Throughout most of my adolescence, I grew up thinking that there was something off about the way that I looked, something not quite right about the curly hair and glasses. In retrospect, I can now identify the source of my discomfort about my own appearance:
I looked like Anne Hathaway in "The Princess Diaries," but pre-makeover-montage. You know, when she wasn't quite pretty enough to be a real princess just yet.
Yes, that was (practically) how I looked in middle school.
As I've gotten older, though, I've begun to ask myself why this is seen as unattractive. I was a cute kid. Anne Hathaway was beautiful here, too. Why have I spent much of my youth being subliminally told that girls who look like me need to be transformed in order to be happy? What was wrong with looking as I did?
Historically, it might have something to do with Semetic features.
Witches in modern context were originally coded as Jewish, though the connection is now somewhat more innocuous. Jews have always been associated by Christian majorities of "working with the devil", but during the Inquisition, this was taken a step further when it was spread that Jews drank blood of Christians and performed black magic unto them - even though Jewish law specifically prohibits consumption of blood. Such connections between Jewry and nefarious sorcery continued to persist past the Inquisition, with Jews being accused of nefarious sorcery all throughout much of European history. To further implicate anti-semitism in the matter, the 1215 Council of the Lateran required all Jews to wear pointy hats - which may have become the staple of the modern pointy witch's hat.
Though Jews in Europe were hardly ever burned as witches (they were too busy being burned as Jews instead), the lasting impact of the characterization has less to do with actual witch hunts, and more to do with modern cinematic portrayals.
This quickly developed into characterizations such as this, which I grew up seeing, and which I was meant to associate with - well, if not ugliness, then certainly distrustfulness. If she has any beauty at all, it is that which is stolen and not rightfully hers.
When this is how you've seen people like yourself portrayed for your entire life, how is that supposed to make you feel?
There are other covert instances of antisemitism found in daily life - such as using "globalist" as an insult - but which would need to be the subject of a totally different article.
My point in writing this is not to make others feel bad for dressing like witches, for liking movies that show this depiction of witches, or to invoke a witch-hunt (heh) on anyone that does. It is simply to educate. So much of social justice today hinges upon accepting the beauty of groups which have historically been looked down upon by Eurocentric standards. I don't think that progressives don't want to embrace Semitic features - I just think that it's not always obvious that Semitic features are in need of embrace.
I hope that any girl with Jewish features reading this knows that she is beautiful. And that the only people who would be telling her otherwise are those subscribing to centuries-old propaganda.
