It’s hard to dispute that Mexican actress Salma Hayek appears to be the perfect physical package. But the brunette star has an important message: true beauty comes from the inside.

According to Hayek, “In my world, you have to be so beautiful, so skinny, so famous — and I don’t believe you really have to be any of those things. You simply have to be who you are. You’re not more important, smarter, or prettier because you wear a designer dress.”

It’s a lesson Hayek feels so strongly about that she is now producing it for the small screen with the debut of “Ugly Betty” on ABC. The show tells the story of Betty Suarez, a young woman trying to fulfill her dream of a career in the publishing world of high fashion. Betty has one problem: she’s not thin and she is not beautiful. But is that really a barrier to her success? Betty, played by Hispanic actress America Ferrera, sets out to prove that it is not. Using intelligence, kindness and hard work Betty finds a way to achieve her goals.

“It’s so reassuring to have a woman heroine who triumphs with more than just what she has on the outside … who has more to offer the world than just a pretty picture,” says Ferrera, the 22-year-old star of “Real Women Have Curves” and “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, on a recent Oprah show. “To me, the tragedy about this whole image-obsessed society is that young girls get so caught up in just achieving that they forget to realize that they have so much more to offer the world.”

“I felt Ugly Betty many, many, many times,” Hayek revealed on Oprah. “You know I’m very short so when I was growing up people made fun of me as if it was like a birth defect, a deformity … like I belonged in a circus or something. I think we all have something that people point out to you especially when you are growing up when you’re a kid and then you point it out to yourself nonstop.”