This story takes place forty five years ago. My uncle was engaged to a beautiful svelte girl. Her figure and her face were flawless. Her business minded brothers were horrified at the vort that she was marrying my uncle who was learning in yeshiva and comes from a large family without money. A week later they took her away on a trip and convinced her to break the engagement and marry a very wealthy friend of theirs. She broke my uncle’s heart when she broke the engagement. In our circles a broken engagement is like a divorce, and my uncle was redt a shidduch with a divorced woman, daughter of a very big talmid chacham. She was not attractive, very overweight and could not be farther in looks from the first shidduch. My grandparents saw her and tried to discourage the shidduch. However, my uncle was intrigued by the fact that she was the daughter of a fine talmid chacham and insisted on seeing her. Much to everyone’s shock he became engaged to her. He explained that he saw her fine character and sterling middos and realized how true sheker hachein vehevel hayofi is….Well I can not tell you of a more blessed marriage than this one. Every one of my cousins (their children) married into a wonderful family. One cousin wrote a sefer already, another is becoming an av beis din, every girl married incredible tamidei chachamin that treat them beautifully….. From this living example in our family we see that emphasis on physical attributes is not a prerequisite for a bayis neeman. A shidduch should not be based on anything other than the person’s middos. I am now in the parsha for my oldest son and I tell the shadchanim that I want to know about the girl’s personality and middos. My son is not overweight and is considered nice looking. He saw one girl that was overweight and was extremely impressed with her good middos and fine character. We’ll see what happens…..
Realize that we are programming our children to look for certain physical attributes, and that what parents say have a lot of influence. PS My brother in-law married a very overweight girl and they have nine children, bli ayin hora, and she became very very thin through exercise (running after all of them!). Many of my friends started out thin and today after pregnancy and nursing became overweight. We all have to be sure we do not overdo eating and cause disease, but the crazy emphasis on being stick thin has really gotten out of hand. One of my friends has a daughter that was hospitalized for anorexia and bulimia! Enough already. (My father who is a survivor of the concentration camps thinks this is so absurd. He says that in Poland, a girl could only find a shidduch if she was a bit zaftig-there was a better chance to carry a baby to full term.) In conclusion, our main requisite for a shidduch is yorei shomayim and fine middos, and I hope that this post does not offend previous posters-my intention is to show a different way of approaching the shidduch parsha based on a history of experience.