Ugly Betty: the latest in a long line of American series that seem to gain precedence in terms of review-page inches over more deserving commissions. Almost as an antidote to the vacuous vogue of Sex In The City, Ugly Betty hits the viewers (not me I hasten to add, I make it a general rule not to watch a programme if it has been described as a) “gritty”, b) “off-beat” or c) “featuring ex-Friends actor/actress…”) right between the eyes with the audacity to be based around the inane existence of a disgustingly unattractive woman plying her trade in the fashion industry (as opposed to Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex In The City?).
Of course, one only has to read the basic synopsis of what Ugly Betty is all about in order to deduce how the show ends, i.e. the central character eventually emerges from her chrysalis and becomes a success (you can bet by the end that those glasses and teeth braces are also gone). Everything in between is merely an exercise on the writers’ part in degrading the main character and invoking sympathy for her in the viewer. Leave the hideous bitch alone! She’s better than you, you perfect 10 of seething sexual energy! (No she isn’t)
[It would all be a little more believable if the casting agency actually cast an
ugly person in the lead rather than recruiting America Ferreira, putting her in a fat suit and giving her geeky accessories. Are there no ugly actresses out there? Sarah Jessica Parker must have been too busy…]
Alas, I fear this show to be a new standard bearer for the gormless sheep of the under-30 female demographic. The antithesis to the predominantly size 0 crammed glossy magazines; a new Bible for every freak with the same inability to think for themselves as the dumb bitch with her head in the clouds and her pussy in the boss’s bed. Society’s sun and salad dodgers won’t draw confidence from a programme like Ugly Betty. In all probability they won’t even comprise the show’s audience – that onerous accolade almost certainly lies with the glitterati and jet-set tuning in to be part of the patronisation. After all, they know America Ferreira is one of them deep down, “Look how brave America is for wearing those horn-rimmed glasses,” they’ll mew.
And this is why the show is in unashamed direct contradiction of what it is preaching. The producers could have made a real life superstar of a less attractive actress if they so wished, but the truth is they just didn’t care for going against pattern. It didn’t matter that they don’t actually believe in the message their show so lamely carries as an albatross around its neck – put enough gloss and beauty around the edges and it will sell.
Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman are recent Oscar-winning actresses and to these eyes – and I’m sure that I am not alone on this one – this recognition only flowed via their “ordeal” of portraying ugly women (give me $10m and I’ll wear a prosthetic nose for the rest of my fucking
life – I won’t even ask for an Oscar, I promise). Do these two women
really possess the acting capacity to win an Oscar? Theron can’t even look convincing in the shampoo advert in which she succeeds in making Jennifer Aniston look like the female equivalent of Laurence Olivier.
However, beautiful people (although it’s mostly actresses who are drawn to this) playing ugly characters seems to be a more recent phenomenon. The flip side has been the more prevalent over the course of the modern era. Catwalk models to me are the most scrawny and wretchedly ugly human beings I have ever clapped eyes on, yet they are held up as the pinnacle of beauty. It’s not so much the carefully painted and manicured image we are being presented with, it’s the fawning sycophants who lap it up and spend their waking breath striving to reflect that image on to themselves. From over-dieting to copying a celebrity’s wardrobe to stealing an entire TV character’s identity in the pursuit of trendy cool.
[It’s almost a nailed-on, cast-iron certainty that in any group of four women, they will have allocated which of the four main characters of Sex In The City or Desperate Housewives they each most closely resemble.]
Style over substance has always been one of humanity’s greatest tools of distraction, but now it seems that style is evolving into substance itself. Everything these imbeciles are and have become is as a result of the dictated edicts cast down unto them by bigwig producers and head honcho magazine editors. They haven’t got a clue that they are merely puppets dancing the merry jig of the media moguls.
And I fucking love it.
