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Susan Boyle & Beauty
by Bhetti Ameen
This video from Britain's Got Talent of Susan Boyle, age 47, has been making the rounds. That should be old news for you, unless you've been living under the Internet equivalent of a rock (dial-up, perhaps?).
What I found interesting was this article on it, by the Guardian's Tanya Gold:
"Why are we so shocked when "ugly" women can do things, rather than sitting at home weeping and wishing they were somebody else? Men are allowed to be ugly and talented. Alan Sugar looks like a burst bag of flour. Gordon Ramsay has a dried-up riverbed for a face. Justin Lee Collins looks like Cousin It from The Addams Family. Graham Norton is a baboon in mascara. I could go on. But a woman has to have the bright, empty beauty of a toy - or get off the screen. We don't want to look at you. Except on the news, where you can weep because some awful personal tragedy has befallen you.
I know what you will say. You will say that Paul Potts, the fat opera singer with the equally squashed face who won Britain's Got Talent in 2007, had just as hard a time at his first audition. I looked it up on YouTube. He did not. "I wasn't expecting that," said Simon to Paul. "Neither was I," said Amanda. "You have an incredible voice," said Piers. And that was it. No laughter, or invitations to paranoia, or mocking wolf-whistles, or smirking, or derision.
We see this all the time in popular culture. Do you ever stare at the TV and wonder where the next generation of Judi Denchs and Juliet Stevensons have gone? Have they fallen down a Rada wormhole? Yes. They're not there, because they aren't pretty enough to get airtime. This lust for homogeneity in female beauty means that when someone who doesn't resemble a diagram in a plastic surgeon's office steps up to the microphone, people fall about and treat us to despicable sub-John Gielgud gestures of amazement."
My pet peeve with this show is that singers get airtime. There are shows like American Idol and X Factor, why do I need to see more singing and why's good old boring singing voted for? It's brilliant singing, but that's it. Perhaps I was being a little dense, these singers were special. These singers were special because they were either cute, old or ugly. They were underdogs, without a fair airing in other shows.
Brilliant singers as underdogs. Strange, huh?
Historically, men have always placed high value on women's looks and have hormone-tinted perspectives. The same is true -- to an apparently lesser extent -- conversely. Women's hormone-affected view can depend on a more complex mix of dominance, power and masculinity that a man exudes (e.g. obsessions with Simon Cowell: that greatly orange tint on his 49 year old skin isn't exactly physical perfection). This partially explains the discrepancy of treatment Ms Gold's noticing.
Still, it is alarming that there could be a trend where the whole of society -- not just men affected by hormones -- is placing more value upon looks-based judgement of women. I can leave you to discuss the reasons why: my usual suspect is portrayals by popular media.
There is nothing logical about suspecting beautiful people to be talented. Why put all that effort into a talent, if you are a beauty? Famous people seem to invest as much in their image and looks (all that exercising isn't for their health, let me tell you) as in their supposed talent.
If your identity lies not within beauty, then both the cause and effect of your identity lying somewhere else. All your energy focuses on a different path: a talent, a profession, some other combination of things to distinguish you and pronounce to yourself 'this is me'.
I know this because this is what I've experienced. I know beauty lies within the knowledge and study of clothes, make-up and feminity. More importantly, the drive to see this as something important and crucial to you as a person. I used to hate these affectations (active hatred, not just passive disinterest) so viewing them from both sides of the spectrum, I understand the significance and difference they make. I will always prefer a novel over the newest lip balm, a healthy lifestyle over a crash diet and the healthiest weight instead of the prettiest. I've observed how much energy learning to be beautiful takes in one's young self: where's the time to be obsessed with something other than all that is beautiful? I've seen a promising little girl toss the novels in favour of magazines celeberating beauty.
I believe that my lack of concern with all that is beautiful has played a crucial part in me becoming an educated person, with whatever skills and talents I have. If a person cannot be beautiful, it makes sense that they would be something else. Remember that.
Related: I've also touched on this in my review of Fairest, where I've also mentioned Scott Westerfeld's wonderful series examining beauty.
That's a wrap on Corrupt
No seriously, why is a Muslim living in an non-Muslim country a columnist on a pro nationalist website? Corrupt condones parasitism now? This combined with the recent direction of the site makes me wonder if Birch has finally gone insane.
Bhetti is not an Arab name.
I am skeptical of the authenticity of Bhetti Ameen.
I am Arab myself. I have never heard of a name "Bhetti", and a quick Google search confirms that this name is not some obscure Arab name, but rather that it isn't an Arab name at all. In addition, Arabs don't refer to themselves as "Arabic", we refer to ourselves as "Arab". "Arabic" is a language.
Are you sure you aren't Desi? If you are, then don't claim that you are Arab. Arabs and Indians are completely different.
I AM an Arab, although I
I AM an Arab, although I can't blame any violations against the English language solely on that. Muslims don't generally call themselves 'Islamic' either; notice I slaughtered that too.
Ahkeelak bel arabi: misri, soori, lebnaani, illi betreedo? Arabiyti maksoora shwaia bas. Ma endeesh Arabic-enabled keyboard. Yallah, khalasna e7na?
Yemken ahkeelak bil urdu kamaan: Tum pagel hai!
Just googled what desi meant. You learn new things every day.
Haha, ok, I believe you now.
Haha, ok, I believe you now. Bhetti just doesn't sound Arab to me, for some reason. Maybe I'm just ignorant.
Kalimny bel ingeleesy, 3shan el masri beta3i maksoora kaman.
Wa ana mish majnoon, ana afham al-urdu shwaya. :)
Clearly, my knowledge of
Clearly, my knowledge of urdu's limited as that phrase is one that should be commonly known amongst Arabs (or is that what I want you to think, aha!).
Shwaya jnoon yefarah 7ayat el ensaan. Boring otherwise, isn't it?
You're right, Bhetti isn't particularly an Arabic name. And that's all I have to say about that.
What?
Why would CORRUPT in principle be against a Muslim in a non-Muslim country blogging here? News: there are millions of immigrants living in Europe. They're not going away tomorrow. I think Bhetti will provide us with a lot of interesting perspectives. And yes, I am also a nationalist.
And yet...
She isn't.
From under my rock
(I am, apparently, living under a rock because I don't keep up with the latest "Internet phenomena".)
I question why you have been added as a columnist to this site. Presumably you agree with some of its message, but (I assumed) that its message involved parallelism and nationalism. If you agree with this, then why are you, a Muslim living in my country, still here? I am not 'anti-Muslim' and believe that a Muslim writing for this site - living in a Muslim country - could be interesting and worthwhile.
There is an mythic idea in society, that 'beauty is only skin-deep', and that there is a contrast between beauty and intelligence. This is similar to the idea that being intelligent excuses you from being a sociable person - the 'nerd' stereotype. We should reject these divisions. The old maxim of 'a healthy body in a healthy mind' comes to mind. We should aim for holistic personal and societal development. Beauty, intelligence, good clothes, physical strength, and a melodious voice are all important. Perhaps with your Islamic background you have been inculcated with the belief that woman's beauty is something wicked. There have been suggestions that the Abrahamic sects among the world religions are world-denying - that rather than celebrating the wonders and pleasures of the temporal world, they point to a spiritual world beyond, and say that in seeking the spiritual one ought to neglect the physical with privations and abstinence. If this dynamic is correctly described in this way, then this 'mythic idea' may be attributable to the influence of Judaic religions in society.
It's not an either-or situation: these false dichotomies are in a large way excuses for inferiority. I am not a moron, I have emotional intelligence. I am not ugly, I can sing well.
*emphasis on 'occasionally' in 'occasionally Islamic'*
Refer to Alex for the rationale behind my addition.
In terms of the essence of the country (UK?), you seem to be implying that muslims can't be citizens, which I'm sure isn't your intent, especially for those born here. I don't know why you assumed this, but yes, I wasn't personally born in the UK. I observe some varied muslim cultures as an integral part of the UK and its citizenship now.
I thought it useful to discuss the subject in terms of the extremes (beauty does not imply talent and vice versa), rather than talking about the shades of the mixed middle. I'm definitely not implying that society exists in some form of beauty untalented vs ugly talented camp of some sort. The first thought that came into my head when I saw Susan Boyle wasn't 'ugly' but the way she was treated implied this. I'll say that my previous allergy to aspiring for beauty was partly rooted in Arabic/Islamic culturalities but understand that there are very confused attitudes about this. It was my personal understanding that pursuing beauty's a waste of time -- not beauty itself being 'wicked' -- rather than what anyone told me about it. This isn't an exclusively Islamic attitude. Being sexual -- which can include the specific circumstance of showing beauty to the opposite sex whom you are not married to -- that is the more Islamic view of 'wicked' and you can discuss the implications of unhealthy ideas about that as much as you care to. I'm not sure about how other Abrahamic religions view this. I can suspect it will be roughly similar. Still, there's always re-interpretation of the teachings occuring.
What I hope people practically apply in real life is the holistic attitude you advocate. I prioritise physical health over physical beauty; these, however, should rarely come into conflict in my view. Lack of physical health in pursuit of some strange idea of beauty, e.g. distorted body image in anorexia nervosa, seems to be thankfully not the norm.
The spirit of the argument was this: never 'judge a book by its cover'. It's unhelpful to assume anything on the basis of the looks department, regardless of what statistics & experiments (thanks, Martin) tell you might be a bit more likely. The more minor point was that lacking in looks seems more likely to serve as a motivation for pursuing distinction some other way.
If "beauty" ain't skin deep, "ugly" ain't to the core either. The dumb blonde's just as cruel and meaningless a stereotype as the ugly stepsister.
I agree
I said nothing about citizenship. The property of citizenship is legal, and I'm more concerned with cultural/racial affinity. As the ethnic situation currently exists within the British Isles, I wish that European and British ethnicity be preserved. Perhaps Britain's 'citizenship now' has incorporated Islamic elements, but citizenship and ethnicity are not the same thing.
I agree with you in that the media's presentation of what is 'beautiful' may not always be healthy, especially when this includes superficiality and individualism, which may manifest themselves as spending lots of money on 'beauty' and 'fashion' products, or engaging in casual sex merely for pleasure, or anorexia nervosa as you mentioned. In fact the media's presentation of such matters may reflect the simplistic and polarized outlook that we've both expressed our dislike for.
(Re Abrahamic religions, I will add to my above remark that there is also a point that gets made, being that Christianity sees sex as something evil, whereas Judaism views it as one of life's pleasures to be enjoyed within marriage. I don't know if that point is true or what its origins are, but it would seem to contradict any blame assigned to the Judaic origins of Christianity for Christianity's 'world-denying' outlook.)
The truth.
Fizuck being hollywood and going by what the media's impression of beauty. is. Be yourself, that is real beauty.
That the media only wants to
That the media only wants to show beautiful women but not cares as much about the men's looks, could also have something to do with men being the bosses and owning most of the media, perhaps?
Probably not
I don't imagine female-run media really placing all that much emphasis on men's looks. If you want lots of very attractive men all over the TV, you will need to have all the TV channels run by gay men. They tend to care what guys look like much more than any women do.
Strangely enough most men
Strangely enough most men don't care about what women think of there looks compared to what other men think. At least thats what we learned in my Gender Studied class.
Personally i always thought being a man means your naturally not-beautiful (not necessarily ugly) - the prettier you are the more womanly you look, since it is a womanly trait.
Woman = Beautiful
Man = Not-Beautiful
Men Are Beautiful
I don't have data for this, but [probably Not-Safe-For-Work link] historically there has been gorgeous art centering around men. There's a comment above that arguing it is a feminist culture that is toning down the celeberation of the male form as beautiful.
Not that you'd think that with Hugh Jackman always missing his shirt (though you could argue about the differences between beauty and sexual attractiveness).
Personally, i think the
Personally, i think the rather modern abject terror of being considered a homosexual has more to do with it than feminism. In men, at least.
Some more possible data
I don't think women care about facial attractiveness nearly as much as men. Attractive bodies seem to be roughly equally important to both.
Here's something else we could look at: we know that even footballers with really ugly faces tend to date and marry gorgeous women. Do female tennis or volleyball players with unattractive faces score really gorgeous men?
Call me cynical: but it might
Call me cynical: but it might be the money.
It's hard to find a good example...
Female tennis stars make great money, don't they? Volleyball probably not so much outside of Italy. Those are the best analogies I could find for male footballers' status and wealth, though I suspect there's something better out there.
I never considered that
I never considered that feminist culture could have been that powerful. However, on my original point, look at these two paintings by Raphael
http://www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/%7Emalek/raphael1.jpg
http://records.viu.ca/~mcneil/jpg/raphael.jpg
They are both very beautiful and similar. I tend to believe that whatever idea of beauty that this woman has (be it erotic or divine) it is shared with the man. It looks as though Raphael agreed with me. I would posit that it is androgyny that is a beauty shared between the two, but by looking at Mona Lisa i think that is easily disproven.
Nonetheless
A feminine face is considered beautiful and attractive in both genders.
Interesting...
Got a citation or data for that? I've read a few random research papers on facial attractiveness and I don't remember that being a finding. I'd like to get a hold of any research that concluded something like that.
A couple of thoughts
Actually, better-looking people do have a slightly better chance of being good singers and musicians. We don't know why but it there is some kind of a link which is strong enough to screw up studies on biases in musician auditions: http://www.corrupt.org/columns/martin_regnen/pretty_songbirds
If you aren't good looking, though, it does make sense to strengthen some other skills. Perhaps skills which don't require being on stage with lots of people staring at you would make the most sense.
Hell, I have crappy social skills, so I lift weights and play music as a substitute. It's a lot easier to get away with saying stupid things when you've big, and you don't seem so boring when you can invite people to a concert you're playing.
I think of it in a slightly different way
Some people are brilliant performers despite unattractive looks, and it's on the stage that they can express a certain confidence and dominance that might appear attractive to the opposite sex. I found more girls had the hots for me on a two week tour than I did in my lifetime as a whole, and I wasn't even giving it 100% onstage. Mind, I don't think I'm that unsightly, just the sort of girls who attended the sort of gigs I was playing had more of an attraction towards guys like me.
Thank you!
Brilliant, Martin, so like you to have a post buried somewhere in the archives linking scientific studies that contribute to the discussion (and look like they're countering my point). You did this to spite me and predicted this moment in the distant future, I know it.
Anyway, this helps explain people's reactions in a more positive light in the context of musicality. It does make sense evolutionarily speaking for beauty to be paired with other qualities indicating talent (although some standards of beauty do fluctuate). However, this is in terms of raw genetics. What, then, happens later in life with these genes? Are these latent abilities nurtured or are they buried?
There're numerous talented female performers who're not (conventionally?) physically attractive. Would they get the same parental and social support to develop whatever performing talents they may have?
Is a person more likely to aspire to a career in acting because of their latent acting skills or their physical appeal?
Yes, I recruited you just so I could bring up that post!
Really ugly people who sing really well do seem to be rare, but I don't think that counters your point, except for maybe explaining some of the extra attention they attract because they are unusual. We don't know whether they're rare because talented-but-ugly people rarely try to develop their skills, or whether it's something deeper like cross-assortative mating, so it's hard to speculate on what it really means.
There's no doubt, though, that being an ugly woman is harder than being an ugly man in most fields, especially fields which require being seen in public. I'm in one band with three female singers, two of whom are considerably better-looking than the third. I'm not a very compassionate guy, but I do feel sorry for that girl being in public view for a couple of hours next to two more attractive women. At least her real job is in geology...
I´ve been living under a
I´ve been living under a rock, so it was new for me. You are right, my perspective on women is hormone tinted, but she did sing beautifully.
I Didn't Mean It. Honest, Mummy.
Bless, I wasn't serious about the rock thing. I just assumed that a lot of people would've seen it by now (didn't want them to depart in a cloud of dust with 'Oh, I've seen this!') and look, even Hugh Jackman's tweeting about the woman. I think she was on Larry King today as well.
P.S. Not obsessed with Hugh Jackman. It's just a freaky coincidence that he tweeted this as I'm commenting now, when I just mentioned him earlier.