But first: if you want something good to read this summer or are looking for a nice gift for someone who likes to read, check out Coudal's Field Tested Books book. I'm in it, as are people like Steve Almond, E. Jean Carroll, Randy Cohen, Brian Frazer, Ben Greenman and many many more.

I found a blog post that shows pictures of the character "Ugly Betty" as depicted in incarnations of the show around the world. Some of them, like the Columbian one, are right on in their ugliness:

But others are pretty weak. If you can't hide the beauty in an Ugly Betty, then you're not doing your job, casting director. Like this:

You can tell that the Israeli Ugly Betty is really adorable underneath, probably because her teeth and bad skin look so fake. Here is the German Betty:

I'm sorry but we all know one thing--if you want ugly, you're not going to cast a blonde. You'd think that if anyone knows that, it's the Germans.

Shame on you, Mexico:

If you removed either the glasses or the braces--not even both--she'd be a supermodel. She's already prettier in that picture than I am right now.

The Dutch fail miserably:

I don't know how they got Helena Bonham Carter to star on the show.

The Portugese version looks like what I wish I had looked like in junior high--bebraced and bespectacled but adorable and confident:

The Croatians didn't even try, unless their excuse was just that the only costuming they could afford was a pair of glasses:

And finally, the Spanish give us this Ugly Betty, a woman who I could clearly see, in this version alone, in the pages of Vogue as a famous, avant-garde artist with a really fancy house/studio whose giant paintings go for $500,000 each on the low end:

I'm sorry if I'm giving these beautiful women a complex but they're simply not ugly enough. Their genes have failed them and they're really just not cut out for this role. I'm sorry if I prefer an unrealistic ideal, but I prefer my women much, much uglier.