Colombia’s Beloved ‘Betty, the Ugly’

BOGOTA, Colombia —  She is the heroine of every secretary who ever spilled coffee on her boss’ Armani suit, the hope of girls who never have a partner at middle school dances, the consolation of clerks who lost promotions to better-looking co-workers.

And even in Colombia, where beauty queens reign supreme, that apparently is a lot of people. Enough to make “Yo Soy Betty, la Fea” (“I am Betty, the Ugly”) the biggest hit on Colombian television.

Every weeknight at 9, millions of Colombians turn on their televisions to laugh and cheer for the dumpy, awkward, bespectacled Betty as she triumphs over plotting colleagues at work and a controlling father at home. She has become fodder for political pundits and a symbol of qualities, such as loyalty and honesty, that sometimes seem out of style in a country where a Cabinet minister’s resignation amid accusations of corruption barely lifts an eyebrow.

Betty’s battles--and the public support for her--are a phenomenon in a country where the classifieds routinely specify “18 to 25 with a good presentation” in advertisements for secretaries and most prospective employers insist that photos be attached to resumes. “Yo Soy Betty” has called into question Colombia’s obsession with appearance.

“It’s a look at what a horror it is for an ugly woman to find a job and to have a personal life,” said Fernando Gaitan, the scriptwriter. “If a woman is not blond with a light complexion and blue or green eyes, the sort of person she is becomes secondary.”

Betty is one of those women so easily overlooked in Colombia, he added: “She can react with bitterness or she can turn it into black humor. Betty has the ability to laugh at herself.”

Using humor, “Yo Soy Betty” has broken the barrier of Latin American soap-opera stereotypes, especially the obligatory Cinderella plot in which the triumph of a poor but virtuous woman can only be explained by the leading lady’s extraordinary beauty. “Her looks have to carry the show,” said Ana Maria Orozco, the comedian who plays the unlovely Betty, of traditional roles.

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This show, instead, pokes fun at industries built around standard ideas of beauty. The setting is a fashion house, and gorgeous but vacuous models figure prominently among the characters.

Betty is part of the “Ugly Brigade,” a group of secretaries that the fashion designer has banned on aesthetic grounds from the runway and salons where he shows his creations to clients. But after a few episodes, it becomes clear that the secretaries keep the business going.

Colombia has loved their exploits, such as foiling an industrial spy’s plot to steal financial and marketing plans.

“There are themes that are latent in a society, and when a writer touches on them, they strike a chord,” said Mario Riveros, a well-know comedy director who is making his soap-opera debut with “Yo Soy Betty.” “This is one of those themes.”

The show consistently draws more than half of television viewers during its time slot, said Patricia Amaya, an analyst at Estudios Proceso. Her firm was hired to track ratings by the RCN network, which broadcasts “Yo Soy Betty.” The show is the highest-rated series in the two years since private television stations were permitted in Colombia, and automated monitoring of viewing habits began, she said.

Significantly, single episodes of the show have achieved higher ratings than either the Miss Colombia beauty pageant or the national team’s games in the Copa America international soccer competition, major draws for television audiences here.

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Colombians identify so closely with Betty that when a cloth manufacturer offered her a bribe to push orders his way in a recent Friday episode, the nation was in an uproar for a weekend.

“Don’t let corruption swallow you up,” Juan Lozano pleaded in an open letter to Betty in his popular column in Colombia’s largest-circulation daily newspaper, El Tiempo. “Betty, you are the object of affection of multitudes, having transcended [your place] in the Ugly Brigade to touch the hearts of thousands of good Colombians, tired of violence, perversity and corruption, whom you can influence.”

The following Monday, Betty refused the bribe in a segment that was seen by 57% of Colombians watching TV that night. The number of viewers probably would have been higher, an RCN spokeswoman said, except that Medellin, the nation’s second-largest city, was without electricity that night because of a guerrilla attack on the municipal electric towers.

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The show’s success makes it easy to forget that it initially was a risky venture. Gaitan’s original idea was for a modern version of the “Ugly Duckling” story, so he cast the attractive Orozco and turned her reversibly dowdy with braces, glasses, an unflattering hairdo and unstylish clothes.

He chose Orozco for the role, he told colleagues, because he saw a self-portrait in which she painted herself as ugly. “He knew that she had overcome vanity,” said director Riveros, “that if she was able to paint herself as ugly, she could act in an ugly role.”

Orozco added a facial tic to show when Betty is nervous. She took the role so seriously that she lay awake one night until 3 a.m. during rehearsals, agonizing after another cast member warned her not to exaggerate her movements.

But as much as an experienced player, Gaitan also wanted an actress who could become a swan.

“I was ready to make the switch if the show did not work,” he admitted. Now, he said, several female friends have told him that they will never forgive him if he makes Betty beautiful.

He is committed to writing scripts that will let his lead character triumph both in love and at work as an ugly woman, he said, but has not completely given up the idea of letting the swan loose.

Nor is it clear how much “Yo Soy Betty” will change Colombian television, much less Colombian life.

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Fans stop Orozco to tell her how much they like the character. While the actress was shopping for groceries recently, a woman approached her to say that she admires Betty because “she doesn’t let people walk over her.”

“We are educating people,” said Orozco. “We can make changes with a soap opera.”

But Gaitan warned not to expect the unglamorous heroine to become a fixture in Latin American television.

“It will be a long time before anyone touches this theme again,” he predicted. “I know that for my next script, I’m going to have to find a very beautiful leading lady.”