There are few of us who can't identify with the little Chinese girl deemed not pretty enough to be seen singing, writes QUENTIN FOTTRELL
THERE IS no easy way to say this, but here it goes anyway: I was a devastatingly beautiful child. It's hard to express just how cute I was. But I'll try. With my powerhouse pout and mass of glossy curls, as Baby Quinty I could have done for Ireland in the 1970s what Shirley Temple did for America in the 1930s: turn those frowns upside-down. It wasn't always easy being "Churchtown's Chubbiest Cheeks" 1979 through 1991, especially as those latter years required a custom-made bonnet. (If you believe any of that . . .) But with great beauty comes great responsibility. Plus, as you can see, it's a long way down.
When news broke that Yang Peiyi, with her crooked teeth and cropped hair, was replaced at the Olympics opening ceremony by a Billy Barry-esque Lin Miaoke, who'd appeared in television ads in China, I reflected on the pressure to be all that. As we know, the Olympic opening ceremony's chief music director, Chen Qigang, revealed the dastardly, last-minute switch. "The audience will understand that it's in the national interest," he said, practically elevating a narrow interpretation of "cute" to the level of a nuclear missile programme. The rest of the world was affronted. And also typically po-faced.
No soap would smell of lavender or roses if sold by plain-and-homely people. There is actually a "character" modelling agency, www.ugly.org; most of them look damn hot to me. In Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, he said most Fortune500 CEO are three inches taller than the average American man. Most studies say we put a price on looks. One academic at the University of California said this beauty salary premium is 12 per cent. Dr Andrew Harrell from the University of Alberta found in a soon-to-be-published study that 1.2 per cent of less-cute kids were buckled into supermarket trolleys versus 13.3 per cent for "beautiful" babies.
We Irish can sympathise. We're not the most attractive of races. There is a "Gone for Lunch" sign on the door of our national beauty parlour. A country without much intercultural breeding, we produced generations of potato heads: weak chins, round faces, heavy jowls and, after we men lose our hair, add "slap heads" to that list. Colin Farrell is the freak show. He's made millions from it. We worship what we don't have. The prettiest and richest girl in your child's school will likely be the most popular. Anyone below par is more likely be bullied. And, yes, they do get it from their parents.
There is an evolutionary theory that says parents favour the stronger, healthier, prettier, sportier children as having the best chance to carry on their genes. But there are hidden shallows too. Some parents also see their brood as an extension and reflection of themselves: little Jimmy's piano playing talent is his clever parents' talent by proxy. After Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie received $14 million for their baby pictures, TMZ.com paid readers $14 to print their baby pictures. There was no shortage of entries. You never can tell, a Johnson Johnson scout may spot the next billionaire babes Olsen Twins.
Pretty pays. When we suddenly had more money in our wallets and the first commercial television station TV3 arrived, RTÉ presenters, continuity announcers and weather girls were chosen as much for their good looks as their obvious abilities. It happened almost overnight. There was not one "unattractive" woman among them. This doesn't apply to news anchors the world over, who could deliver the news with a toothless grin and colostomy bag and not be replaced by a younger model. Is it any surprise that a young girl gets passed over for one who supposedly possesses an idealised cuteness?
Peiyi gets more than 80,000 hits on Google and a Facebook page with about 1,200 members entitled, "Yang Peiyi is Pretty". But you only need to look at her photograph with those big understanding eyes, perhaps wise beyond their years, to see that. One Facebook message-writer says: "Even though Yang Peiyi is getting a lot of praise now, I feel bad for Lin Miaoke too. Knowing that she was used as the fake for a performance is a burden she has to carry for the rest of her life." There has been very little sympathy for Miaoke who, let's assume, only afterwards learnt that her own voice wasn't good enough.
A CBS Evening Newsanchor said of Peiyi: "She's the real deal!" In order to come out publicly in favour of western sentiment against eastern promise, he was prepared to throw poor precocious Miaoke and her pig tails to the lions. Wait until they hit their teens. That's when they will bloom . . . or not. In less than 10 years, Peiyi could be the swan and Mioke the poster girl for Panoxyl. But by now, both girls are probably emotionally scarred. Another Facebook "Petition to let Yang Peiyi perform at the 2008 Olympics Closing Ceremony" already has over 12,000 members - and climbing.
As Peiyi acknowledged, it's a small gift that the organisers used her voice. If she were cast in a play in certain Irish schools, she probably would have wound up playing a tree.