The popular Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea (translated to "I Am Betty the Ugly") has crushed a big telenovela stereotype.
Classic telenovelas in South America are filled with pounds of make-up, beautiful and well-known actresses, and over dramatic episodes. This telenovela's main character is a girl with big glasses, braces, and untamed hair. No other telenovela is like this one, and everyone is hooked on it.
Yo Soy Betty La Fea stars Ana Maria Orozco as Beatriz "Betty" Pinzó Solano, the sweet, shy, intelligent and unattractive main character, who falls in love with her boss Armando while working at the prestigious fashion company EcoModa. Although she never wanted a career in fashion, she couldn't find a job anywhere else due to her appearance. So she put a different picture on her resume and got the job. At the end of the series, she then gets a makeover, ditching the glasses and braces, making her much more attractive. This is from the article "Ugly is the New Beautiful" at jerriblank.com.
By the end of the show's two year run and having 340 episodes, Yo Soy Betty La Fea was Columbia's most popular telenovela, having 3 million viewers a night. Countries around the world wanted their own Betty. This included India's Betty named Jassi, and her show "There's No One Like Jassi". Other countries included the Netherlands, Russia and the United States. Even though their storylines weren't the same, they had the same "ugly duckling" theme in mind. This was from an article by Matthew Fogel of The New York Times.
This quote is from the original Betty the Ugly, Miss Ana Orozco, about how the show affects people of Colombia, from the article The Phenomenom of Yo Soy Betty La Fea at zonalatina.com:
"In Colombia, a country plagued by infighting country, this telenovela is an escape from reality in a nation overwhelmed... It is a parallel world to everything else that happens in the country. I think this is a way for people to forget reality, while some laughed for half an hour everyday".
Image from user Feamoda of DeviantART.