I Wore a Wonderbra to the Matzah Ball

By Caroline Tiger

You always hear that it's good to try something new--try it once or you'll never know, as the adage goes. I think it was Erica Jong who said you should do something every day that scares you. And from Faust, "Whatever you believe you can do, begin it: Boldness has genius, power, and magic." Granted Faust may be a little highbrow to apply to these ventures: I wore a WonderBra to the Matzah Ball.

I'm proud of that statement, because not everyone can say it. And you have to admit, it has a certain ring to it--I'm thinking a book deal or movie rights. Actually I wasn't planning on saying it out loud to anyone. The whole thing was under wraps--a harmless foray into the singles world that no one had to know about. But when an ex-confidante at work blabbed it to some fellow cubicle-dwellers, I figured I should come out of the lingerie drawer and set the story straight.

I think it was around late November last year when I started seeing ads for the Matzah Ball. I had heard of the event before, which is surprising since I don't have many Jewish friends. My family isn't exactly religious, and my parents sent me to a private school where I was the only Jew in my class and then to a prep school where there were only two others. When my grandparents died, we stopped going to temple. Growing up, my only taste of Judaism was the bitter one of Hannukah in a world populated by goys. Then there was my school's annual Christmas Sing--two and a half hours of carols and odes to the baby Jesus with one token "Ya Ba Bim Bom" thrown in halfheartedly and met with puzzled or hostile stares from the red-and-green adorned audience.

This kind of upbringing could incite a mini-backlash for anyone of unexplored religion or ethnicity. Imagine an African-American family in an all-white suburb or a lesbian couple in the deep South. Picture a minimalist in a family of circus clowns, Yanni as a member of the Van Halen crew, Erkel a Baldwin--well, you get the idea. All of my friends, except for one in high school and a weeklong fling with Andrew Glassberg freshman year of college, have been Christian.

About the time I started seeing ads for the Matzah Ball, I was beginning to sense that there was a nice Jewish girl inside of me, kvelling and kvetching to be free. A Jewish singles event seemed like the perfect place to nurture my inner Jew--it was all or nothing. It helped that I was in the middle of a dry spell--I hadn't had a date in a couple of months. My last boyfriend had turned out to be a stalker, and (aha!) a non-Jew. It suddenly seemed clear that I was meant to find "the one" by looking to my heritage. Maybe, ironically, I was destined for a Jewish prince. Maybe Mr. Rightberg was waiting for me at the Matzah Ball. And maybe he'd prefer me a little stacked.

Enter the WonderBra. Well, first came the dress--a grey, velvet, little BCBG number I picked up at Filene's for half price. This revealing frock practically demanded cleavage, and as I'm not naturally endowed, I marched over to Lingerie at the nearest department store. Here I found a surprisingly large selection of Wonderbras, Miracle Bras, padded bras, and as it was the holiday season a huge variety of red-and-green teddies and velvet bras and panties (those shiksas have every advantage!). I swallowed my pride, took a deep breath, and purchased the classic black Wonderbra with detachable straps. I was determined to be accepted by my people (at least by the males).

This is probably a good place to stop and take stock of the sacrifices I was making for this exploration of my heritage. First, I was missing out on Chinese food and a movie, the classic Christmas Eve activity for Jews across the nation. Next I was giving in to society's enslavement of women by unnaturally fulfilling the rote requirements to attract a man (read: cleavage). Plus I was entering into unknown and until then actively eschewed territory: Delaware Avenue in Philadelphia is a line-up of supercheesy clubs which breed sexual harassment and perpetuate dance fads that should've been long gone, like the Macarena and lambada (yes, the forbidden dance).

The big day arrived, and three friends (one fellow Jew, one African-American, and one half-Irish / half-Italian with ruby-red hair and a nose ring) I had convinced to come with me showed up at my apartment where we got suitably sauced. The conversation was punctuated with:
Why are we doing this?
Well, we can always leave.
It's open bar!
You need another drink?
It's good to try new things.
We can always leave.

With every drink I downed, my cleavage got bigger, my breasts strangely higher and rounder, and I soon felt like pre-reduction Pamela. I began to ogle myself every time I passed a mirror.

We approached the club in a taxi and watched, from the confines of our cab, the parade of Jewish singles approaching the front door. Suddenly I felt underdressed. Inevitably, the driver told us he'd have to turn the meter back on if we didn't get out. The words "cows to slaughter" entered my mind as we joined the crowd. After a long wait at the door, we were spat out onto the main floor. Immediately one of my friends was approached by a Jewish single (our first score!), who pressed a business card into her clammy palm.

"Hey, Red. Love your hair. Call me."

This was a nice Jewish boy?

We approached the bar, only to find it wasn't "open" But we needed drinks, so we forked out the bills for our respective vodka concoctions and found a vantage point on the balcony.

The music was unidentifiable, and scores of older singles practiced their personal brands of White-Man's-Overbite on the dance floor. Most of the men seemed to be in their thirties and forties, and the younger ones were either painfully shy or the cell-phone-toting, shiny-suit-wearing shark types. People were triple-parked at the buffet table.

We spotted another room with an emptier bar and decided to hightail it. There we found the wallflowers--women on one side, men on the other. One of my friends was approached by a man in a dirty white turtleneck who wanted to dance. I went to the bathroom and got a business card pressed into my own clammy hand. It was beginning to dawn on me that the Matzah Ball was interchangeable with any other singles event or for the younger set, any school dance. Here was a congregation of single men practicing their lines on single women trying to attract their attention by tottering around in uncomfortable shoes. And by wearing WonderBras! What was I thinking?

I realized that Mr. Rightberg was nowhere to be found--at the Matzah Ball or at any other singles event. He was probably sitting in a movie theater, happily digesting his Hot & Sour Soup and General Tso's Chicken or maybe even enjoying a Christmas Eve feast. If I wanted to reclaim my heritage, I'd need to do so through learning about Jewish religion and history, not by nibbling on the proverbial Matzah Ball. If I wanted to find Mr. Right, I needed to be true to myself.

My girlfriends and I left with the satisfaction of having tried something new, but chances are we'll only try it that once. Ditto for the WonderBra.

Sponsored by the Society of Young Jewish Professionals (Juppies?), the Matzah Ball celebrates its twentieth anniversary this upcoming Christmas Eve 1999. In 1998, the Ball was held in many cities across America, including several locations each in Philadelphia and New York. You don't have to be Jewish to participate (but most are).

Caroline Tiger is a writer in Philadelphia. And, yes, that is her real name.