This is an article with a difference. Whether you liked the clothes Paulini chose to wear in Idol or not, there are some interesting points made here.

Let?s get this straight: contestants on a show designed to choose winners and make them into pop stars, so they can be rich, famous, and idol-ised, should be treated with sensitivity about their looks?

All the well-meaning psychologists and former stars who have pitched in and attacked Australian Idol judges Dickson and Holden over their comments about Paulini?s dress need to get real. They were right about the dress – it looked hideous, and they were right to be blunt and point it out.

Idol is one of the shallowest shows on TV, because it is designed to pick budding members of the shallowest part of the entertainment industry- pop stars. It is only one removed from Model Search, and it certainly isn?t about fostering idealism, a positive image, or any other sentimental stuff.

Being a pop star is about generating money for record companies, and for yourself. Top stars like Kylie are constantly in the news, have their butt measurements analysed, and their love life trashed. In exchange, though other people write songs for her she makes tens of millions of dollars, gets A-List invites and dates male models and film stars.

That is what pop music is about. It is the complete opposite to original music; written by the musicians themselves and played live before cranky beer-swilling audiences in a hard, brutal arena of natural selection (corner pubs!) where almost nobody ever gets paid.

Great Aussie original acts, such as INXS, AC/DC, Regurgitator or The Waifs, would never have made it past first base as Australian Idols. Then again, they probably wouldn?t have signed up for the show in the first place.

There is a huge gulf in the music industry (and that is what it is, an industry) between those who still write their own music and those who proffer themselves as pawns to be made up as stars. The latter as I?ve suggested already are little more than models, to be shaped and moulded into manufactured money-generating machines.

Original musicians, on the other hand, do the lot. They have to come up with a ?sound?, write their own music, polish their performance through hundreds of tough gigs and self-promote as the ultimate guerrilla marketers.

The trade-off is that strict conformity with a single ?ideal? image is not so important. Sure, looks certainly count, but there are plenty of ?voluptuous?, badly dressed or otherwise non-conforming types who have made it regardless, through genuine talent and originality. And most of them probably wouldn?t have cut the mustard as pure pop stars. Imagine trying to package up and sell Peter Garrett, Courtney Love or the Queens of the Stone Age as tweenie idols!

If people are against shallowness and poor role-modelling for young people, then they should rally against the pop industry as a whole. Making Australian Idol all sensitive and PC won?t alter the fact that Kylie works out every day to keep her bum as round and hard as a pair of rockmelons, just as it won?t suddenly introduce a whole bunch of male pop stars with more hair on their backs than their heads.

And as for Paulini, she has two options. If she wants to be a pop star, sold as a commodity to the base end of the market, wrapped up in a manufactured image and someone else?s sound, then she needs to learn to dress herself.

Or she can team up with some muso?s and start a band, write some music, pick an image she is comfortable with, and maybe, just maybe, she will succeed as a true artist. And if she does, she will make herself and the industry suits some money, but she may also give something of value back to music as a whole.

From: Crikey.com

{mos_sb_discuss:14}