truth is beauty, beauty truth

it's always interesting to me where we discover truth and beauty.
today, it's in the wasteland that is reality tv. i will spare you all (in my imagination, people actually read these posts) a diatribe on the perils of television and it's supposed "reality", because there is something wholesome to be taken from it at present, and i will not overshadow that with my inherent cynicism.
so, i'm watching the finale of "He's a Lady", a competition wherein several big, burly, "manly" men don feminine apparel in the endeavour to become the best woman. lots of rediculous moments, lots of mass market appeal as we watch paragons of macho masculinity humiliate themselves for money.
but in all of that cheapness, something real and wonderful happened.
the fat guy won.

i'm not discriminatory by nature, but the guy was huge, he had no neck. even after the contest, he marvelled, in his own words, at how "the ugly girl won". but he wasn't ugly. that's the point.

in true pageant tradition, the three finalists had to answer a question before the panel of judges near the end of the competition. the question was "what, as a woman, have you learned about being a man?" a good question, to be sure, although the other two guys used humor to mask their feelings, like most men. but the speech given by David at the end was incredible. as soon as i find a link or a transcript i will post it, it was that good. it was sincere, and heartfelt, and it made him beautiful. John Salley, the judge who was unmoved and indifferent and unimpressed with the men as women as a whole was seen to wipe a tear away from his eye at the end of it. and the big guy won.
they should take this footage and show it to absolutely every person in the world with a bad body image. all the girls who think they have to throw up to be pretty, all the kids who didn't go to grad because they wern't a size 4, everyone who doesn't think they can find love and happiness unless they look like the cover of vogue. because none of that matters.
it's kind of a sad reflection on society that we've taken a concept like inner beauty and made it the setup to a joke, the punchline of which is judgmental commentary on body type. "she's got a great personality" has been used in so many sitcoms to mean "she's ugly" and we laugh at it, lap it up, think it's hilarious, while our kid sister is putting her finger down her throat in the bathroom after supper.
but the beautiful part of this whole thing is, this big, non-perfect, anything-but-"ideal"-bodied man won the pageant. he beat the pretty ones, he beat the thin ones, he walked away with pride and the prize. and it was absolutely beautiful to watch.
so let's learn something about what beauty is. let's stop cheapening people who arn't perfect, let's stop evaluating people based on the smallest amount of fabric required to cover their bodies, let's stop dehumanizing and demoralizing people based on one small, constricted concept of beauty and discover the value of actual beauty, in all its forms.
and then,
let's celebrate it.