September 29, 2012 | 12:54 pm

Who Loves Bagels This Much?

Posted by Ilana Angel

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While I’m not sure how it is that bagels became part of Jewish culture, they are our thing.  Everyone associates bagels and shmear with American Jewish cuisine.  I love a good bagel and am partial to boiled bagels from Montreal, but also enjoy a sesame from Western Bagel here in Los Angeles.  It is comfort food and has marked all milestones, family events, and Sunday brunches throughout my life.  Bagels are quintessentially Jewish.

As a Jew I take offense to people ruining the bagel.  Personally, I think blueberries and chocolate do not belong in a bagel, and if I were to search the Torah, I might find that it is actually forbidden.  When my son was young I would put a frozen bagel in his crib, and when he woke up it would be defrosted and he would gnaw on it.  It gave me an extra 15 minutes of sleep, which was a blessing.  My delicious son loves a delicious bagel.

I may love a bagel, but I can assure you, I am never going to have one injected into my skin, and certainly not ever on my face.  National Geographic’s Taboo television show is featuring a story on the latest “beauty” craze in Japan, the “Bagel Head”.  Really.  People are injecting saline into their foreheads, shaping it into a bagel, and then walking around like it is the ultimate in fashion.  These people are cray cray.

The entire process takes about 2 hours, and only lasts between 16-24 hours. Once the body absorbs the saline you have had pumped into your face, it’ is gone.  Really?  People are sitting with an IV drip of saline going into their faces for two hours to come out looking like a moron?  I don’t understand the extreme body modification movement, but unlike Mitt Romney, I believe people should be able to do whatever they want to their bodies.  That said, this is stupid.

This is not cool, not attractive, cannot possibly be safe, and I just don’t get it.  If I saw someone on the street with this modification I would not need to stare because now I know what it is, but it would take all my strength not to offer them lox and shmear.   At the end of the day I guess Jews and are just so cool that even our food is coveted.   I won’t be sporting a bagel head anytime soon, but I’m off to grab a bagel, and I’m keeping the faith.

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