"Betty," however, was unlike anything I had seen. I was hooked. I tuned in nightly. I watched as Betty was treated cruelly because she was ugly. The show's creators never spared her an insult or avoided a joke. Everything was fair game. The soap offered some of the most realistic portrayals of race and class in Latin America that I have seen on Spanish-language television, including a single mother struggling to eke out a living, a black secretary who insists her blind dates be informed of her race and a cast of wealthy personalities whose lack of empathy made them seem like Leona Helmsley clones.

The showed appeared to remain true to the philosophy of its creator, Fernando Gaitan, who was once quoted as saying that telenovelas are really about class struggle. For Gaitan, the telenovela was made for the poor, who live in a world where it is nearly impossible to get ahead. Other soaps were meant to offer an uplifting message in which downtrodden characters finally succeed, thanks to their love lives. Gaitan said his characters also succeeded, but instead thanks to their work.

Indeed, Betty climbed the corporate ladder, getting promoted from a lowly assistant to vice president of finance as a result of hard work. She never stopped trying and eventually captured the attention of her boss, a spoiled man who routinely yelled at secretaries, mismanaged the firm's assets and constantly cheated on his fiancée.

Slowly, Betty and her boss moved closer. He began to take notice of her as he struggled to keep the company afloat. She fell head over heels for a man who showed her some attention and kindness. Eventually the boss's interest in Betty moved from what she could do for his pocketbook to what she did for his heart.

And then, just in the nick of time, Betty sheds her ugly duckling image and transforms herself into a beautiful executive who struggles with the realization that her lover isn't a prince. In the end, Betty chooses to overlook his shortcomings and the two wed.

If Gaitan's message is that Betty moves ahead thanks to hard work and good old-fashioned smarts, the underlying text is very different. Apparently the antiheroine is intelligent enough to add the numbers but not smart enough to see her boss for the lying, cheating louse that he is. In the end, Gaitan gives us the same old message: Women can't find true happiness alone; they need a man to help them realize their dreams.

The message is so obvious -- and so reactionary -- that it has prompted angry opinion pieces accusing the show of being criminal for misleading the public. One Colombian writer mockingly said the country's attorney general could charge the show with a litany of crimes including fraud and abuse of the public trust. And in Costa Rica, where the show is still broadcast, legislators attempted to ban the soap midway through its run. (The soap is still being shown in several Latin American countries, including Argentina.)

Perhaps the biggest crime of Betty the Ugly One is that it missed the opportunity to bring one of the most popular Spanish-language television genres into the 21st century. Unlike the United States, where English-language films and television offer a broader range of female characters, Spanish-language viewers are confined to the small screen. Latin filmmakers struggle to put out a few movies, leaving viewers little choice other than what they get on the tube. So when viewers were promised a radical new character who broke stereotypes, millions of us tuned in.

What we got was the same old Cinderella story.

Recent Stories