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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Why on earth should this have been a shock?
Posted by Jill | 9:33 PM
If you were a watcher of the series Upstairs, Downstairs in the 1970's, you're familiar with the character of Ruby, played by Jenny Thomasin. Ruby was a homely, slow sort of girl -- the cruel comic relief of the series. It was this portrayal that I thought of when I finally got around this evening to catching one Susan Boyle swat that sardonic grin right off of Simon Cowell's face during auditions for Britain's Got Talent.

Linkitude to this clip (sorry, no embedding) is all over the intartoobz, as well it should be. But while it's a lovely moment for this odd-looking 47-year-old with the magnificent voice; a real cheer-for-the-fat-chicks dream, there's an underlying truth here that doesn't go away just because Simon Cowell got smacked down, and that is this seven-minute clip demonstrates clearly what women who aren't conventionally attractive and aren't young go through every single day.

Why on earth should it have been a surprise that this woman could sing? Because she wasn't nineteen and didn't shriek like a pop diva? Because she wasn't "fuckable"? It would be lovely to believe that Simon Cowell learned something from this, but the fact remains that his bread and butter comes from tearing people down. It shouldn't take a voice this magnificent for a woman who looks like this to be treated like a human being.

Fillyjonk over at Shapely Prose nails it:
Folks, we are all Susan Boyle. Fat or thin, pretty or plain, butch or femme, old or young, abled or not: people will judge us and find us wanting. You can posture all you want, out of genuine confidence or bravado; you can insist that the ideals are wrong, that the goalposts need to be moved, that rational humans can shake off the shackles of cultural expectation. You can talk big and wiggle your hips — for some people, that’ll just make you more of a joke.

What makes people stop laughing — or at least, what makes you stop caring if they do? The discovery that something about you is utterly remarkable. Because it is. It might not be an angelic voice or some other showy talent. It might be humble, even difficult for others to notice. You might not know what it is yet (lord knows I don’t). You don’t even have to realize, right off the bat, how your remarkable qualities elevate you past any backwards beliefs about who you should be or what you should look like — apparently Boyle herself saw that clip and what she saw was “I looked like a garage” (which at least gets points for being an awfully humorous self-putdown). It’s an arduous process and goodness knows we’ve never said otherwise. But whatever it is, once you really know it’s there, once you know how much that means, a smirk from Simon won’t change a damn thing — and you’ll slap that smile off his face when you bust it out.



Good for Susan Boyle, who gets the last laugh. I hope she wins, and I hope her fifteen minutes go on forever. And that Simon Cowell's end tomorrow.

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4 Comments:
Blogger Rhode Island Rules said...
A testament that it is never too late. This video makes me cry every time I see it, not only as a 50 year old woman trying to reinvent myself after a long term marriage but also as the mother of a high functioning autistic artist daughter.

See through the wrapping to the beauty.
4/15/09, 10:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
This REALLY pisses me off!!

A really wonderful,self possessed, attractive woman with a fabulous, ACCURATE voice; 47 years and going on the WORLD stage....WTF??!!

I would rather frame it thus: skeptical Simon couldn't believe that a 47 year woman could deliver a vocal performance that could eclipse that of some a third her age, and yet acknowledge the same...

And for the fat-o-phobes out there: there is no stretch of the imagination where M. Boyle could be said to be fat. For any age, she's damned good looking!!
4/16/09, 1:23 AM  
Blogger Bob said...
I've been reading about Emily Dickinson - never much interested in her life story before, since so much of it is speculation. But feminist critiques have at least taken the focus off the tedious obsession that some terrible secret heartbreak is what made all that remarkable poetry come together, & like maybe she knew what she was doing.
4/16/09, 4:54 AM  
Anonymous jb said...
I had not seen the Susan Boyle clip until this morning, and your thought was the first thought I had. Why were people so shocked by her beautiful voice . . . because she's not particularly attractive? If that voice came out of a 22-year-old American Idol contestant, far fewer people would be forwarding the video around the Internet.

Well said, as most things are usually well-said here.
4/16/09, 5:46 PM  
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