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.