Lens of Life: Looking at Julia Haart

From long sleeves to lingerie, an obedient housewife to a CEO, Julia Haart has come out of her dark and heavy cocoon of oppression and has burst into the butterfly that she is today.

Reality TV stars live a life of luster in their penthouses or 10-acre mansions that most of us don’t live. And I’ll be honest, Julia Haart has had a wild ride that hopefully most of us won’t experience, but that doesn’t mean we can’t relate on a basic level. All that she has been through has made her stronger, tougher, and someone we should look up to for inspiration when it looks as if there is no way out. I was going to pick someone more docile or established but I decided on Julia because I truly find her story engaging and have followed her career for a number of years. Before we can understand anything about Julia, we must understand where she came from.

Julia was born in Russia and shortly after her parents moved to Austin Texas, then to Monsey New York where they lived in an ultra-orthodox Jewish community that Julia describes as “an intolerable prison”. She was surrounded by perverted extremists who were incredibly rigid and followed archaic laws under God. She wasn’t allowed to sing in public, run in shorts, or ride a bike and she needed to be fully covered all of the time. This is according to Julia’s book Brazen, written in 2022. (Haart, 2022) During this time Julia was married to her first husband, Yosef Hendler, the couple was in an arranged marriage and they were together for 20 years. When they met Julia was 19 and Yosef was 24 according to Yomary’s article in Distractify. Julia has said, that her first marriage was prison. (Yomary, 2021) Because Julia was a woman she couldn’t have any money of her own separate from her husband, so she started a secret “freedom fund” by selling insurance. She also dedicated herself to education. When she was forty-two, she was finally able to make her escape. This was at a time when she had nowhere else to turn and was considering suicide. This information was all found in her memoir (Haart, 2022). While Julia was able to escape, it led to many complications in her relationship with her family.

Her daughter Batsheva is the oldest and was married, in an arranged marriage just days before Julia left her community. It was the hardest for her to adapt. She was open with her mother but her husband fell behind and she eventually divorced him by the end of season two of their show. (Haart, 2022). Her son Aron still lived part-time with his father in the community and similarly found it hard to adapt. His dedication to religion fluctuated as he became closer and then distant from his mother. At the end of the show, he was extremely religious and wanted to study religion only. (Haart, 2022). Though it was not always easy eventually her four children—Batsheva, Shlomo, Miriam, and Aron—have not only accepted but embraced her transformation and followed suit in their own unique ways, some changing their name to Haart and her daughters wearing pants for the first time. According to Haart’s Brazen. (Haart, 2022). Julia’s family was a huge part of her life but she also cared a lot about her career and advancing herself.

Very soon after she left the community, Julia founded a shoe brand in her name, only nine months later, she went to Paris Fashion Week. And a little while after that, in 2016, she became the creative director at La Perla, an Italian fashion house, after collaborating with them on accessory collections. Soon she became co-owner and CEO of Elite World Group in 2019, and a powerful icon in the fashion industry. (Briscoe, 2023). Currently, Julia is focusing her efforts on a new venture after her split with her second husband and being fired from Elite World Group. Her new shapewear line is called +Body by Julia Haart. Julia crafted her first dress when she was 16 years old and since then has believed that fashion should be comfortable and accessible to all wrote Sayej, in 2023 in a Forbes article. Another important facet of Julia’s life and the last that I will address was her reality TV show, My Unorthodox Life on Netflix. Julia starred in the two-season reality TV with her family. The reviews are admittedly not great, around 30% on Rotten Tomatoes but I believe it is because most people don’t agree with Julia’s abrasive personality and beliefs but I find the show quite inspiring and family/business oriented. This is found in an IMDb/Amazon article.

Despite her tumultuous reality TV life, there is a lesson to be learned here.

We all know that a good pair of heels can get us through anything but Julia showed that even when things are at their darkest you can muster up the strength to get out and take control of your life. I hope we can all take a step towards that today and find beauty in Julia’s story.

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References:

Amazon. (2023). My Unorhodox Life (TV series). Retrieved from IMDd

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14398500/

Briscoe, B. (2023). 49 facts about Julia Haart. Retrieved from Facts.net https://facts.net/celebrity/49-facts-about-julia-haart/

Haart, J. (2022). Brazen. New York City, NY: Penguin Random House.

Penguin Random House. (2022). Julia Haart. Retrieved from: Penguin Random House https://brazenbook.com/#resources

Sayej, N. (2023). Julia Haart on her stylish new shapewear collection ‘+Body’. Retrieved from Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadjasayej/2023/08/10/julia-haart-on-her-stylish-new-shapewear-collection-body/?sh=3d07a6c22407

Yomary, T. (2021). My Unorthodox Life' star Julia Haart's ex-husband has also moved on with his love life. Retrieved from Distractify https://www.distractify.com/p/julia-haart-ex-husband

If this post sounds like AI, I promise it's not. It was originally written as a speech so it has a bit of a weird tone. I apologize.