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Makeover narratives are a form of discourse which relies on some type of transformation as a path to success. These narratives mainly target the bodies of white middle-class and middleaged heterosexual women with the aim of creating more conventionally beautiful feminine subjects. This article explores the beauty practices and rituals present in the US dramedy Ugly Betty. We look in detail at makeover narratives and their close association with contemporary idealized versions of female attractiveness. Closely tied up with the makeover canon, the beauty industry entails processes of disciplining women's bodies to meet the requirements of an ideal feminine being. This regulation of the external appearance is made evident in Ugly Betty, suggesting that the adaptation of the self to dominant beauty discourses provides the way to personal and professional success. The thorough exploration of the makeover framework also reveals its linkage with the contradictoriness of neoliberal capitalism and current post-feminist sensibilities. In Ugly Betty, we find a vibrant, independent and determined protagonist that fights indefatigably for her dream job but, on the other hand, sexist depictions still persist, such as the continual mockery, disparagement and disregard of women who fail to match the narrow Western expressions of feminine appearance. Such a self-contradictory picture marks one of the contemporary debates of the feminist movement as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using ethnographic observation, this study explores the television (TV) formatting of Ugly Wudi, the Chinese version of Ugly Betty. The article explicates how Chinese producers followed the “bible” of format production, differentiated ideological points of contestation, and modified narratives contradictory to Chinese ideology in the localization process. Ugly Betty’s localization reflects the political, cultural, and commercial imperatives in China. The producers recreated a televised drama with its own unique Chinese modernity, which invited a large spectatorship within the boundary of the current politico-social landscape. It also initiated an innovative marketing model that could maximize profits through format localization. As a new industry development strategy, TV formatting brings western values into China and is changing the landscape of Chinese TV. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the ideological construct "beauty" that permeates our society by focusing specifically on socially constructed ideals of beauty and ugliness as they are represented in media text, specifically, in the TV sitcom Ugly Betty. For this study we conducted focus group interview sessions to explore the influence an alternative representation of beauty and ugliness, as portrayed in the show Ugly Betty, has on college aged females' definition and interpretation of beauty-typically questions explored using traditional experimental and other quantitative methods. Moreover, this study provides insights into tensions surrounding how beauty and ugliness are defined and the implications of these definitions for women. Keywords: Beauty, Ugly, Ugliness, Media, Focus Groups, Sitcoms, Ugly Betty [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues related to immigration have long been present in U.S. television and print news cycles. In recent years, those issues have become more prevalent in U.S. popular culture, especially in television and popular music. In this essay, we analyze three representative and diverse examples from U.S. popular media to better understand the representation of immigrant narratives: ABC'sUgly Betty, the Chicano band, Los Lobos's 2006 album,The Town and the City, andCNN Presents“Immigrant Nation.” From our analysis, we advance three interconnected arguments: First, personalized narratives of the immigrant experience reify stereotypes through accumulation and repetition that contributes to the construction of border spectacle. Second, audiences interpret individualized accounts through ambivalent readings that function to entrench audience beliefs and attitudes about immigrants and immigration which create unmotivated sympathies. Finally, individual accounts humanize issues related to immigration, but they also individualize responsibility and absolve collective responsibilities by emphasizing immigrants’ hard work and pursuit of the U.S. American Dream. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘Cultural translation’ is a metaphor whose currency is increasing in the broad field of cultural studies, but it has largely been neglected in narrower field of television studies. This article brings cultural translation to television studies by proposing an approach to describe how the industrial logics that govern the global circulation of programs also shape them as texts. It then uses this approach to explain the circulation of telenovelas in the English-language market in the United States, paying special attention to Ugly Betty, adapted from the Colombian program Yo soy Betty, la fea. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The global television landscape in the first decade of the 21st century is a complex terrain of contradictory developments and trends. Since the early years of television the United States has been the most important exporter of TV series, TV serials and game shows. But nowadays times have changed. Admittedly the USA is still the leading nation in selling TV fiction all over the world, but since the deregulation of the TV market in Western Europe in the 1990s Great Britain and the Netherlands are the leading exporters of non-fiction formats like reality shows, Australia sells its soap operas all over the world and Latin American countries are important exporters of telenovelas. At the beginning of the 21st century the Colombian telenovela Yo soy Betty, la fea made its way around the world. Several countries bought the rights to produce a local adaptation of the format. For example ABC produced Ugly Betty in the United States, the German channel Sat.1 produced Verliebt in Berlin, and there is a Russian adaptation Ne Rodis’ Krasivoy. This article compares several local adaptations of the telenovela: the Colombian original and the adaptations in Germany, Russia, Spain and the USA. It looks at the dramaturgical and narrative proximities and differences of the adaptations and focuses on the textual conditions of international success. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cinderella, a perfect fairly tale girl has been widely known to the world. Its popularity reveals the universal Cinderella Complex hidden behind the woman status. My thesis focuses its attention on the transition in woman status. First, it looks into the Cinderella paradigm as well as its complex in reality. Second, it finds the transcendence in modern Cinderella. The last part pursues the development of women status' improvement. In current study, seldom people make comparisons between Cinderella and Ugly Betty. With its comparison and the exploration of feminism, it can be reached that woman status have been greatly improved under the influence of different factors like economic and political. And as a modern woman lives in the new century, she has to be independent in economy and optimistic in spirit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines representations of U.S.-Latino identity on the ABC television program Ugly Betty. The analysis argues that the show articulates a tension between ethnic “otherness” and cultural assimilation that symbolizes current negotiations of individual and collective identities among young, English-speaking Latinos in the United States. Furthermore, the essay argues that Ugly Betty symbolically endorses a new conceptualization of Latino identity in the United States. The conceptual framework of the analysis is the relationship between media representation and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]