Pixie Scandal

“Everyone should understand this in this way,” Mr. Chen said. “This is in the national interest. It is the image of our national music, national culture, especially during the entrance of our national flag. This is an extremely important, extremely serious matter.”

What pressure on the shoulders of a 7 year old, to have your crooked teeth cause such national concern.

As the world now knows, it was an extremely serious matter that Chinese officials did not find Yang Peiyi to be cute.  She was deemed good enough to be heard but not seen, thereby prompting officials to use Peiyi’s recorded voice and Lin Miaoke’s lip synch performance during the opening ceremony.  Peiyi is described in media accounts worldwide as the girl with “crooked baby teeth” and a “chubby face”. The Associate Press begins its story by treating Peiyi’s deemed lack of cuteness as fact: “one little girl had the looks.  The other had the voice.”

Miaoke, on the other hand, is ready for America’s Next Top Model.  She is described as a “smiling angel” with a “pixie smile.”

Worldwide outrage has ensued in support of both girls. Hill & Knowlton is the PR firm that works with the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympics.  In fact Hill & Knowlton’s CEO, Paul Taaffee, carried the torch in Beijing last week, wearing shoes donated by Adidas.   The firm is one of the largest in the world and gives counsel to Walmart, Enron, and the Church of Scientology.  Their long history includes helping the tobacco industry counteract scientific findings about the link between cigarettes and cancer.

It’s not clear if Hill & Knowlton is helping Chinese officials wade through the pixie scandal, or if all parties are simply waiting for the competition to drown out the story.  To date the only voice counteracting the judgment of the Chinese officials is Peiyi’s father who said, “In my opinion, she’s not ugly.  She looks cute.”

The bigger issue is the underlying bias that drove officials to reject Peiyi.  Blogger Ran Yunfei described the ceremony as “nationalist clothing over authoritarian underwear”.  As the medal ceremonies crowd this story off the front page, it may be the bloggers that give Hill & Knowlton reason to face the dissonance between the message of authorities (“This is in the national interest”) and the gut reaction of viewers worldwide when they see Peiyi’s precious photo.