Barbara Lippert's Critique: Ordinary People: The New Pretty

ABC's Ugly Betty is a show with a mean-spirited title and a seemingly well-worn premise: Place a slightly overweight, badly dressed young woman with glasses and braces on the staff of an excruciatingly snobby women's fashion magazine, and watch the designer fur fly. But unlike all the editorial assistants/Cinderellas before her—most notably, the one in The Devil Wears Prada—Betty (America Ferrera) has not, as of yet, stripped off the glasses and gotten beautiful. Yes, she has trimmed her Marx Bros.-level eyebrows, but otherwise sticks with her signature look: polyester separates set off by fiercely gleaming orthodontia. That's because the show is not about whether Betty will ditch the poncho or get Da Vinci tooth veneers. Rather, what resonates is her humanity, intelligence and authenticity in the face of her mean, superficial workplace family. Ugly Betty has become a breakout hit because it upends standard cliches about woman and beauty and, along the way, forces us to reconsider the notion of what is ugly and what is beautiful—and, while we're at it, what is ethical and what is real. A rejection of inauthenticity is not being limited to the make-believe world of TV. Personalities are coming under scrutiny as well, as seen by the negative reaction to Star Jones when she refused to come clean about her stomach bypass surgery (no doubt one reason she was booted from The View). And Jenny Craigster Kirstie Alley, by no means model thin, was cheered for the 75 pounds she has very publically lost; the audience was also more than forgiving about her choreographed bikini reveal on Oprah. With the recent death of a young Brazilian model from complications of anorexia, we're also witnessing a waif backlash, to which the worldwide fashion industry has responded by imposing and/or considering weight minimums for their runway models. Another sign of the time: famously anti-cosmetic surgery actress, Diane Keaton now appears in L'Oreal ads via McCann Erickson.Enough is enough, it would seem, in more than just politics. In fact, welcome to the comfort and authenticity of an Ugly Betty moment, a much-needed cultural correction from the obsession with cosmetic perfection. It's fueled, in part, by the inevitable reaction to any extreme trend (we even have badplasticsurgery.com with which to peruse the damages). Having a nightmare plastic surgery story to tell (after her scarred, not-ready-for-the-red-carpet breast implants were posted all over the Internet) has actually helped B-list actress Tara Reid get herself booked on talk shows recently. An air of desperation and fear resonates from the unmoving foreheads and giant lips plastered in magazines and on TV. And that says much about Hollywood's tossing aside of anyone over 35—and how this emphasis on youth and perfection trickles down to the culture at large. Which brings us to the baby boomers. Blame it on exhaustion, but one could argue that they have approached the age where they either need to give into and/or embrace the aging process, or go broke (and, possibly, physically harm themselves) trying to stave it off.What is clear is that, from a pop culture standpoint, the pendulum has swung back to the middle. Extreme Makeover, for instance, devoted to giving people the cosmetic surgeries of their dreams, was yanked off the air after one episode this season due to low ratings. Spinoff Extreme Makeover: Home Edition has become a mainstay. The big difference: Home Edition focuses not on the self-obsessed, but on truly needy people—the kind who bring multiple-disabled foster children into their homes or who themselves have suffered terrible health problems or losses. Proving that more-attainable types of beauty are officially in vogue, Entertainment Tonight jumped on the compassion bandwagon for mid-November sweeps when correspondent Vanessa Minnillo did a heavily promoted hidden-camera investigative series entitled "Ugly Vanessa." The former beauty queen spent hours on the street encased in fake fat to see whether she'd be treated differently. She was. She got ignored or was made fun of—reactions quite different to the overwhelmingly positive attention she received in her other investigative outfit—a blonde wig and miniskirt. The searing insight that people generally prefer hot blondes in miniskirts to fat people allowed her to make a final ringing statement about the need for sensitivity for the overweight. With its "Campaign for Real Beauty" from Ogilvy & Mather, Dove has worked steadily on a more genuine and authentic stance for women. This fall, Dove's latest move was an Internet video, "Evolution," which asks, "How did our perception of beauty get so distorted?" Then, in sped-up time, it shows an average-looking woman sitting through 10 hours of hair and makeup. Yet to meet "model" standards, she still has to have her neck lengthened and her eyes enlarged (courtesy of airbrushing and Photoshop) before the image can be put on a billboard. The video has gotten some 500,000 hits on YouTube plus thousands of girls and women posted their appreciative feelings about it on the Dove Web site.Another brand, L'Oreal, has decided to embrace instead of eradicate the wrinkle by using Keaton, an actress who famously refuses to go under the knife. "I want to express my age and be authentic," she was quoted as saying in regard to the ad. "Why do so many people follow somebody else's idea of what's attractive?"Keaton, along with Jamie Lee Curtis and Cybill Shepherd, also spoke out against cosmetic surgery recently on Access Hollywood. Shepherd told the camera that she likes her boobs just the way they are: "They're more flexible this way. I can wear them up or down.'' And Jane Fonda, who has had more public cycles than a Maytag washer—she was anti-cosmetic surgery in the '70s and then face-lifted in the '80s—is again in step with the Zeitgeist, announcing that she is off plastic surgery (no better living through plastics). It shouldn't surprise us that even those who can afford it—least of all Fonda, given her past political agendas—are putting aside the pursuit of physical perfection. We're bombarded with images from Iraq, Darfur and, closer to home, post-Katrina New Orleans—images unavoidable in this era of YouTube.The new media provide outlets to express the pangs of social conscience and common decency that are the natural reactions to public ugliness. Certainly, this was the case for shutting down Judith Regan's Fox TV interview with O.J. Simpson to coincide with the publication of his book, If I Did It. The idea so repulsed advertisers and the public that Rupert Murdoch apologized and announced that it was being pulled. But this rejection of perfection is hardly a revolution. While we're in the throes of celebrating regular folks—the sweat and tears of the teams on CBS' The Amazing Race, the multi-cultural, all-shapes-and-sizes (but sweaty) talent on Bravo's Top Chef—it is vastly overpowered by the overwhelming consensus that thin is in and aging an embarrassment to be overcome. Yes, Entertainment Tonight's Mannillo put on a fat suit, but it turned out to be more of a celebration of her thin, pretty self.And Americans, to borrow a term from New York Times writer and former Botox addict Alex Kuzcynski, are still beauty junkies. (Her well-received book, Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession With Plastic Surgery, was published this year.) Botox use is exponentially on the rise and, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, since 1997 there has been an increase of 444 percent in the total number of cosmetic procedures. (The percentage has remained relatively constant over the last few years, however, for teens 18 and younger.)And given that Ugly Betty is on network TV, how long could it possibly take before the curvy Latina character gets her nips and tucks?It looks like at least a season. The storylines are following her love life and her family as she also finds career success—despite the polyester. As Ferrera told the gals on The View about her character, "It's not about looking ugly. It's just about looking past what you see. Achieving that image is not all you were put on this planet to do. On the show, you get to watch the other people blossom into real human beings because Betty reminds them what it is to be real." And maybe the show also offers a return to baseline normal, where natural has to be good enough because we have more important things to do.

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Barbara Lippert's Critique: Ordinary People: The New Pretty

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Barbara Lippert