Page 73 - Middle Georgia State University - Knighted 2019
P. 73

physical beauty, in the Anglo beauty standards that are regular in most eastern countries, as well
as key differences, where Ugly Betty “undercuts the excesses of the telenovela” with casting and
key portions of the plot (Tierney 10). Tierney then goes on to discuss the Western and Latin
American concepts of female beauty, which are informed by skin tone, hair color, and body type,
and that our Western culture has been dominated by the idea of lighter skin, lighter hair, and
slimmer bodies, and that Latin American ideals reflect this domination due to “nineteenth-
century ‘nation-building’ discourses” (Tierney 11). Tierney also goes on to discuss
“uglification,” and the different norms and ideas that were used to make Betty considered ugly,
such as glasses, braces, and the clothes she wears. Lastly, Tierney discusses class and economic
status. In Betty, la fea and Ugly Betty, both Bettys are considered ugly due to their class;
however, the way they change that differs.

         In their very interesting study, Parrott (2015) discusses the likelihood of criminal
perpetration and victimization in males versus females and in blacks versus whites. In this
quantitative study, they analyzed 983 characters over 65 episodes of highly rated crime drama
television, between the years 2010 and 2013 (Parrott 1). In their analyses they broke down crime
into differing titles of crime, and violence into severity, as well as relationship between the
perpetrator and victim. In their study, they found that females are underrepresented with 39% of
the population, while males cover 61%, and that while Caucasians and African Americans are
generally well represented, Hispanics and Asian Americans are underrepresented with 6% and
5%. They also found that males would be more likely to perpetrate crimes and violence, and that
females were more often the victims of crimes, but no significant difference developed in who is
more likely to be a victim of violence. When it came to separating statistics with race, white
women were more likely to be crime victims, white males showed a greater likelihood to commit

                                                                                                                                                                             72
   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78