But anyone watching this show's first season could see that the "family friendly" tag just doesn't apply anywhere near this. The Parents Television Council's analysts counted 205 instances of sexual content and 154 examples of foul language in just the first season. They also found catty references to oral sex, genital size, pornography, strippers, anal sex, threesomes, kinky and fetishistic behavior, transsexuals, statutory rape, sadism, and masochism.
With this show set in the fashion industry, the show is heavy on sexual scenes and sex talk, straight and gay. "Ugly Betty" has several gay characters and a transgendered former man (improbably played by former supermodel Rebecca Romijn). Even Betty's teenaged nephew, Justin, is effeminate and loves the fashion industry. They've never openly addressed whether he is gay, but the show's creator, Silvio Horta, is gay and said the Justin character will experience "the journey" as he matures on the show. "I see myself in him," Horta says. The actor playing Justin is 12, but Horta loves the way he is "able to play up the flamboyance."
The writers love to throw gay and lesbian references in everywhere. In a recent show, guest star Betty White, playing herself, declared that she adored her fans, "except for the few sickos who write lesbian fan fiction about me and Bea Arthur."
This is "family friendly"? When a show can win both a Family Television Award and a Media Award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, as "Ugly Betty" has, you know there's something wrong. With a pile of plots advancing the gay agenda, a GLAAD Award is appropriate. A "family friendly" award is insulting.
What does the FFPF think the phrase "family friendly" means? It shouldn't just mean a show with sympathetic leading characters. It should mean what it plainly says -- that you can put your grade-school children in front of it without wincing at bloody murders or needing a dictionary of sexual slang. These choices make you wonder if that TV critic is right. Is network TV so far gone that these shows are the ones who most deserve awards for wholesomeness?