By Annika Wolanczyk '24
At first glance, Netflix's My Unorthodox Life appears to be yet another superficial reality show about the mega-rich. Admittedly, it is full of fashion weeks, personal stylists, helicopters, penthouses, and all of the expected extravagances. However, My Unorthodox Life quickly draws viewers in and becomes much more than a first glance. The show unfolds into a tale of self-discovery and independence through its portrayal of a family's escape from an ultra-orthodox community and transition to an uber-successful secular lifestyle in New York City.
My Unorthodox Life, which premiered on July 14, 2021, follows the CEO of Elite World Group and fashion designer Julia Haart and her multi-talented family. Haart is a fiery entrepreneur who wears six-inch heels and catsuits to work and rents castles in France for solo business trips.
She is a go-getter and manages to build a wildly successful career for herself with little to no experience or money. Raised in Monsey, New York's Jewish ultra-orthodox Haredi community, Haart married at nineteen and had four children: Batsheva, Shlomo, Miriam, and Aron. However, she felt trapped and oppressed. The Haredi community represses womens expression of themselves, education, and career, which felt confining and depressing to Julia. She eventually left her children, husband, and community behind at forty-three to explore a secular lifestyle. Throughout the show, Haart compares her life in Monsey to prison. She admits that had she not left the community, she might have taken her own life.
Unfortunately, the show barely touches on how Julia was able to build this grand life for herself. However, after some research, I found that Silvio Scaglia Haart, Julia's husband, is head of Fastweb, a large media company that controls Elite World Group. In earlier years, he was CEO of La Perla, the company that gave Julia her big break when she was appointed creative director.
Once Haart's children become adults, they join their mother in the outside world, fleeing their community. Batsheva (27), Haart's eldest daughter, becomes a social media influencer with over a million followers and works for her mother at Elite. Batsheva married her husband Ben when she was nineteen and still in Monsey. We see discovery and development throughout the show within Batsheva and Ben's relationship; they confront sore spots, like rejecting their prior beliefs and pursuing careers without secular education.
Miriam Haart (21), Julia's second daughter, is a computer programmer and entrepreneur at the ripe old age of twenty-one. Of all the Haart children, it is clear that Miriam had the easiest time rejecting her orthodox upbringing and transitioning to her current lifestyle. Miriam's journey mainly pertains to her sexuality. Miriam is bisexual and struggles with her still orthodox Jewish family and the Haart family's acceptance. Julia is fully supportive of Miriam's sexuality. The show leaves major discrepances in showing the process of this family’s acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community coming from their religious background which traditionally is opposed homosexuality.
Shlomo Hendler (25), the second child, is a law student and still religiously observant. He is slower than his other family members to secularize his lifestyle, but Julia reminds them that it is perfectly acceptable for Shlomo to continue practicing Judaism and that acclimating to the outside world takes time. The Haart family is hyper-fixated on setting Shlomo up and getting him a girlfriend. As the show progresses, he becomes more comfortable with the idea of a date, and we watch as he goes on his first date.
Aron Hendler (15) is Julia's youngest. Because Aron is fifteen, he still lives part-time with his father in Monsey and part-time in the city with his mother. Aron is forced to balance two lives not just in the typical divorced parent's way but by balancing religion and lifestyles that contradict one another. At the beginning of the series, Julia becomes concerned about Aron "conforming to fundamentalist thinking" after he stops talking to girls. Later in the show, Julia was relieved when he agreed to start talking to girls and overlook the strict rules surrounding the relationship between men and women in the Haredi Jewish faith. One could describe her parenting style as a wee bit controlling.
One critique of the show is that Julia and her children are scripted to fit an archetype:Julia, the glamorous CEO, Batsheva the Influencer and perfect wife, Miriam Julia's mini-me, and Shlomo, the naive and clueless but loveable character. This prevents the audience from truly connecting to the characters and their real journeys of leaving an ultra-orthodox community on a personal level. Like most reality shows, the archetype is phony. For example, Batsheva "has it all," so to speak, a great husband, a career, and a supportive family, but there is a depth to her that the camera shies away from. When we see this depth emerge, Julia gives all of her children the first print of her memoir to read over. After reading it Batsheva briefly opens up to her mother about her feelings of abandonment when Julia left her only a day after her wedding. The scene had so much potential to open up and grasp the audience, maybe about fear of abandonment or maternal struggles. However, it lacks depth and emotion, and all the audience takes away are some Hollywood tears and a classic reality show resolution hug.
This sentiment is not just seen in Batesheva’s relationship to her mother; all of Julia’s children seem to fight over their mother's approval, constantly competing to get her recognition, and in a way, Julia encourages this behavior. For example, when the children believe there is only one position open for a Haart child at Elite, they all discuss with their mother and compete for that position. Julia lets this go on. She later informs them that "she has a plan for each of them," and they all can have a position at Elite, despite constantly emphasizing how they must pave their own path. Perhaps this behavior could be Julia's fear of losing her children, similar to how she felt after leaving Monsey. As a result, she has her children compete for her attention to keep them invested in her.
The show covers a profound topic, and it fails to do the Haart's story justice in more ways than one. It leaves gaping holes in Julia’s life story, like how she made her claim to fame and the details of her career. On the other hand, it tells a tale of a woman's self-discovery and journey on escaping the pressures of a religious herd mentality, in which women are repressed. Had the show taken on a documentary or biopic format, it would have been far more moving. Unfortunately, the reality TV format expectedly left much to be desired.
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