Christopher Souvey's Blog

When I read this story, I was so disgusted that I have to vent and post about it.

In China’s opening ceremony, they had a cute little girl in a red dress singing the national anthem. But she was lip-syncing. Ok… fine, that’s reasonable – she was only 9 – plus everyone lip-syncs these days. Except it wasn’t her voice.

It was the voice of Yang Peiyi. Yang was originally scheduled to sing the anthem but was cut at the last moment because she wasn’t pretty enough. Yes – they replaced her because she had a chubby face and didn’t have nice teeth.

“The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings and expression” said the the ceremony’s music director.

This is absolutely sickening to me that China would go this far to create (what is now clearly an illusion of) perfection (it was also revealed this week that the footstep fireworks seen on TV were actually computer generated and inserted into the live feed – although, I don’t have an issue with that, and the fireworks were actually set off – China was just worried they couldn’t capture them all live).

I don’t even know how to express how repulsed I am by this without just yelling out swear words…
Read the full LA Times Article and see pictures of the 7 year old who wasn’t perfect enough for China.