Of course Jay Nordlinger is right that the Chinese displayed fantastic, gratuitous cruelty to the little girl with the great voice who sang at the Olympic opening ceremonies, while another little girl, judged to be cuter, with better teeth, lip-synced on stage for the cameras. In this instance the slight was gratuitous, because little girls can be perfectly cute even with imperfect teeth, and the aesthetic standards most of the world uses for judging children are far more flexible than the Chinese seem to understand. The watching world would have been equally impressed with the child attached to the voice.

But Jay — come on. In what cultural or media venue have aesthetic considerations not crowded out substance, especially when it comes to women participants? Hillary Clinton not only had to spend an hour a day on her hair — but she clearly had some work done beforehand, and hewed to a rigorous diet during her grueling campaign. TV would have been unforgiving, especially in a race against a younger male candidate, if she had not done so.

A friend who runs a conservative women’s advocacy organization recently told me that the number of TV appearances by the group’s fellows and leaders is the “metric” by which donors best like to measure success. But it turns out that Fox News, which is especially happy to put conservative women policy experts on their shows to discuss issues, really only calls back the cute blonde ones a lot. Striking black women also get a lot of return requests. So the really smart, less attractive women get to do the thinking and writing. (Or maybe they don’t get hired.) But the mediagenic ones get to discuss it in public.

As for the same phenomenon occurring in the music world, yes, the Deborah Voight incident at Covent Gardens was pretty glaring. Presumably various opera companies have market research data that makes it clear that cultured, upper class audiences do not wish to watch extremely large divas play ingenues. But opera had long been the last holdout for pure voice above looks, body size, and even acting ability. The movie Dreamgirls depicted the phenomenon as it occurs in commercial music with brutal accuracy.

I am afraid that we consider the the behavior of the Communist leaders who dictated the two girl strategy in this incident particularly cruel, because the little girl was so young, and because we understand, intuitively, the pain that it will cause her as she gets older and understands the rejection better. (Will the cute one care that her voice didn’t measure up? No. Apparently she already does TV commercials.) In the case of adult women (and sometimes men) we chalk up preferences for the more attractive to “reality.” “That’s just the way things are.” At what age is it reasonable for girls to learn that lesson? Or am I missing something?