Thank You Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle’s appearance on Britain’s Got Talent made me question reality, more so than The Matrix even.

Apparently, someone bad at looking attractive can be good at something unrelated. What an Earth shattering revelation. How did it take me 28 years to learn this?

Sure, before Susan Boyle there was that Ugly Duckling fable, but fables use animals to represent people and that’s just confusing. Also, the titular ugly duckling is actually a swan, whereas an ugly person can resemble a wild animal but rarely belongs to a different species.

Also, there was the 1999 motion picture She’s All That, in which Freddie Prince Jr. befriends a bespectacled Rachael Leigh Cook (on a bet, of course), but then begins to fall deeply in like with her EVEN THOUGH SHE WEARS GLASSES! Sadly, halfway through She’s All That the life lesson is averted when the message switches from “people with glasses are worthwhile,” to “people with glasses can be worthwhile provided they take off their glasses and are actually really hot.”

In 2007, I almost learned my lesson when Paul Potts looked ugly but sang beautifully two years before Susan Boyle did the very same thing on the very same show.

Unfortunately I missed the whole “don’t judge a person by their appearance” message because Paul is a guy, and it’s much more common to see unattractive men on TV than unattractive women. To prove my point, here are some male and female actors from TV’s smash hit Law & Order.

vs.

In Law and Order’s world, the most important part of the New York State Bar Exam is the women’s swimsuit competition.

But thanks to Susan Boyle, we don’t live in a world of law and order anymore. Oh no, this new world is one of confusion and uncertainty where unattractive people might be capable of more than failure. It’s a frightening prospect and I desperately hope someone (attractive) will reassure me that Susan Boyle is not the beginning of a new reality but is in fact a solidification of our old way of thinking by providing us another uplifting exception that further proves the rule.