What Is It About Susan Boyle That Moves Us So much?
Yesterday in the coffee shop I insisted we watch Susan Boyle's performance via a UTube clip. The sound was not so great coming from this mini-computer and with the traffic noise well it was hard to experience the full effect of her performance. But still several people who were present shared their feelings about this common woman and her triumph and subsequent popularity. The fact is we identified with her....we *common* folk, here in the dumpy little coffee shop...and dumpy it is, I admit...funny and funky and weird and creative and perhaps a work of art, but still tacky and weird to some people who come in the door. I see people react.....this place scares some people.. It is too much for them. They are too used to sterile...like Taco Bell, McDonald's..They might not notice the employees at these places do not interact...no matter what anyone says to them....no eye contact, no small talk...but here in this ..let me see...what did they guy call this place the other day?...oh, a cubby-hole of a place...well in this cubby hole of a place, we actually talk to each other. Imagine that.
Anyway, Susan Boyle represents something to those of us who have been made fun of, shunned by the "popular" girls, ganged up on, made into the proverbial *underdog*.
I wept when I watched her performance. One simple common woman from a small town who for one moment in time was not just the center of attention but who was fulfilling a lifelong dream, singing her heart out to a crowd who could not contain themselves....leaping to their feet before she was half-way through.
And don't those of us who aren't so beautiful, not so in with the *in* crowd, not quite up to the standard of those mean, bitchy, pretty girls with....the right clothes, the right hairdo, the right partner or husband, the right politics, the right possessions...don't we GET IT? Don't we understand completely what Susan Boyle did and what she represents?
Third grade, seventh grade, high school.....college, the peace corps, group on to group, never finding that place where we fit in? Were accepted...just plain old accepted..a part of something which did not require us to completely sell-out or act as if we were someone else? Or contain ourselves?Yes, we get it and don't have to analyze or examine it..We felt her in our hearts.
Susan Boyle, we thank you. We thank you for your frizzy hair and your not so hip slick and cool outfit. We thank you for your big eyebrows and your chubby body..We thank you for being a star while not being perfect.
We thank you for standing for all of us ugly-ducklings and politically incorrectlings.
Thank you for standing up there with complete confidence and showing the people who are obsessed with external appearancees and property and material posessions, that real folks are appealingly wonderful.
Thanks for showing the snotty bitches of the world that the clothes they wear does not help make them attractive, that beauty is something wonderful and uncontainable and by-gosh, the common woman is pretty darned appealing to at last count about 12 million people who watched you on UTube...About eight of us here in Melrose, Florida.
Thanks Susan for bravely walking into that auditorium the other night and singing for all of us common, dorky girls, nerdy girls and all of us who also, have a dream.
