When we think of TV geeks, the first that come to mind are probably Sheldon, Leonard, Raj and Howard of The Big Bang Theory. This is not surprising as the show’s 279 episodes have been broadcast worldwide. Yet a far less celebrated geek Colombia’s record-breaking Beatriz ‘Betty’ Aurora Pinzón Solano appeared in 335 episodes of Yo soy Betty, la fea, exported to 180 countries. Her nerdy character has been re-imagined 29 times creating a Bettyverse across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. In this post, Heather Mendick asks why Betty is so neglected by people writing about TV geeks and what difference it would make to our ideas about geeks if we were to give her the attention she deserves.
Why do we neglect Betty’s geekiness?
Kathryn Lane says of the geek: “We know this character when we see them: a male character of high intelligence, demonstrating obsessiveness and social awkwardness, wearing “coke bottle glasses,” a pocket protector, or a comic book-related item”.
Betty is a female character of high intelligence. As well as extraordinary skills and qualifications in economics, she speaks multiple languages. She is clumsy and awkward but also caring and empathic. She is marked by her ‘ugliness’ with unflattering glasses, unstyled hair, and unfashionable ill-fitting clothing. She is attached to childish things, though these are furbies, trolls and soft toys, rather than comic books. She is female and Latina. She does not fit our stereotypes of geeks so it is harder to see her as such. The idea that all geeks are white men has become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Further, the original series and the reinventions of Betty (as Letty, Bea, Jassi, Katya, Nina, Gönül, Lisa, Maria, Sara, Lotte, Wu Di…) are unapologetic melodramas focused on women, family, friendship and romantic love, catering for a mainly female audience. As has long been noted, genres associated with femininity are devalued.
Finally, our accounts of popular culture geeks centre US culture and the English language. We rarely engage with shows like Betty, La Fea, while objectively less popular and successful shows such as Chuck, that hail from the US and feature white male geeks, attract more discussion. This distorts our image of the geek.
How can Betty help us to reshape our idea of the geek?
Stereotypical TV geeks set up a distance between themselves and their viewers. We are encouraged to laugh at them, even to pity them. Betty evokes identification. We are encouraged to laugh with her and to share her hopes and dreams. During the original series, the then Colombian president told the novela’s writer that if Betty were to accept a bribe she’d been offered, this would set a bad example. That he had nothing to say about her boss Armando’s abusive behaviour reflects the tighter policing of women than men’s actions. However, it also reflects how Betty is more relatable than Armando.
Actor Elyfer Torres who portrays Betty in 2019’s Betty en NY says: “We have all felt not enough or not beautiful enough for something. If you felt that at least once you can connect … then you feel her as your friend”. The producers instructed Elyfer to delete all social media images where she looks different from Betty and during the period when the show was broadcast, to appear on chat shows in character. Unlike male geeks, Betty is an everywoman. Her story focuses not on her intelligence but her failure to be beautiful and her struggle to overcome her insecurities.
Betty’s story shows the importance of appearance for women (geeks). Betty is bullied relentlessly for her ugliness. This makes it difficult for her to find and retain employment, forcing her to apply for a secretarial vacancy in a fashion company. Once in post, the company’s president Armando gives her a secluded storeroom for an office and after the VP Finance is dismissed for corporate espionage, Betty takes on his workload but not his title, nor his salary, nor his office.
In contrast, male geek Nicolas (Betty’s best friend) secures a top job and a beautiful girlfriend, Patricia, with no more effort than occasionally replacing his nerdy attire with designer suits. Betty must go through a transformation that involves not just a whole new wardrobe including high heels and designer nightwear, but daily styling her hair and putting on makeup, regularly waxing, and in the latest version, ditching her glasses for contact lenses. This message that a woman must change her appearance for others is countered by how two good-looking men fall head over heels in love with pre-makeover Betty. The show presents beauty ideals as something society demands of women, that create inequalities of gender and class. As Patricia puts it in Betty en NY, the new Betty confirms her theory that there are no ugly women, just poor women.
Betty and Nicolas are working-class. In Betty en NY, they live in the immigrant communities of Jackson Heights. Armando and Patricia live in elite Manhattan. Scenes contrast these locations and show characters whose home is Manhattan looking out of place in Jackson Heights and vice versa. At a smart Manhattan restaurant, Betty doesn’t know which cutlery to use or how to eat snails. On her first trip to Jackson Heights, Patricia gets arrested, and on one of Armando’s early trips there, he gets beaten up.
When Armando falls in love with Betty in Betty en NY, he has a nightmare in which they are living together in Jackson Heights. He has gained weight, no longer wears designer clothes, and Betty is permanently pregnant. When Patricia falls in love with Nicolas, she has a nightmare vision of herself as his heavily pregnant wife selling Mexican street food. The fear of geekiness (and ‘ugliness’) is also a fear of downward mobility, for children of immigrants from Latin America like Armando and Patricia.
Melodrama is a key white male geek narrative, in which “suffering, regardless of its source, equals moral superiority. It is through this process that the geek hero becomes a justified and superior protagonist in the face of all other identities and regardless of the politics surrounding the geek hero’s straight white maleness”. Betty, lacking the white male geek’s entitlement, does not experience her suffering as unique. It provides a basis for empathy even with those who tried to destroy her including Armando who exploited Betty’s love for him by involving her in illegal business practices and started a sexual relationship with her to secure her loyalty.
Ultimately, Betty triumphs over her former detractors becoming president of the company. But this is not a rerun of ‘revenge of the nerds’. There is forgiveness, generosity, redemption. Although Armando’s looks are unchanged, ultimately his transformation is greater than Betty’s and is only possible through his relationship with her. This enables the uncomfortable ‘happy ending’ in which Betty marries her former abuser. As Ien Ang wrote, “no single experience, certainly no experience of something as complex as a long-running television serial, is unambiguous”.