"Cinderella", "The Cupid", "The Ugly Duckling" : gender representations in Latin American telenovelas

The aim of the article is to present typical representations of women and men in Latin American telenovelas, shaped on the basis of images of femininity and masculinity in the local culture. A standard scheme of a poor woman and a wealthy man is presented, with strongly exposed ideological elements of marianismo, machismo and malinchismo. A typology of characters has been proposed in relation to the character and conduct of the screen characters. The female characters discussed are: "Cinderella", "The Ugly Duckling", and in the male case, "The Amant". This categorization is subjective in nature, and its purpose is to draw the reader’s attention to the way in which female and male role models and their attributes have been culturally represented in the twenty years, 1997-2017