Flaws & Fame: Susan Boyle vs. French Elle Magazine

It would be impossible to talk about body image this week without mentioning Susan Boyle. The 47-year-old Scottish woman became a viral sensation after her surprising performance on Britain's Got Talent. However, due to the physical antithesis of what our society has come to expect from pop stars, the judges smirked and the live audience laughed when she first appeared on stage. But her stunning rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" turned the snickering response into a standing ovation.

Though many have held up Boyle's popularity as proof that we should never judge a book by its cover, it raises an important question. What if Boyle had stepped into the spotlight and, instead of silencing the audience with her incredible voice, she had croaked out her show tune as expected?

In his Huffington Post column, psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo writes:

"The unspoken message of this whole episode is that, since Susan Boyle has a wonderful talent, we were wrong to judge her based on her looks and demeanor. Meaning what? That if she couldn't sing so well, we were correct to judge her on that basis? That demeaning someone whose looks don't match our impossible, media-reinforced standards of beauty is perfectly okay, unless some mitigating circumstance makes us re-think our opinion?"

At the same time that Boyle's video was making the rounds via YouTube, a different trio of famous faces challenged our expectations of beauty in a different way.  For example, in the "Stars Without Makeup" issue, French Elle created three covers featuring Monica Bellucci, Sophie Marceau and Eva Herzigova without makeup or retouching.

The women are breathtaking and wonderfully real all at once. More than the lack of cover-up and blush, it is the lack of Photoshop that impresses me. With their pale lips and shadows under their eyes, they look very different from the flattened glamour we expect from cover girls, and that is incredibly refreshing. Of course they are still genetically blessed, but we can see they are actual people, not plasticized goddesses that never have a blemish.

Which bit of pop culture gave me more hope this week?  French Elle. Rather than enforcing the belief that only the extraordinary are worthy of our admiration, those three covers show that even our stars have flaws. And when we see our icons as real human beings, we chip away at the myth of perfection.