Many of my girlfriends and I are fans of the popular American sitcom Ugly Betty and I think the reason we enjoy it is because we all see something of ourselves in her.
Thankfully none of us share the same fashion sense as Betty (played by the very endearing America Ferrera), but we can certainly identify with all her insecurities – finding her place in this big and scary world, getting started on her career, dealing with the struggles of life, dating woes and figuring who her true love really is etc.
The characters in the show are also interesting, each nicely fleshed out by a great cast. I love Betty's gay nephew Justin (Mark Indelicato) best. This young actor is so fantastic with all his rather effeminate mannerisms and portrayal of the way he idolizes Martha Stewart is hilarious. Betty's boss, Daniel Meade is played by Eric Mabius who is good-looking in a very believable, everyday way. I mean, he's not drop-dead gorgeous like the Adonis-like hunks you typically see on the big screen, but he's still someone whom women would consider "cute" if he walked past us on the street or saw him at a bar. So it's that kind of cute where women find accessible, so to speak. Vanessa L. Williams also plays the rather evil-looking creative director, Wilhelmina Slater, to a hilt.
The show has a great mix of elements - humour, romance, and mystery. It also has a good dose of family values, friendship and also enough cattiness to keep audience interest up. I also love to look at all the couture that's paraded in the show, what with most of the action centred in Mode magazine's office.
Ferrera manages to play Betty with such earnestness and at the end of the day, we are all rooting for her, the underdog, to triumph against all the odds against her.
At this point, I'll segue into a conversation I had with a good friend couple of days ago. We were musing about how struggles are a part of life and he said that he actually enjoys swimming against the tide and dealing with those struggles as he finds it challenging. And that, he believes, is what life is about.
Hmm...I don't know about that. I guess the only reason why he can say something like that now is because he's never encountered any major obstacles in his life. So far, everything has gone smoothly for him. He's gone to all the top schools, managed to find a job he enjoys, knows where he wants to go in his career, has recently purchased a studio apartment and is already planning other investments in preparation for retirement in years to come.
As for me, I don't enjoy swimming against the tide - put it down to laziness or whatever, but I'd rather have it easy than hard. But I guess it's true, too, that you can't appreciate the good times if you don't know the hard.
Anyway, we agreed that probably the only way out of this struggle is to opt for a spiritual or religious life, which would mean renouncing the secular world. But we both agreed that it's not a path we would choose for ourselves (at least at this point in time) because we can't give up all the yummy food in the world, men (for me) and women (for him). Haha.
So there you go. My Sunday musings.
I think you can choose to have different priorities and goals to the people around you (without necessarily being religious). Rather than struggling against the tide, it actually makes life easier and happier when you don't have to live up to other people's standards.
Are you making a surprise revelation soon? I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be careful about what I write on my blog!
Posted by: Joe at May 13, 2007 7:21 PMIt's called "Going with the Flow". ;P
Posted by: ivn at May 15, 2007 2:52 AM