Top Girl

Over Shabbos, I met my friend's sister for the first time since she came back from Seminary. Naturally, the first question is do you know of a shidduch. In the course of telling me what her wish-list is, she said that rather irritating phrase I hear all too often. "I'm looking for money, or I want a very good bochur, because I'm a top girl".

Which got me to thinking, what exactly is a top-girl. This girl isn't exactly a raving beauty, she is of average looks, she isn't the valedictorian, or the biggest genius in her class. Her family is very nice, and real baalei-chesed, but her father isn't exactly a Rosh Yeshiva or an Adom Godol, nor is he very affluent, by any stretch of the imagination. He is a very sweet, geshmak near-do-well.. In terms of tznius, I wouldn't say that she is lacking in this area , relatively speaking, in this very weak generation, however, she isn't a paragon or a role-model in this area either.

So what exactly makes someone a "top-girl". Based on a very simple perfunctory understanding of Mesillas Yesharim, I would think that someone who announces, "I'm a top-girl, by definition is a bottom-girl. By the obvious presence of excessive 'gaiva' or arrogance , and sheer void of understanding on the simplest level of what the Mussar seforim say.

In short, I'm at a losss to understand, what is a "top-girl" .. Maybe it is the most thoroughly indoctrinated, the girl who thinks the least, because her chip-implant is entirely intact. Basically, the future Collel-wife, who will be the least controversial and threatening . In other words, a perfectly, submissive drone in the BMG collective.

I wish her all the brocha and hatzlacha in the world, and it is my sincerest desire that she grow to actually become a "top-girl" the way the Torah and our sages have always defined that, rather then merely in the cultural, colloquial sense..