“I do everything for everyone.
EVERYTHING to be perfect!”
Ever since Betty Cooper was first introduced in Archie Comics in 1941,
this iconic blonde has had one constant characteristic ---
She is hopelessly in love with Archie Andrews.
“You like him.
He likes you”
“Well then why Kevin, hasn’t he ever said or done anything?”
So, it’s a dramatic break with tradition when Riverdale,
the CW show based on the Archie comics,
fairly quickly cures Betty of this infatuation.
When Archie rejects her in the pilot episode,
“I can’t give you the answer you want.”
she moves on and by the end of the first season
she even gives Archie and Veronica her blessing.
“It’s okay V.
If you guys wanna be together,
I’m happy for you”
Riverdale’s update to this character is simultaneously
a radical move and an obvious one.
For almost as long as Betty has loved Archie,
he’s overlooked her for Veronica Lodge,
the feisty brunette from New York City.
“My mom and I just moved here.”
“From where?”
“New York.”
“Wow.”
If you think about it, the truly surprising thing
is not that Riverdale lets Betty give up this boy
who’s not really that into her,
but that the comics, for nearly eight decades haven’t.
Extending to Betty this modicum of self-respect
is arguably a necessary update
to allow today’s young viewers to relate to her
over the course of a multi-season TV show.
“I like it.
Makes me feel...powerful”
But this revision fundamentally resets Betty’s character
holding a mirror up to how much our culture’s expectations
of female characters and young women have transformed in recent years.
Popular culture has now turned on the faux “Nice Guy”
who puts on a front of niceness
to manipulate a female friend into becoming more.
“You pretend to be nice and that’s worse!”
Betty Cooper is the female equivalent to this,
“The Nice Girl” who’s faithful devotion to her friend
with the ulterior motive of making him fall in love with her
is ultimately kind of creepy and not very nice at all.
As Riverdale digs into Betty’s pathological niceness,
it uncovers the social pressures that have been forcing her
into this persona and a dark side lurking underneath.
“You’re Betty Cooper.
Like Nancy Drew meets girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”
So here’s our take on how Riverdale’s modern update
to Betty Cooper reflects the death of the nice girl in our culture
and reveals what’s left after the niceness is gone.
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The love triangle between Archie, Betty and Veronica
is one of the longest running staples of the Archie comics.
“A blonde girl, a raven-haired girl
and the luckiest redheaded boy in the universe.”
The popular understanding of this triad,
is that Archie is unable to choose between Betty and Veronica.
However, a closer look at the comics
reveals that this love triangle was often less a triangle
and more a case of Betty trying to come between Veronica and Archie,
who were a well-established couple.
In his book 12 Cent Archie,
Bart Beaty argues that especially during the 1960’s,
when the Archie comics were at their most commercially successful,
Archie seems to have very little interest in Betty at all.
“I have never felt whatever it is I’m supposed to feel with Betty.”
For example, in Pep 224,
Archie calls Betty his “true blue loyal friend!”
And in Betty and Me 11 he says “Ol’ Betty’s like a sister to
me!”
In an issue of Laugh, Archie,
who has taken truth serum, even admits to Veronica
“I only go out with Betty when I can’t get you.
I can date her anytime.”
But throughout the comics, even when Archie explicitly rejects her
and clearly shows a preference for another girl,
Betty keeps chasing him.
Why?
The simplest answer is that going after Archie is what Betty does.
As Beaty writes, “Betty’s desire
to win Archie’s heart is absolutely central
to her characterization and motivation”
Betty, the original character,
is completely defined by loving Archie unconditionally.
No matter what he does, or whether he loves her back.
After so many years of this being almost her whole identity,
if Betty were to give up on Archie
What would she do?
Who would she even be?
Riverdale interprets this situation as indicating that in fact,
Betty’s not actually in love with Archie after all.
It frames her obsession instead as the product of of expectations.
“To seperate what my mom wants from what I want, I think I want….”
Just as in the comics, Betty goes after Archie
out of unexamined automatic habit, almost as if it’s a duty.
On Riverdale, Betty thinks being with Archie
is something she should do.
Archie and Betty have been best friends since they were kids.
“We’ve been friends forever.”
Archie tells Veronica a story about how
when he and Betty were kids, he asked her to marry him.
“She was like, oh little Archie, we’re too young.
Ask me when we’re eighteen and I’ll say yes.”
So Betty has always known that she was supposed to be with Archie,
even before she was old enough
to actually have romantic feelings for him.
This suggests she never gave herself
a real chance to consider other possibilities.
Although her mother doesn’t want her involved with any boys,
we get the sense she would like Betty to eventually date someone like him
from their suburban middle-class background.
“Pretending to be normal and perfect when really we’re like..
like a Greek suburban tragedy”
When she tells Archie about her feelings,
she describes her fantasy of the perfect image
they could fulfill together.
“I have this fantasy of us as a power couple.”
Though Betty clearly feels something for Archie,
her way of telling him reveals
that this relationship she thinks she’s supposed to have
is actually based on her preconception of who she thinks she’s supposed to be.
And this gets at another major theme for Riverdale’s Betty,
being the nice girl is essentially living for others.
Being what you think they want you to be.
“The perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect student!
Can’t I do this one thing just for me?!”
Whereas the fake nice guy chooses to act nice to get what he wants,
the Nice Girl is much more passively responding to a culture
that incessantly pressures girls to always be nice.
“Sugar.
Spice.
And everything nice.”
Betty’s perfect girl-next-door persona isn’t something she’s crafted.
It’s pushed onto her by others.
“Pink perfection.
It’s more you”
“You are so perfect.”
She feels like she has to life up to this perfection
others project onto her
unless she’s a reflection of her environment's view
of what a girl ought to act like.
“Between us she’s a lot more high strung than she looks.”
After Betty is rejected by Archie,
she finds she can’t keep pretending to be fine.
“You okay?”
“I’m supposed to say yes...that’s what the nice girl always says, but no I’m not.”
This moment represents a dramatic shift in Betty’s character
as she not only allows herself to grieve the vision
that she had of herself with Archie, but also admits
that she cannot be the nice girl all the time.
Here Betty is choosing herself for the first time,
instead of pretending to be okay for Archie’s benefit,
as she had originally planned --
“Walk me to school?”
she reveals her true feelings at the expense of his comfort.
“I can’t give you the answer you want.
That’s what you said to me and that’s how I feel right now”
In the comics Betty is defined not only by her pursuit of Archie,
but also by how Archie sees her
and the extent to which he likes, approves of or notices her.
Thus, the girl who would otherwise be her best friend, becomes a rival
and in an issue of Betty and Veronica in 1966,
Betty even admits that the reason
she grew out her hair into her iconic ponytail
was because she saw Archie fooling around with a girl who had a ponytail.
Ultimately, Betty’s actions in the comics are there to support Archies characterization.
We know that Archie is swell because Betty,
the perfect girl next door, is so in love with him.
This dynamic is reflective of a time in American culture and media
where it was overwhelmingly the norm for female characters to exist
just to service male stories.
And these narratives told women they were defined by
their relationship to a man.
“I beg your misogynistic pardon?!”
Archie’s also not complaining about this situation.
Even if it seems like Betty’s failing that she can’t face his indifference,
on the flip side he dangles his potential affection
in front of her like a carrot.
Giving her just enough hope to hang herself with.
Thus a modern TV show doesn’t have much choice
but to extricate Betty from this situation.
Whereas the Archie comics are characteristically short and contained,
a longer form, live action show demands that the characters
be allowed to change and grow.
“Slay your dragons Betty Cooper.
One by one.”
In order to be a three-dimensional character that viewers invest in,
Betty must at least consider what she wants and who she is,
outside of what Archie Andrews thinks of her.
“As hot and as smart as you are,
you should be the Queen Bey of this drab hive”
Freeing Betty from Archie also radically changes her bond to other women.
Our culture has long imagined a natural rivalry
between the Nice Girl and the Mean Girl
and that perceived opposition is exemplified by Betty and Veronica.
“Before Katy versus Gaga, it was Jackie versus Marilyn
Betty versus Veronica,
Mary Todd Lincoln versus Martha Washington.
Why must we always choose BETWEEN female pop archetypes?!”
But after Betty drops her futile obsession
and pushes back against her confining nice girl label--
“Bad girl, you mean.
Get used to it Mom.”
she can happily enjoy her female best friend.
“Can we make a vow?”
‘Sure.”
“That no matter what, no boy will ever come between us again.”
“Nicely.”
“Nicely, because what?
You’re about to be the nice girl now?’
So what happens when the perfect nice girl stops being so perfect and nice?
Riverdale’s answer to this question is Dark Betty.
“I might have to punish you.”
“How?”
One of Betty’s ongoing struggles on Riverdale
is understanding her inner darkness.
“Something is very, very wrong with me.”
In the first season, this darkness is personified
by Betty’s black wig-wearing alter ego.
“Betty couldn’t make it, so she sent me instead.”
Dark Betty, the costume, was eventually ditched
after many viewers found it confusing.
And even Lili Reinhart admitted the alter ego made her uncomfortable.
Nevertheless this shadow is the repressed flipside
of the nice girl persona.
“I saw the real you, the dark you.
The Betty that I actually
think about every night when I’m laying in bed--(slap)”
Pretending to be perfect forces her to repress all her negative
and complicated emotions, causing them to come back with a vengeance.
“Say you’re sorry for destroying me!
APOLOGIZE FOR WHAT YOU DID TO ME!”
Though in the comics,
Betty Cooper is usually characterized as incredibly sweet,
especially when compared to spoiled Veronica,
Betty’s nefarious on the show isn’t am entirely new trait.
“You’re a stone-cold bitch Betty Cooper.”
In the comics she’s often manipulative and scheming
as she tries to lure Archie away from Veronica.
In Archie 171, Archie develops amnesia and Betty takes advantage
by telling him that she is his one and only girlfriend.
In another comic from 1965, she even resolves to murder Archie,
after he has rebuffed her one too many times.
In his book, Beaty goes so far as to describe Betty’s behavior as “stalking and psychotic”.
When she was still still hanging onto her “Nice Girl” act,
she could channel her deviousness
into socially acceptable forms of aggression, like going after a man.
But after she decides to move on from Archie in Riverdale,
that darkness is fully exposed and it’s intense.
“I’ve always felt like there was another person inside of me.
A person capable of doing dark terrible things.”
Betty eventually learns that she possesses two genes
that are common amongst serial killers.
(Whispered) “Serial killer genes.”
She also lives with the knowledge that her own father was a serial killer.
(Whispered) “You’re The Black Hood.”
And that her own family is linked to another dark and messy Riverdale line.
“I’m…..a Blossom?”
But ultimately nice girls like Betty need to face their darkness
and bring it out into the sun.
“I’m all about the beast within.”
Exposing her inner pain, confusion and imperfection
is a crucial step on the Nice Girl’s path to self-discovery
and defining herself for herself.
“You’re an enigma Coop.”
One way riverdale shows Betty learning to define herself
is through a real reciprocated romance.
This is Riverdale’s other major departure from the Archie comics in Betty’s storyline,
her long-term relationship with Jughead Jones.
“I love you Betty Cooper.”
In the comics, one of Jughead’s most constant characteristics
is his lack of interest in women.
In a recent comic, Jughead even identifies as asexual.
Rivderdale’s Jughead is still not an obvious pairing for Betty,
as far as their world is concerned.
“You’re a straight A student.
You’re a cheerleader for God’s sakes.
You’re the perfect girl next door!”
“I hate that--”
“I’m the damaged, loner, outsider from the wrong side of the tracks.”
At the beginning of the show, Jughead is essentially homeless
as his father struggles with alcohol addiction.
Betty feels that her family disapproves.
“You talk a big game about liking Jughead,
but wouldn’t you be much happier if we weren’t together?”
And when her father is blackmailing her disguised as The Black Hood,
he even orders her to break up with Jughead.
(Distorted voice) “Jughead, the son of the serpent--”
(Sobbing) “No!”
(Distorted voice) “--is not worthy of your love.
Cut him out of your life...or I will”
Committing to this relationship her world is against --
“Can we be Romeo and Juliet but we live happily ever after instead?”
represents Betty’s putting self-determination over the perfect
external image that she believes winning Archie represents.
“If we’re gonna be together I want to know who you are...all of it”
So this relationship illustrates how far she’s come
in figuring out what she actually wants
and defying what others want for her.
“They’re each other’s soulmates.
Good for them, don’t you think?”
Being a nice girl is in essence behaving the way you think you should
instead of following your instincts, but reining in your every impulse
to question whether it’s appropriate is exhausting for you and boring to others.
Betty’s Nice Girl act never actually worked to get Archie.
“I’ve never been good enough for you.
I’ll never be good enough for you.”
Riverdale’s breaking with the past on Betty Cooper
reflects an important shift in today’s culture
which discourages girls from being too nice
at the expense of being themselves.
Once she tires of being perfect,
Betty Cooper gets to discover who she really is.
That’s still the girl next door who fixes cars and wears her ponytail.
“Betty’s ponytail is iconic and beyond reproach.”
but also someone who’s drawn to weirdness, solving crimes and an alternative guy.
“I’m weird.
I’m a weirdo.”
Post-nice Betty becomes a model for letting go of others' expectations
and learning to define you for you.
“Here here, to Betty Cooper!”
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