Ugly Betty

I have decided to analyze Betty Suarez, the title character of the television show Ugly Betty for my paper. Because she challenges ideologies including race, gender, and class, I figured she would be an interesting character to pick apart.

While I'm not 100 percent sure that I'm going to do this episode, the one I have in mind is from the third season, and is called "When Betty Met Yeti". In this episode, Betty, who works as an assistant at a fashion magazine, aspires to be a part of a career acceleration program, the "Young Editors Training Initiative". Standing in her way is Marc, another assistant who also wants to be accepted. The only problem? They only accept one employee per magazine.

After Betty is chosen, a bitter Marc tells her that the only reason that she got the position is because she's Latina, and the program had to fulfill certain requirements regarding race. So Betty deals with this news by discussing it with her family, and eventually turns down the position because she doesn't feel comfortable not having "authentically" earned it. However, by the end of the episode, after other miscellaneous factors and an interesting heart-to-heart with editor-in-chief Wilhelmina, who is also a minority, she ends up joining the program with Marc. Overall, this episode deals with the issue of Affirmative Action and the lack of minorities in powerful, executive careers.

In my analysis, I plan to address these issues and discuss how minorities in the workforce are portrayed. And, if I can't find enough information, I may switch to another episode, most likely the very first one in which she gets hired at Mode and discuss the issues of image and gender. Either way, I would also like to touch on the executive producers (including Salma Hayek) and writers of the show, and how the majority of them aren't white males.

Here's the recap:


I really really hope this show doesn't get cancelled...