The singer Susan Boyle, 52, always a little strange, has been diagnosed with Asperger’s.

"Now I have a clearer understanding of what’s wrong and I feel relieved and a bit more relaxed about myself," she says. "I have always known that I have had an unfair label put upon me."

"The newspapers reported that Boyle ran down a corridor shouting, 'I hate this show.'"

"The staff were concerned - something wasn't right. She looked lost. Not all there."

Susan Boyle, now under treatment for exhaustion.

Susan Boyle loses on "Britain's Got Talent."

Fame has a narrative arc.

In this case, it feels like the right story. A woman comes out of nowhere, is embraced by the world for her naive goodness, gets a bit of a swelled head and acts bitchy instead of sweet, and plummets back into the obscurity from which she emerged.

Or not obscurity, really. She will melt into an undreamy life of second-rate fame — with bad records, dull reality show stints, etc.

"She tried to be chipper, and when they asked her age, she did this little shimmy" — because she was on TV.

"We could see that Susan Boyle thought "you’re supposed to be kind of sexy and personable, and she got it wrong... Nothing sort of triggers our contempt more than something trying to be acceptable and then failing."

Consider the brain and its stereotypes:

On a very basic level, judging people by appearance means putting them quickly into impersonal categories, much like deciding whether an animal is a dog or a cat. “Stereotypes are seen as a necessary mechanism for making sense of information,” said David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University....

Eons ago, this capability was of life-and-death importance, and humans developed the ability to gauge other people within seconds....

One reason our brains persist in using stereotypes, experts say, is that often they give us broadly accurate information, even if all the details don’t line up. Ms. Boyle’s looks, for example, accurately telegraphed much about her biography, including her socioeconomic level and lack of worldly experience.

Her behavior on stage reinforced an outsider image. David Berreby, author of “Us and Them,” about why people categorize one another, said the TV audience may have also judged her harshly because, in banter with the judges before singing, she appeared to be trying, awkwardly, to fit in....

[John F. Dovidio, a psychology professor at Yale] said that encountering discrepancies to stereotypes probably “creates a sort of autonomic arousal” in our peripheral nervous system, triggering spikes of cortisol and other indicators of stress. “That autonomic arousal is going to motivate us to do something in that situation,” he said, especially if the situation is dangerous.

But we're not out on the savannah in evolutionary times. We're sitting at home on our comfy sofas, experiencing the thrill that was once danger.

"In the third stage, acclaim soars right up to the Cat Calendar Tolerance Level...."

A graph of our feelings about Susan Boyle.

(Via Throwing Things.)

Susan Boyle needs a makeover, not "an 'Extreme Makeover,' but rather the Tim Gunn or What Not to Wear' version."

Says Robin Givhan:

Those are the kind of transformations in which the recipients spend a little time figuring out precisely why they've been squeamish about trying to achieve their personal best. Just before her triumphant performance on "Britain's Got Talent," Boyle said she wanted to be a professional singer, but no one had ever given her the chance. It was a reasonable comment, but it also had the ring of passivity to it. What held Boyle back for so long?...

The tale of Susan Boyle will not be complete until the shy spinster blossoms. Those who have been entranced by her story so far should let Boyle's fairy godmother finish her work.

Yeah. The idea of keeping her in her original state is sentimental and selfish. Is she supposed to bolster your self esteem? One of her attributes is that she's never been kissed. (She's 47.) Should she retain her virginity along with her bushy eyebrows so that TV viewers can feel warm and squishy?

***

Here's an article about Stacy London of "What Not to Wear." She's Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar with degrees in 20th-century philosophy and German literature, and she's been skinny (90 pounds) and fat (180) — so presumably she's knows what she's talking about when she tells less-than-perfect women to cast aside their slovenly comfy clothes and show off their curves.

The point of the show, she says, is to help people "find perfection in their imperfection." That means helping them really see the image they're projecting to the world -- which can be painful. "You have to see it clearly," London argues, "so you know what you're working with, what to emphasize, what to camouflage." Helping makeover subjects see themselves that clearly sometimes requires tough talk. "People think we're being mean," she says. "But we're helping take down barriers."