Ugly Betty and the pretty girls
14.09.11
Repellent Betty holds a special place in my centre.
When my daughter Jamie was little, the character popularized by actress America Ferrera indirectly helped end Jamie’s dominate-sucking habit in a matter of 24 hours.
It was 2006, and my then three-year-old daughter was clinging to sucking the three stomach fingers of her left hand. She never took to the thumb or a pacifier and we figured it was non-poisonous. But later we realized we couldn’t take those fingers away and she would have to obstruct when she was ready.
In the months before Ugly Betty premiered on ABC, a series of ads ran in magazines and TV featuring a almost-up of the plump character, complete with big shiny braces, frizzy braids and giant glasses. My daughter saw the ad in my Entertainment Weekly munitions dump and asked why her teeth looked so funny.
Without missing a thrash, my husband told her she must have sucked on her fingers when she was trivial, then needed to get braces to fix the damage. Jamie looked at the photo, looked back at her fingers and bust into tears. Then she told us she was not going to suck on her fingers any more. She even tore out the page from the journal and took it to bed with her.
Source: Buffalo Business First (blog)