Susan Boyle is the new sensation. And thanks to Tanya Gold, who brilliantly highlighted the real issue behind Susan's 'shock ' talent, the spotlight has been thrown on our own age-of-celebrity behaviour, to be prodded, ribbed and jabbed at, much like Susan herself. The only difference being, she turned out to have the voice of an angel.
Our collective voice of disgust at this woman, who admittedly does look a little like the last potato in the cupboard, was summed up in an audience shot, where the camera picked up a lank overpreened teen, sporting a pretty awkward face, herself - although perhaps it wouldn't have been quite so repulsive if she weren't snarling her nose, twitching her lip, visibly snorting and rolling her eyes at the unpromising-looking spud on stage. However, she chose to manifest her disbelief at this woman's audacity to have a shot at the big time, and it's now freeze-framed - that Golum-come-gargoyle leer.
It ain't a pretty insight. And unfortunately for this girl, it's an image that will be held aloft as the mascot of 'the day we misjudged'; she'll be the scapegoat for every small-minded tormentor out there. Because everyone now loves Susan Boyle, you see; oh yes, she's the 'aw bless' and the 'told you' and the 'look at her now'; she's a national treasure. How quickly they'll forget their own initial insults and mocking sniggers as they point the finger at the teenager in the audience and tut.
Quicker than lice, victimisation has leapt from one head to another. And we need treatment.
Because this girl - let's call her Shazza - is just a girl. There's no real malice there; you can see that she's nervously taking a bite of the bitch cake and really she only dares to snatch a few crumbs. She's just a teenage girl, and teenage girls do that - they toy with being utterly horrible to other members of the fairer sex. More shame on Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan - rational grown-ups who teenagers look to for guidance in 'cool' (did Cowell really snort at her age - 48? did they really find it so inappropriate that a possibly unattractive woman should wiggle her hips? - yes); Shazza - she's just going through that stage in life where you splash on a bit of eau de bitch every morning, along with cheap orange make-up and unnecessary accessories because that's what your friends do. She's not an illustration of our vacuous times, she's not necessarily a prime example of Generation Y-should-I care? - she's a young woman who is still not sure who she is supposed to be or how she is supposed to react.
Being a teenage girl is painfully awkward. And for the many who aren't premature intellectuals, samaritans or punky little Junos, with their self-certainty and fool-suffering mechanisms in order, the insecurity manifests itself as crowd-pleasing - sending up some other unfortunate to distract from your own emptiness - or camouflaging, adopting the personality of those around you. It could be worse, it could be actual bullying - but for those who don't have a real mean streak, whispered bitching is safe backseat sport, and it's played out in every school, in every shopping mall, in every gathering of girls across the country, rich or poor, state or private, K-Mart or Top Shop or Young Burberry. Bitching is a pastime, an on-going initiation process in many a gaggle, a dubious method of feeling more certain in a time of identity confusion.
Poor Shazza. Little did she realise that thanks to her natural, expected, reaction to Susan Boyle (remember, she wasn't aware of the angled cameras), she would find herself in the stocks suffering personality execution, and stoned with flimsy moral judgements thrown by a crowd that was probably turning its face inside out searching for the ultimate expression of derision, just out of shot. Ah, divine hypocrisy. But we all love a good stoning.
No one will pelt Susan Boyle, now. She's a a celebrity, and actually, there's nothing to dislike. So Shazza, your only option is to sing - sing for your life. Or run for it.
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