GMA News Online – Sun, Oct 13, 2013


From the pasty white and plump standards of the Victorian times up to the tanned complexion popularized by Hollywood in the 1950s, humanity no doubt has changing ideas of beauty.

This doesn’t seem to apply to this country of Malays, though. Our idea of beauty has been fixed on the mestiza standard since the 16th century: that a woman has to have fair skin to be beautiful. Obviously, this proves how ingrained the Western-standard of beauty is to us Filipinos.

During those times, the mestiza beauty used to be a rare find. Now, it’s different. Everywhere we look, we can find “beautiful” faces. Our narcissistic and image-conscious culture is further amplified thanks to TV, Facebook, and the ever-reliable Photoshop.

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Beauty makes one attractive to the opposite sex. It sells magazines. It gets high TV ratings. Beautiful people lure us into a purchase. Nothing sells better than an impossibly gorgeous face.

But the sad thing is, the Pinoy’s fascination with the standard of "unattainable" beauty makes everyone miserable and discontented. In a country where the majority possess the skin color influenced by genes from our brown, Malay forefathers, scouring and scrubbing their colors off doesn't seem enough. Our well-off ladies go a notch higher to attain beauty through bleaching and other surgical operations.

Historically speaking, the fixation with the mestiza standard of beauty is one of those cultural influences we got from our Spanish colonizers. During Hispanic times, when Filipinos were considered second-class citizens in their own country, the archetype of beauty was the standard of the conquistadores. That yardstick where indios are ashamed of their own skin color.

No wonder we had people like Doña Victorina who abused facial powder just to look more like the Caucasian colonizers.

It is like a mortal sin to have a darker skin tone. It seems that some sensitive racial barometer in the Pinoy still equates blackness with being dirty and unclean, or that having a darker shade of melanin is something to be ashamed of.

Many Pinays feel pressure to have whiter, lighter skin. Pinays want to be white; Pinays need to be white. In fact, dark skin is frowned upon and they are sometiems harshly called baluga, negra, uling, ita, kulay-duhat, etc. You'll notice it in the common Tagalog expression: Mahiya ka naman sa balat mo! Or jokes like “Black is beautiful. But too much is charcoal.”

Having darker complexion can make you a laughing stock here.

The adverts don’t help, either. Some ads tell us that we need their products to unleash our “natural whiteness.” Television commercials feature whitening product endorsements of aquiline-nosed celebrities who are already endowed with white skin, while another product promises “kutis artista.” Now, this makes me wonder: just what exactly is “kutis artista”? Well, for one, Tado is an artista. And so is Tsokoleit.

There's also rhinoplasty, skin bleaching, facelift, breast lift, face peel, tummy tuck, and what-have-you that are options just to make you happy about your appearance. For me, it seems that they are fixing parts of themselves that were never broken in the first place. But maybe it’s human nature? It’s that part of us that can’t be satisfied with the things we have.

With the grand slam win of the Philippines at the Miss World pageant, has this changed our perception towards those we call “black beauties”? Because most of these beauty titlists don’t possess the mestiza looks our society prefers. I don’t know, but one thing is for sure: in some ways, our international pageant wins lets us realize that foreigners appreciate the natural beauty of our Malay race; something we fail in.

My mom, I believe, is an example. She may not be a beauty title-holder but I have always admired her strength, kindness, and dedication. She is not fair-skinned but she has many qualities that transcend complexion.

This may be a cheesy way of ending this, but the truth is we have to focus on the more important things. True beauty is not skin-deep; it is timeless and doesn’t expire. – KDM/HS, GMA News


JR Lopez Gonzales is a senior law student at the Mindanao State University in Marawi City. This piece originally appeared in his blog in two parts on October 9. We are re-posting it here with his permission.

beautiful.

 Binay's complexion. She didn't deserve the position because of her inexperience, not because of her skin color.
but of course.  and the fact that she's one more member of the binay dynasty, which is proving tasteless.  whoever mocked her skin color must have been out of sorts.

The meme that backfired. That is, if it wasn't actually issued by the Binay camp.

Hmm, I feel for the underdog, but I vote for the overcat anytime...