Mayim bialik what not to wear

Actress Mayim Bialik is back to work after the birth of her second son — she’s recently appeared on Bones and Saving Grace — and has found herself in need of a “mommy makeover.” Help comes in the form of Stacy London and Clinton Kelly, in the season premiere of makeover show What Not to Wear, which begins its new season on May 29th.

We chatted with the former Blossom star — mom to Miles, 3 ½, and Fred, 9 months — about the makeover experience as well as motherhood to her two boys in our two-part interview.

Celebrity Baby Blog: How did the What Not to Wear people approach you?

Mayim Bialik: They snuck up on me on the street in New York. I hadn’t really seen the show, so actually I wouldn’t have known them were they not coming up to me and surprising me in the middle of the street. I didn’t know who they were! They basically said, “We’re from What Not to Wear and you need a makeover!” Clinton said he’s been watching me in the years since Blossom ended definitely thinking that I needed a makeover.

Were you offended?

It’s no secret that my sense of style has taken a backseat to the rest of my life, so I wasn’t terribly shocked. And I do have quirky taste. A lot of stuff I wear I’ve had since high school. I like army boots, I like peasant skirts – sometimes together! So I do know that I have odd taste. And I used to be able to put more time and effort into what I wore, especially before I had kids. With a 3 1⁄2-year-old and 9-month-old I haven’t been putting much effort in and didn’t know what size I was – weight goes up and down with kids. So obviously I’ve been wearing things that are way too big for me.

How would you describe your old style, and how would you describe your new style?

The style that I used to like was eclectic, a lot of vintage stuff, a lot of army stuff in random combinations. I like bold colors but usually wear black. But the reason I was chosen for the makeover is

Mayim Bialik — that’s TV’s Blossom to you — returned to the small screen a few months ago as, surprisingly enough, a fashion victim on TLC’s addictive makeover show What Not to Wear. It was a particularly inspired choice for the long-running series, not because she’s a “celebrity” so much as because she’s a self-dubbed “Conservadox Jew” — meaning, for her, that she observes some clothing restrictions in the name of religious modesty. Unfortunately, though, it seems a lot of her religion — the most interesting part about having her on — ended up on the cutting-room floor, according to a wonderfully reasoned, insightful essay she wrote for Tablet, a Jewish lifestyle magazine. Basically, she doesn’t wear pants and tries to stay relatively covered up: “I started appreciating what it means to keep your sexual appeal for yourself and for your partner,” the married mom writes. “I came to see that not everything that makes me beautiful, sexy, or desirable needs to be on display.”

But while the show’s producers did ask her about the specifics of her beliefs — and she stresses that she loved being part of the show — she explains: “When we filmed me revealing the final outfits they picked, I gently pointed out that skirts above the knee are not something I’d wear, and that I wouldn’t wear sleeveless shirts or dresses without something to cover my arms once I left the set. When the show aired, I saw that my qualifications and explanations did not survive the cutting room.” So, basically, she ended up coming off like a fussy frump, instead of a very modern (and, she points out, deeply feminist) woman navigating a world that makes following her beliefs very complicated.

Just a few weeks later, style mavens Clinton Kelly and Stacy London — whose taste I adore, by the way — committed yet another makeover faux pas. And this one the cameras truly couldn’t disguise. A Southern d

In , actress Mayim Bialik was made over on TLC’s What Not To Wear. (The episode recently aired on Hulu.) As one of Mayim’s close friends, the show asked me to be interviewed about Mayim’s style. I was super excited to appear on television for the first time and freaked out about what I would wear on What Not To Wear since I was a friend dishing out fashion advice. I had to look fabulous.

Sadly, most of my interview (and outfit) did not make it to the show because on reality TV you’re supposed to trash people, and I wasn’t willing to do that. In my five seconds of fame, I noted that Mayim was not a messed up child star and instead raising a family and getting a PhD. All the stuff I mentioned about modesty not having to equal frumpiness and how I (the Orthodox Jew) had been encouraging her (the celebrity) to put herself together and find the perfect balance of cute, confident, and covered, was missing.

I also had a message for Stacey London. In a prior episode, there was a woman who wore a lot of long black skirts and Stacey made fun of the woman telling her to “stop dressing so Orthodox.” Replace “orthodox” with any other minority group and use it as a pejorative. Of course it would never fly. I wanted Stacey to know that plenty of Orthodox Jewish women have incredible style. That message never aired and probably also didn’t get to Stacey. Oh, well.

What did air? Mayim only wearing skirts. She had apparently chosen skirts only in her makeover look because we had learned about Jewish modesty together in our Partners in Torah learning partnership, and while the hosts only gave her skirts and dresses to wear, no one bothered to explain why Mayim was not wearing pants.

It could have been a neat way to introduce viewers to a minority culture and celebrate it. There’s been an increased normalization of hijabs in recent years. But, alas, Jewish modesty continues to be degraded in popular TV shows and movies as outdated and

They say the clothes make the person, but when "The Big Bang Theory" and "Blossom" star Mayim Bialik appeared on "What Not to Wear" in , the show ignored a fundamental part of what makes the actor feel like herself — namely her self-described Conservadox Judaism. In accordance with her spiritual beliefs, there was a period of time when Bialik didn't wear pants (and neither did her "Big Bang Theory" character, Amy Farrah Fowler), and to this day, she avoids wearing anything revealing. That wasn't something the show's hosts seemed to understand. Bialik claimed in an article for Tablet (quoted by Entertainment Weekly in ) that her explanation for wanting to remain modest was ignored by the show's producers.

"When we filmed me revealing the final outfits they picked, I gently pointed out that skirts above the knee are not something I'd wear, and that I wouldn't wear sleeveless shirts or dresses without something to cover my arms once I left the set," she wrote at the time. "When the show aired, I saw that my qualifications and explanations did not survive the cutting room."

On-air, Clinton and Stacey responded to her request to keep her wardrobe modest by reacting negatively to Bialik's choices in an attempt to get her to modernize her look. "It seems like she's uncomfortable with her body a little bit," Clinton observed while reviewing Bialik's pre-makeover clothing choices during the program. When they re-dressed her for the show, Stacey told Bialik her mission was to "unleash her inner sex goddess." The end result was a modernized but conservative wardrobe for Bialik, who went on to admit that she did eventually find the right middle ground between her own style and the new one offered up by the reality program.