by Jade Fitzgerald

Created on: July 10, 2009

As soon as Susan Boyle walked onto the Britain's Got Talent stage the audience begun snickering and rolling their eyes. As a viewer, i did the same thing. I was fully expecting her to give an audition worthy of a place on "Reality TV's most embarrassing moments."

She answered questions awkwardly and didn't seem to have any social skills. The audience and viewers were looking forward to seeing her fail. Even Simon Cowell couldn't suppress a grin when she said she wanted to be a singer, as big as Elaine Paige.

Then she started singing! It would be an understatement to say everybody was shocked. Even the judges had their mouths agape.

Susan Boyle became an international sensation over night. Millions of people viewed her performance on Youtube and she made the headlines on all corners of the world.

The reason for this fascination with her is simple: Her image. She's unglamorous, unfashionable and middle aged with frizzy grey hair.

Many people will claim not to be judgemental but Susan Boyle is living proof that we do live in an image obsessed world and we do judge a book by its cover.

We make snap judgements based on how someone looks then when we discover that those judgements were premature we try to make up for the fact that we were wrong by going too far in the other direction.

That is exactly what has happened with Susan Boyle. We were wrong, so to compensate for this we put her on a pedestal. We talked about her as some great discovery when in truth there are plenty of other reality TV hopefuls who are just as talented as her.

The fact is there is no link between appearance and talent yet we continue to judge. If a petite, glamorous young blonde had walked out on the stage and given a brilliant performance of the same song we wouldn't have batted an eyelid. She would not have got the same reaction as Susan Boyle has had.

There are of course other aspects to Susan's success. For a start it is a feel good story - The 47 year old underdog does good. Her story was unique. She had learning disabilities as a child and was bullied because of this. She took car of her dying mum and she's never been kissed. Everybody was interested in her Cinderella style life story. She gave people hope that they too could achieve their dreams and she's forced us all to rethink the way we perceive people.

John 7:24: "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment." That's certainly something we should all be doing in future.

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