A week ago, the name “Susan Boyle” swept the globe like wildfire.

I was cleaning the living room with MSNBC on, where they shared feedback from viewers about the Susan Boyle segment they did the day before. They didn’t show her performance, but shared the commentary from a viewer which caught my interest.

The viewer spoke of the hardships of our time right now, and the stress and financial pressures she’s needed to go through in the last few months, with children to take after too. When she saw the Susan Boyle video on the news, it brought a smile to her face. She thanked the newscast for sharing the story and asked that they cover similarly positive stories like this, even to bring a smile to someone’s face for 5 minutes in their day.

This sincere commentary caught my curiosity and I Youtubed “Susan Boyle.”

If you haven’t seen the video yet, you can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luRmM1J1sfg

Below are my thoughts and social commentary in response to Susan Boyle’s shocking performance.

Introduction

Unexpectedly, this video greatly affected me. I started crying while watching and continued to cry, 15 minutes after I watched the video. Why did this have such a big impact on me?

Without a doubt, Susan’s singing abilities is extraordinary: grand, beautiful, and precise. The moment she sang her first line, it reminded me of Jodi Benson, the voice actor for The Little Mermaid’s Ariel. When I saw pictures of Ariel’s voice, I was in my teens and was a little shocked that “it was an old lady”! (Perception of “old” was rather skewed back then ;)

There’s two issues that come up for both Susan and Jodi’s examples: the correlations between beauty equating to success, and the preconceived notions of beauty and age. Additionally, the three factors of beauty, success, and age are all related.

Shock

Why is it that we were all shocked the moment Susan sang her first line?

She doesn’t look like everyone else, she’s older, and she’s from a village town. She’s nervous so she stumbles on her words on stage.

Based on previous experiences watching these shows, the editors often depict the abnormal contestants as weird, strange, unappealing to tv audiences, and otherwise unsuccessful. Take a look at the editing, they still made Susan out that way before she began singing. It’s reinforced by the teenage audience member that rolls her eyes, and the middle age woman that’s probably saying, “She’s old; she shouldn’t be up there!”

So then she sang. And it was strong, clear, and elegant. Her voice was so “opposite” of her appearances–or rather, her voice was so opposite of the appearances WE’RE used to seeing.

Beauty and Success

That bubbles down to our concept of beauty and success, both walking hand-in-hand.

Look at all the successful American Idol contestants over the years. All of them have been made-over to be “more presentable” for the mass media. They’ve been cleaned up, styled, and are prim.

Consider the whole idea of make-overs on talk shows and how the audience cheers to reinforce the concept of beauty=success, that now she’ll be able to find the job and man of her dreams with her new look! (Finding a man=success is a topic for another day ;) Magazines, models, celebrities, we hear it all the time about how we’re fed images of beauty. But do we THINK and CONSIDER and DIGEST these things that we internalize every day?

Consider our own individual lives, and how we have to dress up at work. Traditionally, folks at large corporations need to have business attire (though a lot more relaxed in the computer/web company world). White-collar attire vs. blue-collar attire.

I’m not saying that this is bad and we should change it, I’m just saying this is how it IS. We’ve been taught and we are CONSTANTLY taught that beauty equates to success.

Beauty and Age

It’s interesting how our perception of beauty itself has been driven by advertisements, Hollywoodism, and mass media’s goal to just make more money through sexual icons. They all tell us that beauty = youth, and that growing old is NOT beautiful.

Why else would you buy the products that reduce wrinkles? Why else would so many middle age people dye their hair to cover up their grays? Our culture is not very good at embracing aging for what it is.

Most older women want to look young again. Most women in their 20s want to maintain their youth as long as they can. And most teens want to look like what folks in their 20s look like.

Our society’s conception of beauty is in youth.

Proving Us Wrong

For the reasons above, when we initially see people like Susan on tv, we kind of cringe because she wears a plain dress, she hair is flopping all over the place, she just doesn’t look appealing on tv because it’s not what we’re used to. She’s 47, way over the age of most contestants in their teens/20s/30s.

So, people have preconceived judgments and EXPECT and WANT her to fail, because that’s what we’re used to seeing when people like her come on tv. She lacks the media’s ideal beauty aspect altogether, so chances are she’s not gonna do very well.

Wrong. Her voice shook us up, contradicted our expectations and conceptions of how WE think she was going to do. In fact, it’s the contrast of our preconceived notions of her appearance that really brought out the success and talent in her voice.

Lucky for her, she’s good and she had a great performance. Consider what would have happened if she stumbled during her song, or if she got really nervous like most contestants would on stage. She was spared by the spears of judgment that loomed over her, waiting to strike at her fumble.

In a completely different experience, beyond the superficiality of appearances, it was her voice, her talent, and her uplifting personality that brings out the beauty in her now.

Final Thoughts

So, why did I cry for so long? Why was I so touched by her performance?

Yes, it was the obviously moving and inspiring ability of her voice, in addition to the lyrics of the song she sang.

Yes, it was the happiness I felt when she overcame everyone’s negative preconceptions of her, which were solely based off of her appearance and behaviors.

Yes, it was the complete turn around that the judges and audience members experienced, where they all shockingly realized that they were proved wrong.

But I cried also because I realized how we’re SO quick to judge, and we’re SO quick in thinking that we know everything and anything about someone in a span of 60 seconds. And that it’s usually in a negative, put down manner.

And it also made me think about all the people that will NEVER get a chance to succeed because of that, and because of the lack of OPPORTUNITY to even SHOW others that they’re extraordinary. There’s likely someone in a 3rd world country right now who could potentially be THE person to cure cancer, but due to the lack of opportunity, resources, encouragement, and BELIEF, it WON’T happen.

 

Susan Boyle’s performance brought a lot of positive feelings to me, but it made me understand and realize more clearly the negative implications too.

I think the major lesson for me is that every person has a talent, although it might not be completely developed yet–they need the opportunity, resource, and support for it to show. Also, every person has an opportunity to prove you wrong, so don’t get too comfortable in thinking you know everything about everyone.

Thanks for reading my thoughts and commentary on this topic. I’d love to hear what you thought about her performance too. :)