Near my apartment there’s been this spray-painted graffiti of a naked woman with green spikey hair, gleefully riding a broom and giving the viewer the finger. Very Hothead Paisan in style. I’ve been trying to decide what I think of it–I’m somewhere between vaguely amused at the antics of somebody’s little sister and wanting to roll my eyes and ask for a more sophisticated statement. I’m pretty ambivalent about graffiti in general–some of it is art, without a doubt, but a lot of it is the vandalism of public property for no particular good reason, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be the person who has to decide which is which. (The same person who did the green-haired witch seems also to have painted a blue-haired chick apparently urinating on a wall by Hatzer HaHatulim.)

Anyway, today I walked by the bruja and someone had painted over her nekkid breasts with black paint, to make her (presumably) a little more modest. Just to remind us all that there may be collegiate riot grrrl graffiti around town, but we’re still in Jerusalem.

I’m working on an essay on modesty right now–and people’s various reactions to the discomfort of seeing another person in a more revealed state–so this is very, very fitting.

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