Amazing Women Rock - DStubbings on Susan Boyle

DStubbings on Susan Boyle

Re: Tanya Gold's article in The Guardian (April 17 5:56 am)

Surely, Tanya Gold has missed the point entirely with her argument that it's a response to Susan Boyle's perceived 'ugliness' - that from such a face could ensue such a voice - that has so shocked and amazed viewers. (And she does her argument no favours by excoriating the judges on the basis of their own appearances.)

What most delighted about Susan Boyle was the sheer unexpectedness of her performance, coming as it did in an arena where the vast majority of participants have unrealistic ideas of their own talent. Watching Susan Boyle take flight on that stage, we were watching just one of - I'm certain - thousands, millions of women whose dreams have been, and continue to be, stifled by life; whose 'lives of quiet desperation' remain sadly unsung.

Women who have sacrificed themselves and their aspirations for family; for whom, even still, the promise of a career, their own life, might never be realised.
It's our expectation that talent will win out, and our all too ready judgment that anyone who - by the age of 47 - hasn't yet proved themselves, well, they obviously have nothing to prove. Susan Boyle overturned that expectation.

No, Susan Boyle didn't look like a diva; she wasn't styled like a diva (but that's a long, long way from dismissing her as ugly). More likely our immediate reaction to her - our expectation that she would surely make a fool of herself while amusing the rest of us - stemmed from the fact that she was in her late forties, unmarried, and had never had a sexual partner. And, truth be told, it was those elements that made us so ready to shelve her away - as life seemed to have done - as a dear, quaint thing with little to offer.

Why Susan Boyle has so enraptured the world is not because an 'ugly' face produced a magnificent voice, a spine-tingling few minutes of theatre. It's because after so many years of sacrifice, after so many years of missing out, Susan Boyle never gave up on her dreams and, when her time came, she seized it.

And it should be lost on no one, the song that Susan Boyle chose to sing. For there are few other songs which capture quite so beautifully, so poignantly, the pain of a life that has refused all hopes and dreams their deserved moment. Until now.

Related links:
Amazing Susan comment
Mayapie comment
Beyond-Amazing Susan Boyle Rocks the World
I Believe in Magic

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