20 moments that prove Ugly Betty was ahead of its time

Betty quitting Mode because of Daniel’s misogyny

In today’s #MeToo society, the story of Betty’s first week at Mode is all too relevant. Obviously, the entire plot of Ugly Betty revolves around the idea that Betty is ugly (which we’ll point out right here, she isn’t — but for the show’s purposes, she’s seen that way). She doesn’t fit in at the fashion magazine she works at. She barely even got an interview at Meade Publications after they saw what she looked like, but she ended up getting hired as the assistant to the editor-in-chief at Mode anyway… because she was unattractive.

After Daniel takes over the publication following the death of Fey Sommers, former editor-in-chief, he has a bad habit of hiring sexy assistants, and then sleeping with them. His father Bradford, head of Meade Publications, decides to take matters into his own hands. He sees Betty in the lobby and hires her to keep Daniel from being tempted yet again.

Betty doesn’t know this, but when Christina admits to her that the only reason she was hired was to keep Daniel from sleeping with his assistant, Betty is crushed. Daniel isn’t pleased with it either, because why should he have an ugly assistant? That’s when Daniel and his photographer friend hatch a plan to make Betty quit on her own, by giving her outrageous tasks to do that are way out of her job description.

But Betty being Betty, she took everything Daniel said and did as she was told, because she always goes above and beyond. The final straw is at a photoshoot for a cosmetics account, when the photographer tells Daniel he needs a stand-in for one of the models with her skin tone, and in walks Betty. They need her in full wardrobe for the test shots, and Betty storms off when Daniel asks her.

Daniel thought that Betty finally broke and quit, but then she walks back in moments later clad only in latex, and the entire room stifles laughter and snickers as she gets her photo taken. Daniel finally realizes what an ass he was being, but then Betty storms out and tells Daniel “God forbid you had to work with the ugly girl your father forced you to hire.”

We all know it works out in the end, because Betty works with Daniel for years to come, but Betty was an integral part of changing Daniel’s misogynistic, playboy ways.