Ugly Betty: Character's Looks Are Relative to Our Anorexic Fashion World

After the first ten or fifteen minutes of the initial episode of Ugly Betty last season, it became pretty immediately clear that the title referred less to any innate or objective unattractiveness in the lead actress, but to the pointed contracts between America Ferrara's character and the bevy or underfed, undersized model wannabes that populate the offices and corridors of Mode Magazine. With apologies to Robert Heinlein, Betty is truly a stranger in a strange land.

Yes, the character is made up to look as plain as possible, replete with heavy glasses and braces, unpopular idiosyncratic and ethnic clothing and un-tweezed eyebrows. But after watching and listening for a bit, her appearance seems less 'ugly' than it does 'normal' in a world of flamboyant abnormality. Betty looks more like people I know than do the anorexic minions of the character, Wilhelmina, who strives to take over control of Mode by seducing and marrying its owner, the senior Mr. Meade.

The motif of establishing what constitutes a desirable appearance, attitude or behavior is often determined by the context - by the majority expectation and presentation. As is the case with so many things in life, the majority is not always right - especially, perhaps, when that majority is a narrowly defined and contained of zealots engaged in the pursuit of their own version of success. Betty just doesn't buy into it and her appearance is simply one manifestation of that fact. I think she is kind of cute!

This is an old one liner that goes something like, "In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king." And so it is with Betty. She is a nice, genuine and clearly humanly imperfect person. None-the-less, she can see a lot of things and people for whom and what they really are. In their eyes, she is a freak, a creature from another (undesirable) reality - someone to be abused, made fun of, scorned and taken advantage of. A target of smirking office humor.

But we see through it, just as the writer's of the show intended. I wonder how well we see through parallel situations in the real world of our day-to-day lives. Different = Bad? Not like we want to look = Ugly? Let's hope we do not fall victim to the narcissistic and image conscious personas that the majority of staff at Meade Publications personify. If Betty is ugly, let us strive to be ugly, too.