Sucker Punch

As a respite from the political scene, here's a real-life Slumdog-esque moment from British television that, I'm nearly ashamed to say, does the trick to my tearducts.

As the name Susan Boyle is already worth six million or so worldwide views on YouTube, a triumph for late bloomers everywhere, the question of our prejudicial reactions to packaging is addressed by Colette Douglas Home:

The moment the reality show's audience and judging panel saw the small, shy, middle-aged woman, they started to smirk. When she said she wanted a professional singing career to equal that of Elaine Paige, the camera showed audience members rolling their eyes in disbelief. They scoffed when she told Simon Cowell, one of the judges, how she'd reached her forties without managing to develop a singing career because she hadn't had the opportunity. Another judge, Piers Morgan, later wrote on his blog that, just before she launched into I Dreamed a Dream, the 3000-strong audience in Glasgow was laughing and the three judges were suppressing chuckles.

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It was rude and cruel and arrogant. Susan Boyle from Blackburn, West Lothian, was presumed to be a buffoon. But why?

The ugly answer:

The answer is that only the pretty are expected to achieve. Not only do you have to be physically appealing to deserve fame; it seems you now have to be good-looking to merit everyday common respect. If, like Susan (and like millions more), you are plump, middle-aged and too poor or too unworldly to follow fashion or have a good hairdresser, you are a non-person.

I dread to think of how Susan would have left the stage if her voice had been less than exceptional. She would have been humiliated in front of 11 million viewers. It's the equivalent of being put in the stocks in front of the nation instead of the village. It used to be a punishment handed out to criminals. Now it is the fate of anyone without obvious sexual allure who dares seek opportunity

We're far past a 19th Century world where looks were not yet mass marketed and character was more often the story. Helen of Troy, that's an anomaly of history, mainly because the standards weren't set. Or, a word I used yesterday, the brand, in this case the body brand.

One imagines the happy ending to Susan Boyle's story would not just be worldwide fame but the man to go along with it, the overdue romance, completeness for Susan and closure for the British movie version nominated for those acting and writing Oscars.

Susan is a reminder that it's time we all looked a little deeper. She has lived an obscure but important life. She has been a companionable and caring daughter. It's people like her who are the unseen glue in society; the ones who day in and day out put themselves last. They make this country civilised and they deserve acknowledgement and respect.

Are we damned by our sensationalism of the body? Is the brand so pervasive now that our capability to discern character is in steep decline?

Or has it always been thus?