September 30, 2006

let google define ugly

My message today is a simple one. Without coming directly out and declaring The Word, let me just put it this way...

This is "ugly" according to the ABC network:













From the new ABC show called Ugly Betty comes that hideous creature. Or maybe hideous is too strong a word, so let's call her not pretty. Or at least, badly dressed.

Because let's face it, this girl's not repulsive. Although the costume braces make her mouth huge and her clothes are over-the-top terrible, she has an otherwise pleasant face. Here are a few pictures of the real life actress:




































This girl is moments away from being very pretty in real life (yes, she's a little round-ish, but who isn't these days?). But with glasses, braces and frumpy clothes she's suddenly morphed into Ugliness.

(Allow me a quick rant about the glasses. This is an entirely out-of-touch idea from the brains behind this show. Lots of people wear glasses. Many of those people look better because of them. Adding glasses to illustrate ugliness is straight out of an elementary school playbook.)

Hollywood once tried to fool us into believing that this girl was also a lost cause:




















In the movie She's All That, this actress played a nerd who had to become pretty before the film ends.





(there they go with the glasses again)








Tons of sarcasm is flooding into my mind, but I'll take the high road instead and simply say that Hollywood is all wrong about what makes people ugly. Hollywood's preschool lesson is often that real ugliness is "on the inside," but that's just not true. If only Hollywood would employ actual ugly people they would find this out.

And in an attempt to research true ugliness, I went to the one thing that holds no bias: Google. I searched with the terms "ugly," and "ugly people."

Friends, I present you with...

The Gallery of Google Uglies


(my advanced apologies to these ugly people):




















i can't look at this one directly












the real Ugly Betty?











is this a photoshop job?













"I look like a warthog."





















I actually get angry looking at this one.















Her face is shaped like toast.












At least they have each other?













I don't even know what to say here.




















yep. even pets can be ugly.








All right, all right, I can't take it anymore....no more ugly people.

***

ABC is hoping the gimmick of having an "ugly" main character will be enough to draw viewers in. But as you can see, Ugly Betty isn't really that daring because Betty's just pretend ugly - it's enough to tell our imaginations that she's supposed to be ugly without literally being so ugly that we won't watch.

There's nothing much wrong with that, I guess. It's just that she's not really that ugly when compared to actual ugly people.

No comments: