Office of the Independent Blogger

This is not a particularly important news story — at least not in the way that a story about a sudden, violent event such as the invasion of Georgia is — but it is significant for what it tells us about Chinese attitudes toward beauty, talent and the female gender.

In a last-minute move demanded by one of China’s highest officials, two girls were put together for the opening ceremony Friday, with one lip-synching over the other’s singing. The real singer, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, with her chubby face and crooked baby teeth, wasn’t good-looking enough for the ceremony, its chief music director told state-owned Beijing Radio. So the pigtailed Lin Miaoke mouthed the words.

In a brief phone interview with AP Television News on Tuesday, the music director, Chen Qigang, said he spoke about the switch with Beijing Radio “to come out with the truth.”

“The little girl is a magnificent singer,” Chen said. “She doesn’t deserve to be hidden.”

Don’t you ever let anyone tell you that self-esteem and body-image issues are products of American society and culture.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Outside Retort (Current Affairs).