wear it proudly.

I can promise you that this time there will be no nuisances like a photographer, invitations, and fillet of beef, and most importantly, no one will push himself in and stand with you under the chuppah