Yeah, it usually means Jewish American Princess, but that term didn’t define the three black clad women on a Makor panel about “Debunking the Myth of the JAP”. According to Rhonda Lieberman, Isabel Rose, and Alana Newhouse, a JAP is stereotypically spoiled, loves shopping, shallow, high-maintenance, pushy, has disposable income, expressive, opinionated, whiney, narcissistic, and much more. Of course Urban Dictionary has its own list of definitions. When I told someone at work about this lecture, he referred to Gilda Radner’s “Jewess Jeans” Saturday Night Live skit.
Alana Newhouse is the arts and culture editor at the Forward. In a March 2005 Boston Globe article she wrote, “First identified in postwar America, the JAP was a girl lavished with the best in life-from the top of her professionally straightened mane of hair, to the nose job she got for her 16th birthday, to a wardrobe of designer clothes and the most expensive shoes money could buy.” Ms. Newhouse grew up in an Orthodox family and went to Barnard.
Isabel Rose is the author of The JAP Chronicles. She said she had problems getting booked on her book tour because of the word’s stigma. Many people consider it to be Anti-Semitic and an ethnic slur like “nigger”. She’s now making the novel into a musical that will include the ditty, “Don’t Worry, Be JAP-py”. Ms. Rose grew up on the Upper East Side and went to Yale.
As a self-described Jewologist, Rhonda Lieberman said a JAP was like pornography, you know it when you see it. She associates the archetypal JAP with the evils of consumer culture. Ms.Lieberman is an artist who Newhouse said produced an iconoclastic group of pieces that included a “geltbelt”. She teaches at Yale and has taught at the Art Institute of Chicago.
All three women are Jewish American Powerhouses. Confident and success professionals, these women don’t fit many of the stereotypes mentioned above. During Q&A, a guy in his mid-50’s rambled on about his anxieties about living up to the expectations of strong Jewish women. I understood where he was coming from.
Listening to Alana Newhouse, I got the impression that emasculated Jewish men started to use the word JAP pejoratively approximately the same time feminism was empowering women in the 70s and 80s. In other words, coming from a Jewish guy, the term reflected hostility because his social/professional status was being threatened.
That leads me to JDate. During Q&A, I noted that in many profiles I read, a woman tries to distance herself from other “JAPs” by saying she’s not “your typical Jewish girl”. A young lady in the audience noted with disgust that she’s read guys’ profile in which they think using the words “Gucci” and “Prada” will get them a Jewish girl. The panelists noted with pride that non-Jewish guys are going on JDate in looking for a Jewish girl. They didn’t say anything about gentile women on the site or Jewish guys going for shiksas because they are supposedly less demanding and better in bed. I personally doubt the latter comment.
I don’t think the myth of the JAP was totally de-bunked. Many of the stereotypes of a JAP describe Jewish women in general. There are so many working Jewish women in my generation that it is hard to think they’re truly spoiled. I don’t think there is anything JAP-py about appreciating nice things or expecting to be treated like a lady. The panel ended with a well-dressed woman in her late 60s or early 70s getting up and giving an impassioned defense of being a JAP if that means embracing your good-fortune and loving family.