The Unbearable Banishment: Is 7 Too Young For Psychotherapy?

Friday, August 15, 2008

Is 7 Too Young For Psychotherapy?

Are you following this Olympic nonsense? Adorable 9-year old Lin Miaoke was chosen to sing the Chinese national anthem at the opening ceremony last Friday. Just look at that face!

The trouble is, her father knew right away that it wasn’t her voice everyone was hearing. It turns out that although 7-year old Yang Peiyi was a fine enough singer, the Communist Party didn’t think she was “cute” enough to represent China, so they used her voice but not her face.

“The reason,” they claimed, “was for the national interest.” Holy shit! Wait until poor Yang is in her awkward teenage years and is constantly being reminded by mean girls that billions of people all over the planet were told she wasn’t cute enough and had bad teeth. Apparently, the body-self image dilemma isn’t a purely Western notion. (See previous post.)

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Funny thing about all this is that Yang Peiyi is still a cute kid!

I feel kinda bad for Lin Miaoke, too. I was under the impression that she didn't know about the dubbing, either, so she spent the rest of the day thinking the world was digging her rendition, not just her pig-tails.

August 15, 2008 at 11:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

They should have had one of the little girls from the gymnastics team lip sync the song

August 15, 2008 at 12:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

they're both cute kids, this story is such a sad indictment on society. for some reason, I didn't think asian cultures were as image obsessed as western cultures. that's probably a sad indictment on my current affairs knowledge

August 15, 2008 at 6:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not much to add from what the previous three said before me, except that this ridiculous incident is sort of typical of what the Chinese government has been doing for the entire prep of the games. They're both cute, the one thing is that Yang doesn't look like she's had a facial and dental work before showing up to perform. You know, like any other kid: vaguely awkward, totally normal.

August 15, 2008 at 11:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey - they're young girls in China. Apparently with two parents. That means they were kept despite the societal pressure to maintain the one child as a boy... Maybe they consider themselves lucky not to be in an orphanage?

August 15, 2008 at 11:54 PM  

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