Another hegemony to defeat...

...hyperbole aside, there is another underdog that has reminded the consciousness. The people of the world who are fat and do not have any beauty in the classical sense of the world.

this morning a popular TV show was brought to my attention by the somewhat lame but very important (for artists, community activists and to small businesses) Lawrence.com

It's the British version of American Idol. Even if you haven't even stumbled upon one episode (like myself in a bar), you know what it is.

Evidently a recent episode of "Britain's Got Talent" auditioning before a crowd of tens of thousands Susan Boyle, a fat forty seven year old Scottish woman with thick eyebrows. The Camera editing made sure to capture the snooty confounded reactions on the faces of the conventionally beautiful audience when Ms. Boyle answered in the interview with the three judges that her dream is to be a singer. Then, once she started singing, the crowd roared in pleasure. At the end of the song (fuck it, click here. She's a more than competent singer), the crowd and the judges each gave lots of praise to her. Most of it strikes me as condescending. But the blond female judge gave an interesting statement acknowledging that everyone in the audience was "against her" and did not expect such a wonderful performance.

People love the underdog, and the line between condescension and genuine unassuming empathy gets quite blurry. The way Boyle responded was extremely classy. It's hard not to wonder whether she shares my same lack of concern for cosmetic stigmas--which is certainly something that can be characterized as a social adaptation of sorts. She either genuinely sees her physical body and self as beautiful and/or she doesn't give a fuck about what others think. But the underdog love is something to be exploited. She must be conscious of it by now.

One Pollyanna speculation is that sooner or later after more fat and classically ugly people gain exposure for their talents, maybe spectators won't be so obsessed with what a person looks like(other than maybe pornography and modeling)--or even better, allow the natural embrace in themselves of fat people. Speaking for myself: some women as overweight as Susan Boyle do turn me on. But in this situation, where Susan Boyle is still being written about and about to make an album, meet celebs, etc., there is nothing redeeming in this story. The people who watch this shit are either patting themselves on the back for their positive reactions to Boyle's very good voice, immersing themselves in a mental masturbatory orgy of schadenfreude irony, or are very fat and ugly themselves. If this woman were an amazing singer to me, like Nina Simone or Karen Dalton, my reaction would have been different. Something like: "wow, regardless of how idiotic the hype is about the collective audience surprise , it's so nice that a singer with that emotional depth can be heard by this big of a mainstream audience". But since she sung the disneyfied song that she did, and when the ears listen her voice does not reach the deepest parts of my viscera, the real story is about how disgusting these people involved in making and watching the show really are.

If you are offended by that statement, you will get no apology. This is not said out of seething anger. A little anger, but not much.

Praise of female beauty amongst females in those ridiculous magazines and other media will continue,and the embrace of exceptional people who happen to be fat may never fully escape the possible condescension charge. Changing the topic slightly, it would be nice to see a near future where these "beauty mongers" are made more aware of how stupid and vacuous they appear in their attention to themselves (their hair, their faces, their nails their skin, etc).

[the opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily the opinions owned by the pubertyless Junior high and high school years of low self esteem]

it must be acknowledged there is one friend of mine, an old fuck buddy, who caters to herself cosmetically--in excess. The other day as we were walking in KC she mentioned that she loves how so many guys she talks to in bars always get stumped in finding out how smart she is. Her narcissism seems to come from a purer and healthier source. The fact that she is friendly with people from all walks of life and seems to also protect my image of her from the usual associations--for instance, it really is hard to see her in a sorority or a beauty pageant or some other awful social institution for girls.

The praising of and the presence of female beauty should never go away. But it seems to count for disproportionately too much to a woman's ego. And it gives heterosexual men like myself a lot of power (which can be great!), but damned if women didn't have their own ideas of beauty that run counter.