Loading ...- Category:
- Soap Box
- Author:
- Doug Pollard
- Posted:
- Thursday, 23 April 2009
I admit it. Along with a trillion others, I cried when Susan Boyle sang.
A very ordinary middle-aged woman who appeared to have washed her hair under the kitchen tap and pulled on the first -˜fancy’ dress that fit from her local op shop. Oh the poor dear, we thought, deluded old frump, sitting alone with only her cat and her dreams for company.
Then she sang, and we cried. Except Simon Cowell, whose face went from -œWho let that in? to -œSign here, darling faster than you can say Il Divo.
We cried because we heard the pain in -œLife has killed the dream I dreamed, as she sang her dream back to life. We cried for the lovely voice condemned to obscurity because she’s not young and pretty. We cried because we feared instant fame would take her swiftly up and then, most likely, chuck her out with the trash the next morning.
Television is obsessed with physical perfection. As Henrie Stride, a former Channel Nine casting director told The Age, people on television can’t have anything wrong with them, like the girl who almost didn’t get a job merely because one of her eyes was slightly smaller than the other!
-œGrannies have got to like you, mums, dads, girls have to want to f— you, guys to be your mate, she said. Mums, dads, girls have to want to f-” you?? Well, that explains the Bondi Vet.
In this sea of botoxed, gym-buffed, airbrushed, capped, whitened, surgically enhanced, brightly chattering shop-window dummies, Susan Boyle was a gorgeous shock. Take that, Madonna!! Up yours, Kylie!! Since when did talent have to be toothsome, too?
Pavarotti had a stellar singing career, but for physical appeal, a whale in a powdered wig could have held the stage as well. A face like a pork pie didn’t stop Ethel Merman becoming the toast of Broadway, while Marlene Dietrich’s acting ability redefined beauty for a generation. None of them would stand a chance today.
But why not? Looks are no guarantee of talent -” or anything. Good-looking people are almost invariably ruder, more selfish and self-centred, less reliable, less faithful, and altogether less pleasant to be around than the plain. Because they don’t have to make much effort to be liked, they generally don’t.
Gay men are so hypocritical: we demand that the world embrace us in the name of diversity, yet we’re the most judgemental, ruthlessly standardised community of all. The TV audience who sniggered when Susan Boyle took the stage were nasty enough, but they pale beside the bitchiness in a gay bar when a plain-looking older bloke walks in.
Gay papers feature enough young, tanned, buffed neo-Aryan boys to fill Nuremberg stadium. Black, Asian, Indian get a look-in if they’re feminine or steroid-buff. Fat or furry? Get into the bear ghetto.
And where are the elders of our tribe? Driven out by scorn, sitting at home with their cats, dreaming of what might have been?
Tags: bears, bitchiness, Britain's Got Talent, Ethel Merman, good looks, Henrie Stride, kylie, Madonna, Marlene Dietrich, Pavarotti, physical perfection, Simon Cowell, Susan Boyle, talent
April 24th, 2009 @ 10:32 am
I love you, Doug Pollard! Unfortunately, the points you’ve made will have to be repeated again and again, because many people still don’t get it.
I’m a middle-aged woman who was heavily influenced by the feminists who came before me, and I really did believe that we’d get past the tyranny of being judged by our looks. I was wrong. Not only are women still judged primarily by their appearance, but these attitudes have also spread to gay men. Men in their early 20s getting Botoxed, for crying out loud!
It’s all very disheartening, and I feel we really haven’t moved on at all, but instead we’re stuck in a vacuous mindset. A gay guy I knew once remarked to someone else that I knew ‘all the ugly poofs’. This was after I’d said ‘hello’ to a slightly overweight man. Nothing ugly about the man at all, but the remark from the other guy, who valued gay men by what they looked like, sure was ugly.
I’ve given up. I spend time with people, gay and straight, who don’t measure other people’s worth on the basis of their looks. I also draw some comfort from the knowledge that all those young queens who think anyone over the age of 27 is old will one day find themselves ageing too.
In the meantime, there’s Leonard Cohen’s great line in ‘Chelsea Hotel No. 2′ which follows a line about being ‘oppressed by the figures of beauty’ and which he attributes to Janis Joplin, ‘We may be ugly, but we have the music.’
April 24th, 2009 @ 5:59 pm
I came out when I was 19. I am now 51.
My experience as a Gay man had it’s highs and lows. I was fortunate to have some four long term relationships, of which the current one has endured some 12 years. I am fortunate I have been loved by some beautiful men (including my current bea).
It is unfortunate that I am very careful now in context of placing my efforts and money with any entity that has been tagged gay. Unfortunately I have been bullied, humiliated, ripped off, lied to and patronised by Gay men. More than a few Gay men having dropped into my life over time have worked against my best interests, chipped away at my confidence and at times outrightly sabatage my efforts.
Now at mature age, my advice to young players might be; enjoy some of the delights, however acknowledge caveat emptor upon entry; all may not be what it seems.
Any notion of brotherhood still needs a lot of work.