Barbie, Betty & Beauty Standards.

When pretty isn't pretty enough, what do you do?

Ella

Jul 12, 2024

NOTE: This post contains light spoilers for Barbie (2023) and Ugly Betty (2006-2010).

Beauty. Noun.

1. A combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses.

2. A beautiful woman.

“You are an attractive, intelligent, confident businesswoman.”

… I say to myself as I attempt to start writing this piece. This one’s been at the back of my brain for the best part of a year, so I think it’s time to bite the bullet and write it. I hope I do the subject justice.

Last summer, I re-watched one of my favourite TV shows of all time, Ugly Betty. If you’ve never seen it before, it follows a girl called Betty, played by the brilliant America Ferrera, who gets a job as the assistant to the editor-in-chief at Mode fashion magazine. The twist? Betty is a stereotypically unattractive woman (important to double underline the ‘stereotypical’ - we’ll get to that later) who sticks out like a sore thumb against her supermodel-esque colleagues.

As I was watching, I was struck by how relevant the show was in 2023, so I checked to see when it was made and Ugly Betty ran from 2006 to 2010. Initially I was like, ‘that’s not as long as I thought’, and then I realised that 2010 was fourteen years ago. 2006? Eighteen years ago!! Ugly Betty should be well past it’s expiry date by now, especially considering some of the issues it deals with - queerness, race, immigration, classism, trans rights, sexism, the list goes on. I could write a whole article about how ahead of its time this show was, but one thing at a time. Today, we’re talking beauty standards.

“God forbid you had to work with the ugly girl your dad forced you to hire.”

I'd like to start by saying 2006 must have been a weird old time because in what world is Betty ugly? Look at her - picture above. Come on now. She’s literally gorgeous. Anyway, for the purposes of this article, let’s pretend it’s 2006 and Betty is sooo ugly.

First, I’ll turn to the characteristics that make Betty ‘ugly’: braces, glasses, frizzy hair, bushy brows, apparent lack of style, and curves. We’ve also got factors such as race and class that come into play - Betty is a Latina who comes from a working-class background and lives in Queens. She is directly contrasted with her colleagues, who are tall, slim, blonde and white, and dressed head to toe in designer clothing. The Mode employees are representative of the beauty ideal in the early noughties when the show was set. What’s more, these are the people who work at a fashion magazine - they literally set the standard.

Time for a bit of context. You’ve heard of pretty privilege, but are you ready for ugly privilege? You might be wondering, if Betty is so different from her colleagues, why is she working at Mode anyway? Her looks, ladies and gentlemen. Betty’s boss is Daniel Meade, labelled a ‘playboy’ by the media. His father Bradford Meade hires Betty because he knows Daniel won’t be attracted to her, and therefore he might actually concentrate on his job as opposed to lusting after his assistant. It’s important to note that Betty is initially rejected from the position, despite being perfectly qualified.

“There is nobody here who cares about fixing the inside, they only care about fixing the outside!”

What I love about Betty is it so clearly points out the flaws with beauty ideals. Betty is judged and mocked for her appearance and background, but very quickly her colleagues see that they are underestimating her and they see her as a challenge, someone who makes them think harder and think differently. The jokes made about Betty’s appearance very quickly poke fun at themselves - they aren’t valid. The audience understands that they are ridiculous - they’re supposed to be. They so cleverly use stereotypes and hyperbole to their advantage.

One of my favourite examples of this is when Marc (Michael Urie) dresses up as Betty for Halloween. Hilarious, yes, but it’s hilarious because it’s so stupid. When you think about it, we’re comparing Betty to something like a witch or a zombie or whatever it is kids dress up as for Halloween to scare the life out of their parents these days.

To balance out Betty’s so-called hideous features, she is the sweetest, most hard-working, kind, angelic character in the whole show. Her niceties make her impossible not to love - even the most judgemental viewer has to look past her appearance and accept she’s brilliant. Betty’s appearance also means she resonates with a large audience: most people have felt like the odd-one-out at some point in their lives. Her character appeals to the compassionate viewer. Don’t worry - if the braces and glasses are too much for you to handle, she has her “beast to beauty” glow up by the end of the series.

“Whatever. I’m still prettier.”

Let’s talk about Amanda. Amanda (played by Becki Newton) is Mode’s receptionist. She’s conventionally attractive: slim, white, blonde, fashionable. Her character is mean, dumb, and sly - see what I mean about stereotypes? Amanda has long been in love with Daniel and would do anything for Betty’s job as his assistant. Just as it is frustrating and upsetting to see Betty ridiculed for her appearance, it is aggravating to see the portrayal of the other women at Mode as unkind, unintelligent, and cunning. Vanessa Williams plays Wilhelmina Slater, Mode’s creative director and the show’s primary antagonist. Though fabulously devious, the show demonstrates the cliché that women in power have to be hard as nails to get where they want to be.

What Ugly Betty highlights so well is the stark reality that in modern Western society, there is a constant struggle for women to get to the top.

“Don’t worry - everyone likes me and thinks I’m cool and pretty.”

During my big re-watch last summer, Greta Gerwig’s modern classic Barbie burst into cinemas. If you’ve not seen it, where have you actually been? Still, if you need reminding, I’ll give you a brief overview. Margot Robbie plays stereotypical Barbie, a conventional Barbie with the blondest hair and highest self-worth you’ve ever seen. Every day is perfect, forever. One day, she wakes up experiencing thoughts of death, insecurity, and notices she has cellulite and flat feet. Gasp! Barbie goes on an adventure to the real world to fix it and become stereotypically beautiful again. She meets Gloria, the real-life woman who owns her, played by, yet again, the wonderful America Ferrera. Barbie realises that she actually likes being imperfect and everything that comes with being a real woman. That’s an incredibly diluted summary, but hopefully covers the basics.

At first, Barbie’s shock and horror at her new imperfections is funny. It’s something so normal to us as the audience. However, there’s a pivotal scene where it becomes blatantly apparent that even Barbie, a woman designed to be the ultimate beauty ideal, can’t live up to the standard expected of her.

“I’m not stereotypical Barbie pretty!”

What happens when even the most conventionally attractive women can’t achieve the beauty standard? That’s the world we’re living in.

During the press tour for Barbie, Greta Gerwig pointed out that if there were to be a real woman who had the same physical proportions as a Barbie doll, she wouldn’t be able to stand up or lift her head. The beauty standard isn’t just unattainable, it’s impossible. As stereotypical Barbie, her niche was her look. With that deteriorating in the eyes of society, Barbie feels depleted and like she has nothing else to offer - and is it any surprise? In her fantastic piece Barbie Has Cellulite (But You Don’t Have To), Jessica Defino amplifies the irony inflicted by the Barbie marketing. She writes:

‘Barbie encounters an older, wrinkled woman in the human world and is overcome with emotion. “You are so beautiful,” Barbie tells her through tears; a supposedly touching response signalling the doll’s emergent humanity. Yet when the Barbie movie has the opportunity to touch the lives of actual women - via its merch, the only aspect of the film that materially affects fans - it tells them to destroy “signs of aging” and strive for “firm, youthful skin” with the Barbie Glow Jelly Face Mask.’

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t clocked onto this before I read Jessica’s piece. She accentuates how Barbie’s marketing undermines the message of the movie that beauty isn’t skin deep. Look like Barbie with the Zara x Barbie fashion line! Look like Barbie with Barbie x NYX Cosmetics! This isn’t to say that these collaborations aren’t fun, but I wonder whether there could have been more focus on a marketing strategy that didn’t concentrate on female aesthetics. I wholeheartedly believe that Gerwig’s intention with this movie is to demonstrate that being a woman means being multi-dimensional, means being more than the fullness of our lips and the curves of our bodies. It’s a shame that women can watch the movie, feel empowered by Gerwig’s message, and then still leave feeling as though they need to buy the perfect shade of lipstick sold to them under the guise of Barbie and girlhood, when in actual fact it’s just another strategy to make us feel as though we could do better.

Greta Gerwig even demonstrates this in the movie - when Gloria pitches “Ordinary Barbie”, she is dismissed until Mattel realises it will sell. Female imperfections are only acceptable if we can profit from them.

“I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.”

Gloria’s speech is the highlight of the movie for me; it perfectly conveys how impossible it can feel to be a woman.

It was at this point watching the film where I started to draw the connections between Barbie and Betty. Barbie is a stereotypically perfect woman - she’s an aspirational beauty. Betty is her apparent opposite - clumsy and seemingly unattractive. Yet, both of them are facing the same struggle: the strain of proving their value. Barbie is valuable when she is perfect. Betty is valuable because she is smart. Both of them feel as though this isn’t enough. The reality? They’re both so much more than that, but society is too shallow to take any notice of it. And America Ferrera has been trying to get this point across for EIGHTEEN YEARS!

What I’m taking from this is - you could be the most stereotypically beautiful woman in the room, you could fit the beauty ideal just a little bit, or you could be the polar opposite, and it still won’t be enough for somebody somewhere. What’s worse? The ideal is constantly changing! Fit the standard today, miss out tomorrow. There are women and girls striving to achieve something that can never be achieved. Isn’t that depressing? These girls who have so much to offer, and the world is belittling them to the way they look. We are trapped in a race that can never be won. As we edge toward the finish line, it’s moved a step backwards.

I remember seeing a tweet last year from some loser saying that Margot Robbie was ‘mid’. The tweet went viral, with hundreds of men claiming to agree, saying they ‘didn’t understand the hype' around her. What a way to take an award-winning producer, actress, businesswoman and advocate and reduce her to her appearance. Lucy Morgan writes,

“The people calling Margot “mid” know full well that the Barbie star has all the physical attributes – slim build, tanned skin, blonde hair, etc. – associated with Eurocentric beauty ideals; she's been cast as the stereotypical Barbie for exactly this reason.”

If this doesn’t demonstrate the impossibility of womanhood, and the oppressive expectation of women to serve the male gaze, I don’t know what will.

“Men hate women and women hate women. It’s the only thing we can all agree on.”

I remember when girls stopped being friends and turned into competition.

I was about thirteen and in a PE class. I’ve always been tiny, five foot nothing, and although I don’t have a problem with it now, at school I felt like I stuck out - I never had a growth spurt and was a real late bloomer. I was with another girl in my class when we were doing wall-sits, when she looks at me and says, ‘I hate you so much, look at your thighs.’ I had never thought about my thighs before. I looked at them and to me, they were just leg. My classmate kept saying how she hated her own legs, that they were too big when she sat down. I had never thought about her legs before, nor did I see anything wrong with them. When I eventually did grow into my hips and my curves took shape, I understood what she meant. I would look at girls on Pinterest and wonder if I should look like them. I always wanted to be taller, less short and stumpy.

When I was in sixth form, I overheard a conversation between two of my friends as they were discussing a boy one of them was fancied. “He’s seeing this girl,” one of them said, flashing a picture of another girl’s selfie. “She’s not all that, hun, she’s fake! She’s got highlights. You’re all natural.”

At university, the boys I knew used girls’ beauty like currency to determine their value. The more you were worth, the better they would treat you. Their remarks were designed to keep us feeling less-than - they could determine how we felt about ourselves with one pathetic quip. After accidentally bumping a boy in the arm when squeezing past him on a night out, I was told I’d gone from a “top tier” to a “6/10, could be prettier”, and stopped being invited to things because I was “difficult”. SORRY?!! Imagine if I’d spoken about him the same way. The double standards are immense.

The thing is, I was so used to girls being treated like competition based on their appearance, it didn’t surprise me anymore. It disgusted me, yes, but I wasn’t surprised. As girls, we did it to ourselves all the time unknowingly. Somewhere along the line, we were taught that it was normal. Thank goodness the narrative changed.

I’ve reluctantly grown up in a Love Island world. In my opinion, the show has always promoted an unrealistic beauty ideal, casting a specific genre of person to create a microcosm of aesthetic ‘perfection’. Though I haven’t watched this year’s series, I have seen the articles online criticising the female contestants for the work they’ve had done, slating them for looking ‘too old’ and ‘fake’. Pair this with the articles ‘exposing’ contestants who have had botox and fillers and commending those they deem ‘natural beauties’, or at least, natural-looking. Katie Rosseinsky puts it best:

“The Islanders are being called out, essentially, for having had the wrong sort of treatments, ones which are too obvious and therefore distasteful. It’s a sentiment that reminds us that when it comes to our looks, women simply can’t win.”

Something I feel like I have to mention because it grinds my gears every time is when the boys on the show say something like “I’m happy, but I could be happier.” To me, this underpins everything: there will always be someone prettier, someone funnier, someone better, and as women we are expected to chase the ideal to keep everyone around us happy. The boys are chasing a level of perfection that simply doesn’t exist. Even then, this concept of ‘perfection’ isn’t real perfection - it’s superficial. Is it making us happy? I think we could definitely be happier. Every time I see someone claim “my head’s been turned” on that show my stomach drops - when will enough be good enough?

“Oh my God! It’s just like Top Model, except no-one’s crying!”

I wish I could conclude this piece with some words of wisdom or a positive spin as I normally like to do. Instead, I’ll just say that it would be lovely to live in a world where we let women look how they want to. I suppose we can, but it’s just that we have to be brave enough to do so, when really, we shouldn’t have to be brave to just be. If the beauty standard is constantly changing, then I’d argue that it doesn’t really exist - and isn’t it exhausting to chase something that isn’t there?

When I’m having an off-day about the way I look, I try my best to turn to Betty and Barbie, and remember that there’s so much more to me than that. I began this article with the dictionary definition of beauty: it doesn’t specify a colour, shape, or form. Beauty is what we want it to be. I’m not a number on a scale, a spot on my forehead, the untameable frizz in my hair or the dimpled skin on my thighs. I’m the voice behind kind words and the giggle after a good joke. I’m a friend, a sister and a daughter. That’s so much more important.

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