So, my today's mission was to figure WHY people hated Betty anyway, because I really have no idea. So I googled a bit, and ofc, found mainly really gross things. I wouldn't really call this meta though, (BECAUSE I AM SO BAD AT IT) it's just me defending Bets a bit.

"[T]his woman (...) is so mind-numbingly spoiled, bitter and uninteresting that we cheer when Don gets his kicks elsewhere. I mean, can you blame him? The only thing worse than being married to a mannequin is being married to a mannequin that complains."

People complain about Betty being boring, doing nothing about her situation but whining and shame the female writers on Mad Men for "not using Betty's potential" and make her break free from her 60ies houswifey life and do something extreme, (but at the same time they call Betty an awful person whenever she reacts to her life in any way). Everybody still seems to think Mad Men was a feminist show (still not true btw) and that, while all the other female characters on the show are oh-so feminist, Betty was an anti-feminist character. What would "using Betty's potential" in a feminist, exciting way even look like anyway? Make her be a single mum, let her move to Manhattan and work in a strip club to make a living, poor and proscribed but finally ~free? Nice, but unrealistic and OOC, it's not even like Betty wouldn't want the house and the husband, she does, she just doesn't want to feel like shit all day.

Betty's issues, her depression, bitterness, her immobility and her failed attempts to change things, are unglamorous and not exactly a whole other life hidden in some drawer, and that's probably why people consider her boring, but they are the most real and least soap-y of the show. I mean, it's hard to relate to anyone on Mad Men anyway, because different decade and all that, but if I would, it'd be Betty, just because she's the most real character and it truly awes me that not everyone feels that way. I do think she's the most complex character on Mad Men and that her storyline, while also being the quietest, is the angriest of all of the female main characters. I wouldn't even say Betty was misunderstood, which many people who defend Betty are saying. It's all pretty clear, I don't think people don't understand it, they probably just find it too realistic and not fun enough for TV.

What I read people complaining about most often were Betty's parenting skills - and lol, I do NOT think Betty was a good mother, but what I find so unfair is that we have no comparisons on the show. We don't see anyone else raising small kids (and lol, no, Don really doesn't count and he is not a better parent than Betty is), her parenting style probably isn't even that controversial for the sixties, which isn't an excuse for bad parenting, but judge considering the circumstances - I mean, no one hates the men on the show as much as they should for being the sexist dicks they are, because "it's the 60ies and times were different". All the excuses people constantly make for other characters on the show just don't seem to apply to Betty, and so Pete can go rape a nanny but Betty cannot slap her daughter.

"In other words, Mad Men can make a rapist weasel like Pete sympathetic, it can admire the toughness of a venal creep like Bobbie. Don Draper is our hot antihero and we root for him to change with the times. And yet each year, Betty inches ever closer to Lee Garner Jr. territory." (by the fucking, sexist geniuses at NYMag btw, "Why do the Mad Men Writers Make Betty Such a Monster")

I also read that Betty making other people (= her children) miserable because of her own issues is the most unforgivable thing anyone has ever done on Mad Men - excuse me, what is it then what Don was doing all the time during their marriage? But whatever, I should stop this, Betty just doesn't have a penis so she'll never have it as easy as Don. However, the big secret, the main reason why people are so nasty to Betty is that she's a mom, a bad one. They don't hate her for being a bad person but an, according to today's sensibilities, bad mom. The viewership doesn't look at her as woman or even as flawed person, but as mother, so everything that might motivate, explain or excuse her behavior is good for nothing now; she's damaging the most important, the holy, the child. There's no place for mistakes or any redeeming quality that'd be good enough to make up for them. In fandom Betty's motherhood suppresses her as character just as much as the men do on the show. And it's not even like Betty was neglecting these kids - it's about her not being kind or warm enough; not "mommy"-like. Basically: Everyone who hates on Betty just has unresolved mommy issues.

TL;DR: Betty is flawfree, deal with it.
OT, but as I used a cap of it as banner, "Souvenir" always makes me SO SAD for Betty, I cry for her every time I watch it, she becomes that other woman, that woman she used to be or could have been, the kind of woman Don cheats on her with, and then the trip is over and it's JUST GONE and nothing's left of it but that fucking souvenir. THE SADDEST.