On my way to school this morning I turned on the radio and heard about 47 year-old Susan Boyle and her breakout performance on Britain’s Got Talent, the U.K. version of American Idol. Everyone was blown away by the power and purity of the voice emerging from this dowdy middle-aged person. Ms. Boyle walked onto the stage and awkwardly camped it up a bit with the judges. She forthrightly revealed her dream of making it as a professional singer to eye-rolling derision. Then, she opened her mouth and sang, very, very, very well.

          Everyone watching from the audience looked stunned that someone like Susan Boyle could possess a voice like this, because we seem to have bought into modern pop culture’s de facto marginalization of the unattractive and, even more significantly, the no longer young. In fact, American Idol, U.S. version, is closed to people over the age of 29, so if Susan lived here, she would have been sent packing before she even got a chance to audition.

          As for being surprised, well, I would have been if Susan took off in her sensible shoes and sparkly church lady dress and ran a sub-four-minute mile, but honestly, her voice didn’t surprise me. What did come as a surprise- though not a good one- was watching the judges’ and the audience’s reactions to Ms. Boyle before she started singing. It wasn’t her ability to sing that seemed to inspire their incredulity, but her ability to dream. To me, that fact that her voice was her only validation of her right to dream was not uplifting, but heartbreaking.