“Ugly Betty” a Massive Hit for ABC
Category: Beauty, Career, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Personality
Betty Suarez has always had one goal in life: to make it into the fashion industry. Despite being smart, hard-working, and productive, her dream has always been shadowed by the fact that she isn’t the best looking young woman. However, she is now determined to do whatever it takes to fulfill that ultimate dream. Ugly Betty is the newest fashion offering. Set in the glamorous backdrop of “Mode” fashion magazine, where everything and everyone is gorgeous, Betty is “the square peg in around hole”. Her appearance is lackluster, she doesn’t dress in couture, and she isn’t stick thin”. Betty is the proverbial fish out of water.
ABC had some inkling that “Ugly Betty,” an American version of a popular Spanish-language telenovela, was attracting attention even before the first episode aired. It had originally scheduled the show for Friday nights “one of the slowest nights on TV” before switching it to Thursday over the summer.
Based on the Colombian telenovela “Betty La Fea.” The story is about a very plain secretary who works in a glamorous fashion design house, surrounded by beautiful women. Despite her looks, Betty gets ahead, through hard work and intelligence, something Colombians find so impossible to believe that it is the bedrock of the show’s humour and massive appeal.
America may be falling for America Ferrera, the star of ABC’s “Ugly Betty,” an underdog that has become the most-watched new series of the fall television season so far. The series makes light of Betty’s struggles to acclimate within her contradictory environment, like Andrea in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’.Betty is smart and talented, but in the fashion industry, appearance is everything, so Betty and her new boss bump heads before
teaming up to conquer the backstabbers in the industry, and in the office.
The comedy, which stars America Ferrera as a plain Queens girl who pushed her way into the fashion world, was seen by 16.1 million people in its ABC debut on Thursday night. All but about a half-dozen of the 24 new series the broadcast networks are introducing this fall have made it onto the air already, and so far “Ugly Betty” stands at No. 1.
The show has already been successfully translated in Mexico, India,Indonesia, Russia, and Germany – all to stellar ratings. It was ABC’s largest audience in the time period with a scripted show since “Matlock” in 1995. 
“To me, Betty is the most beautiful opportunity that’s ever come across my path to represent a whole generation of young women who maybe don’t recognize themselves in anything they’re watching,” the 22-year-old California native and daughter of a Honduran mother has said. “Whether it be in magazines or on TV or in the movies, they’re invisible. To me, it’s an honor to take this role, and I love being her.”
The trademarks of Betty’s ugliness are her heavy red eyeglasses and comical orthodontics a wall between her and the world. Wouldn’t it be lovely if a smart actress turned the wall into a window? I know the show’s meant to be funny. We’re supposed to laugh at the funny outfits Betty wears, along with her dorky glasses and braces. Yet, what’s this really saying about the ordinary woman?
America Ferrera, best known for her roles in the movies Real Women Have Curves and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Regardless, America Ferrera is not ugly. She’s a rarity in that she’s a relatively normal, real-looking woman in an industry dominated by anorexic-looking model-types.
Tags: America Ferrera, Betty La Fea, Ugly Betty
