Cinderella and the Kingdom of God

Monday, April 20, 2009 - Comments 11

We’ve asked Margot Starbuck, a writer and speaker living in Durham, NC to contribute to the True Campaign blog. We hope you will be impacted by her thoughtful and poignant insights into culture and beauty. Welcome to the True Campaign Margot!

When it comes to mass-emailed stories, jokes, photos and video links I have a relatively firm “don’t read and quickly delete” policy. Really, people, I’ve got better things to do with my life.

Usually.

My friend MJ got me today, though, by starting her email, “You probably all know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen the news today.” I didn’t and I hadn’t.  I certainly didn’t want to be the only person who didn’t know and hadn’t seen.  So, against my better judgment, I clicked.

It was a clip from one of those talent search shows called Britain’s Got Talent. That cynical Simon Cowell was one of the judges. The clip begins by introducing viewers to a contestant named Susan Boyle.  I’ll save you the click by simply informing you that everything about Susan Boyle was—by Hollywood’s standards—wrong.

Producers set the first shot of Susan Boyle to a comic soundtrack which evoked images of a clumsy clomping elephant. The unflattering shot shows Ms. Boyle opening her mouth to shove in a sandwich. Sandwich aside, she certainly doesn’t look like anyone most of us are used to watching for long on our televisions. Sure, we’ll tolerate physical imperfection for the first few episodes of Biggest Loser, but typically we don’t have a lot of patience for much besides the kind of Hollywood glam we’ve been conditioned to expect. And deserve.

Ms. Boyle’s curly graying hair seemed to be pulled back, or brushed down, in a shape that I am not certain was ever particularly stylish. Dark bushy eyebrows framed a pale face. She had the kind of hanging double chin that most of us try to disguise or cover when we’re being photographed. I do, anyway.

She introduces herself to the camera, “My name is Susan Boyle. I’m nearly forty-eight, currently unemployed but still looking, and I’m going to sing for you on Britain’s Got Talent today.” She continues, “At the moment I live alone with my cat called Pebbles. I’ve never been married. I’ve never been kissed.” Then flashing a look of mock sadness, she playfully bemoans “Oh, shame!”

At the end of the clip, squinting her eyes in determination, Susan Boyle promises with steely resolve, “I’m going to make that audience rock.” I assume she most likely said more stuff, but producers cropped it just to highlight the particularly uncomfortable and socially awkward parts. The subtext of the editing, of course, is to lure us all into agreeing that Susan Boyle isn’t worth very much, by the world’s standards. 

Judging from the audience’s facial expressions, it worked.  While Ms. Boyle chats with Simon Cowell before her performance, nervously stumbling over her words, cameras pan to attractive disgusted audience members wincing, rolling their eyes, and turning toward each other to marvel at how…unconventional…this woman is.

As the soundtrack from Les Mis begins, though, Susan Boyle has only to pipe out eight words before minds and faces are judgey opinions are changed. “I dreamed a dream in time gone by…” By the time she gets to that eighth word, she has been justified. Well-manicured judging eyebrows rise. Eyes widen. Audience members began clapping, whistling. Before long the crowd has risen to their feet, wild with adulation.

I’m not particularly music-ee and even I knew that I was listening to, watching, a truly gifted woman.

We love this stuff, don’t we? We eat it up. It’s even better than a Cinderella story, because this Cinderella is too old, too heavy, too grey, too unsophisticated. In a word, she’s “us.”

Except with talent.

And that’s the single piece of this great story that leaves me unsettled. We all feel warm and fuzzy inside whether we’re seated in the actual television audience or watching the clip on youtube. Some part of us feels like we’ve been sort of generous to applaud someone who doesn’t typically fit into the world’s mold of acceptability. So bravo for us for being so open minded. 

In the end, though, Susan Boyle still had to earn the approval and praise of her audience. She had to prove that she was worthy of acceptance. Sure, it’s sort of the nature of a talent competition, but if we’re really honest it’s sort of the nature of…the world.

In my fantasies I like to imagine a world where Susan Boyle swaggers out on stage and gets the standing ovation for no other reason than being someone who reflects the image of God.
Friends, that dreamy world is called the Kingdom of God.

Live into it.

Margot Starbuck is the author of The Girl in the Orange Dress: Searching for a Father Who Does Not Fail (July 2009), and an upcoming book on women’s bodies, both with Intervarsity Press (summer of 2010).  Margot’s writing has appeared in Brio, Today’s Christian Woman, Adoptive Families, and other national magazines.  Learn more at www.margotstarbuck”.