Why the hate for Delta Goodrem has reached new heights.

It was the red buzzer that did it.

All of a sudden, Twitter was alight and Australia remembered how easy it is to hate 32-year-old singer songwriter and judge on The Voice Delta Goodrem and her perfect hair.

She couldn’t just press it. No, she danced around it. Put her arms in the air. Moved “orgasmically” or like “she’d been tasered” before hitting the buzzer that signified the person auditioning on stage behind her was through.

It was the beginning of the sixth season of The Voice last week, and Australia couldn’t handle it. They couldn’t handle ‘Delta’. 

A successful, passionate, excited and (I’ll say it because it’s a factor. It’s always a factor) beautiful woman showing herself to be, well, all of those things. Without playing it down. And without acting ‘cool’.

American actress Anne Hathaway has seen the same hate.

She has a whole tribe of people who tear her down on Twitter and on couches in front of televisions and at lunch with friends, but mostly on Twitter. They are brave souls who call themselves the “Hathahaters”.

There have been many incidences where the 34-year-old actress has admitted to her value as a professional. Every time, it’s been used as ammunition.

She said she “cried” watching herself in Les Misérables. She said not much except “It came true” when she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2013. She lived a life of fairytales while dating Italian millionaire Raffaello Follieri, and she had the ‘audacity’ to complain when asked to lose weight for her role in The Devil Wears Prada. 

Again, Hathaway is beautiful. She is earnest and enthusiastic and believes in her work. But her worst crime, like Delta's, is being unapologetic. She doesn't play down her success or self-depreciate. She owns it. And there is nothing the public, particularly Australians, hate more than a 'tall poppy'.

But that - 'tall poppy syndrome' - seems too easy an answer for Australia's almost visceral reaction to Delta.

There is an entire Facebook account that exists to hate her. One particularly vitriolic user has even suggested the Hodgkins Lymphoma the singer suffered in 2003 might return to save the red buzzer, and Australian audiences, from Goodrem's over-enthusiastic approach.

No, the 'tall poppy' excuse is too easy. It implies Goodrem is to blame when, really, the hate says more about us than it does about her.

Listen: Delta Goodrem has moved from The Voice to House Husbands. Post continues below.

My guess? It's because Delta, like Hathaway, freely expresses all the emotions the rest of us try so hard to suppress.

She isn't afraid and we hate that.

All those Instagram memes that say 'laugh till your sides hurt' and 'dance like no one is watching' and 'love like you've never been hurt' and 'do what you love'... For Goodrem and Hathaway, these aren't pretty tiles with beautiful backgrounds and curly fonts. These are a mirror-image of the enthusiasm and deep, deep love the two artists bring to their trade.

The rest of us? We play it all down, particularly women.

We laugh and then scan the group to see if anyone else is laughing, too. We cry and then apologise for getting carried away. We receive a compliment and we respond with 'I was lucky' or 'I had a good team'.

We find it so, so difficult to say 'I am unashamedly proud of what I'm doing and I am so happy to be doing it'.

Goodrem isn't so fearful. She, quite literally, 'dances like no ones watching'. And it's time we found inspiration in this bravery, as opposed to a reason for hate.