Growing up too fast

So, I'm about a year behind the country in TV watching.

Well---maybe more than a year. For example, I've just finished Season One of the Sopranos.

Yes, I know how it ends.

Tonight, I saw America's Got Talent for the first time, and I looked up past auditions on YouTube and came across the audition of Bianca Ryan. She blew me away. She blew everyone away, right? Because here was this little 11-year-old girl, she gives a little wave when she comes onstage, she's wearing no makeup, she has a little half ponytail on the top of her head.

I used to wear a little ponytail like that. I have pictures (not electronic ones, sorry).

In that first video, she is an 11-year-old with a powerful, soulful voice like a 25-year-old. It is a full voice. You listen to her, and you think, that girl has a gift.

Then Simon Cowell tells  her - change your shoes, change your hair, change your dress, and you'll win this tournament.

She does and she does. By the finale, she has makeup, a sophisticated haircut, a slinky dress. She looks like she's lost some weight.

And now, after singing for the President, after singing at Walt Disney World, she is Bianca Ryan, a new Britney, a new Christina. No more little girl with a gift. Instead, a sexed-up young adult who sounds like everyone else on the radio.

She's still talented. I'm not saying that. I'm just wondering why, if someone has a gift, we need to make her sexy and adult instead of letting her be the age she is.

Comments

[Bill Stella]

Jennifer: You're so very right to wonder why she can't just be who she is.

Perhaps you have had no comments before me because the Q-munity is just as complicit as anyone in preferring a sexy package to plain, direct, and great talent and creativity. (See the cult of Madonna for a too-easy example of form over substance.) I try to promote among my friends the folks who focus on producing music of great substance over image - not that it isn't fun, or isn't potentially pop chart material or accessible, because I think it is. But mention Doria Roberts or Reuben Butchart or John Bucchino to people and 99% will respond "Huh?" at best. (And those three are all Out Gay artists, too.)

It's swimming upstream to get people to listen independently, and that's my life's mission.

[Jay]

I love Doria Roberts!

Good for you for keeping real independence alive.