The Voice But Not the Face

This post isn't really concerned with weight loss, but with my pet peeve of how women's looks are always being criticized - regardless of what they really look like.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the story of Susan Boyle, the rather frumpy looking middle aged woman who went onto Britain's Got Talent and was looked at with disdain by the three judges because of her appearance (as well as her outspoken manner.) Then, she started singing, and golly gee whiz it turned out she had an absolutely beautiful voice. Cue shocked and impressed looks from the three judges.

Now she's had a couple of CDs released...and instead of looking frumpy, she looks like a packaged product - coiffed hair, makeup, seems to have lost a few pounds. I bet she used to get up in the morning, brush her hair, have breakfast, and spend the day enjoying herself. Now she probably gets up early, and spends an hour putting on makeup - for god forbid she ever appear in public again without looking glamourous...

There's another story...probably one of many...

Every few weeks, a digital radio station called BBC 7 plays a mystery radio serial featuring detective story writer/private detective Paul Temple and his wife Steve. They are a suave, wealthy, handsome couple - at least Paul Temple is, his wife Steve (a nickname, she used to be a journalist who wrote under a male psueodym) is tall, beautiful, and of course slender. She also has a voice that people who hear fall in lo)ve with (By that I mean the audience who listens to her.)

These radio serials were made between 1950 to 1965, when radio drama in England was in full bloom. And when most people act in front of the radio, publicity folk will take photos of them to share in the various magazines of the day, to satisfy the public's thirst to know what their favorite radio actors and actresses look like.

But you will search in vain for any photo of Peter Coke and Marjorie Westbury (the actors who play Paul and Steve Temple) standing together, acting in a Temple mystery.

Why? Well because Marjorie Westbury was short - only 4 ft 10, dumpy, and with a plain face.

The shortness probably didn't matter...but to be dumpy and plain! No way would a man like Paul Temple get married to such a woman, regardless of how beautiful her voice was (let alone her personality and sense of humor).

Susan Boyle proved that a frumpy woman could have a great voice - and it's that great voice that has earned her more money than she ever dreamed of, not to mention the respect that she never had before.

But one wonders. There are millions of women who have plain faces, but don't have great voices. Do they deserve disdain? Or should they be gotten to know (okay, that's atrocious grammar, but it's late at night, I'm tired, and I'm not going to fix it!) to see if their personality is a lovable one.

That's always the joke in sitcoms, when a woman tries to set up her plain friend with a man - he always wants to know if she's pretty and is not interested in her if all she's got is a great personality - regardless of what he looks like.

(Kids learn this at an early age, too, thanks to mass media. Remember the movie Ice Age, with the very plain but apparently lovable sloth named Sid. He is looking for a female sloth. He scorns a female sloth who is portrayed as ugly (despite the fact that he is in her same league, looks-wise) but goes after one who is beautiful. Thankfully, however, he doesn't get her! (Although that might be lost on the little kiddies. Or it might not. The beautiful sloth leads him on, because he's going to be the sacrifice to a fire god. Otherwise, she'd pay no attention to him at all.)

Well, enough of this rant.