China’s lip-synching actress and the myth of beauty
If you watched the Olympic opening ceremonies, you witnessed a small but upsetting detail that has prompted discussion and debate in the media since: the nine-year-old girl out on stage singing “Ode to the Motherland” was not, in fact, actually singing it: she was lip-synching the song while the real singer, a seven-year-old, was concealed behind stage after officials decided that her physical imperfections (crooked teeth) rendered her unfit for a public performance.
The subjects of beauty, femininity, and living as an image-bearer of God are often explored over at Jonalyn Grace Fincher’s blog, and she tackles the Olympics incident—and what it says about our ideas of beauty and physical perfection—in a recent post. Here’s a short excerpt:
…this substitution perpetuates the myth that flawless (read Hollywoodesque) people are also good at everything else. For a few days we all believed the nine year old Miaoke was flawlessly singing. In the days that followed we compared her face to Peiyi’s. What’s interesting is that no on has actually heard Miaoke sing. Wouldn’t that be interesting to compare her voice to Peiyi’s?
We have to shoulder on against this myth that beauty means goodness, beauty means talent, beauty means perfection. We must face the actuality that people with perfectly straight teeth are just as deceptive, ashamed, broken, manipulative, confused as people with crooked teeth.
It’s an insightful post, and just one of many that touches on issues of femininity and human-ness; see Jonalyn’s recent interview with Molly Aley for more discussion about aging and beauty.
