Susan Boyle revealed in an interview this weekend that she has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Ellen E. Jones thinks this makes Boyle more culturally relevant than ever:
For people who feel isolated or stigmatised, it is usually a comfort to know there is someone else in the same situation – especially a successful person. It’s now slightly less stigmatising to suffer from depression (Alastair Campbell, Stephen Fry and Rebecca Ferguson from The X Factor all have) or to go bankrupt (Miquita Oliver and Burt Reynolds know all about that) and we’ve been thanking Tom Daley since last week for making it that little bit easier for teenagers to come out as bisexual or gay…
At first she was celebrated as a victory for talent in a culture obsessed with physical attractiveness, and a reminder to not judge a book by its cover, but as she’s become more successful, the PR blurb has morphed into something more familiar and much less interesting. Susan is now a classic underdog, a rags-to-riches success and a reminder to ordinary people to dream their own impossible dream. It’s well-worn trope of reality TV, and in this case it’s more than just trite, it obscures the real triumph of SuBo. She’s not, and never has been, an ordinary woman to whom we can all relate; she’s a very unusual woman with an extraordinary talent and specific needs. Her presence in popular culture is a much-needed reminder to never underestimate people who, for whatever reason, don’t fit the mould.
Mary Elizabeth Williams is happy for Boyle:
Recognizing that there’s a reason for one’s behaviors, rather than some kind of personal failing because they’re not like everybody else’s, has got to be pretty validating — especially after more than five long undiagnosed decades of living. For a smart woman once mocked as “Susie Simple,” one who has also battled depression and “got laughed at because people didn’t think I’d do well … It’s a condition that I have to live with and work through, but I feel more relaxed about myself.” Boyle says she hopes that now “People will have a greater understanding of who I am and why I do the things I do.”
Dreher writes that he is “deeply appreciative of her decision to go public with this diagnosis, both to raise awareness of it and to show what Aspies can achieve.” He also discusses his son’s Asperger’s and how it has changed his perspective on his own habits:
Learning about Asperger’s and the autism spectrum from this experience as a parent of an Aspie has made me aware of my own Aspie tendencies. It’s easy to see my son’s inordinate demand for order and logic as an expression of his cognitive condition, but I have always seen the same trait in myself as an expression of moralism. Maybe it is, to some degree, but I have had to concede that a lot of this probably comes from an abnormal neurology, not from an overdeveloped conscience.
The Dish 