What if Susan Boyle Couldn't Sing?

By now we've all heard the story, we've all seen the video, and if we're the sort of person, we've cried the tears. But, as Dennis Palumbo asks in The Huffington Post, What if Susan Boyle Couldn't Sing? What a great question.

Palumbo writes, "the unspoken message of this whole episode is that, since Susan Boyle has a wonderful talent, we were wrong to judge her based on her looks and demeanor. Meaning what? That if she couldn't sing so well, we were correct to judge her on that basis? That demeaning someone whose looks don't match our impossible, media-reinforced standards of beauty is perfectly okay, unless some mitigating circumstance makes us re-think our opinion?"

I don't know what my natural reaction would be to the video, had I not watched it already knowing the outcome. But I can guess that Palumbo is right--that had she not been able to sing so well, I would have felt justified to judge Boyle based solely on her looks. Sad, n'est pas? How is it that I--that we--have gotten to a point where looks are all that matter? And I say 'we' because, from the amount of hits her video has received on youtube, it seems that all of us with an internet connection or any access to the media reacted the same way to watching Susan Boyle walk on stage as Simon Cowell and the rest of the audience did. "Don't judge a book by it's cover" is the absolute basic lesson we can all learn from this episode. The cliché doesn't give any justice to the fact that we all, on a daily basis, are quick to judge. And worse yet, we are all capable of justifying it. Truth be told, however, it's easier to judge than to blindly accept.

So what more could we learn from her if the beauty of her voice hadn't blinded our vision? Jean Vanier, in his book, Becoming Human, offers an answer. He suggests that fear is the basis of our prejudice and exclusion. "When we have constructed our lives around particular values of knowledge, power, and social esteem," he writes, "it is difficult for us to accept those who cannot live by the same set of values. It is as if we are threatened by such people." We are threatened by those who don't live up to our "media-reinforced standards of beauty" because it is easier to look down on them than to relate to them. For in relating to them, we become them. And in becoming them, we recognize that on the most basic level of our lives, we are all human. We are all the same.

That is the deeper lesson that can be learned from Susan Boyle. Yes, the story is a feel-good one. It's a story that leaves us full with some sort of joy and contentment. But I don't think it's because we've all taken a bite of humble pie. For when the next contestant walks on stage who looks like Susan Boyle and sings horribly, we will only validate our initial derision, forgetting that Susan Boyle ever existed.