American Broadcasting Company’s Ugly Betty with its ugly heroine may challenge dominant ideals of feminine beauty, but the subversive potential of Betty’s ugliness is largely recuperated through commodification and rhetorical strategies of rearticulation. This has happened most significantly beyond the episodic text via affiliated Web sites and a public service campaign, “Be Ugly ’07.” These outlets create an expansive text that provides immediate and interactive arenas in which to simultaneously expand and contain a reevaluation of Betty’s ugliness. By repurposing content across various Web sites, producers circulate multiple messages about beauty all the while creating an expansive and lucrative branded online environment. This article argues that the resulting rearticulation, ugly = self-assured, does not pose a significant challenge to traditional standards of beauty on television.
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