“You’re so tan now.”
“Weren’t you like really white before?”
“You looked better when you were white.”
“Wear dark colors” they said, “it matches your personality”… “but do gluta drips, use kojic to whiten so the dark colors become visible. Don’t stay under the sun so much, you’ll get dark and god-forbid that’s the worst thing.”…
“You’re pretty, but prettier when you’re white.”..
“Why can’t you be white like your sister?”
“You should do this to look Korean/Chinese/Japanese, you have the look for it.”
I remember telling an ex of mine I wanted a tattoo. He said “Sure, just make sure to whiten so it becomes visible.” I remember the same ex telling me “Bella’s (his ex) so white, she’s the pretties girl I’ve ever seen.” I was 13 when the colors started to fade.
“Wear dark colors.” they said, so I threw all the gluta, meta and all this junk I’ve been feeding my skin. I was 23 and inlove with the sun.
I decided it was high time I wore “ME”.
I was conditioned to use whitening products since I was 11 years old.
Yes at 11, I was told that if I wasn’t white, I wasn’t pretty. This mindset resonates not just to me but so many Filipinas (and Filipinos) in this country.
You tell this to the girl who was overweight and had really bad acne growing up. I remember being told to use a loofah that was made of a rough textured rock and told to rub it on “darker areas” so my knees, elbows and thighs would be “whiter” and I remember bleeding because I was scrubbing too hard.
When I was 13, I remember my ex telling me that if I wanted to get a tattoo, I should atleast get “whiter” first so it would look nice.
I am a small town girl who used to dance as a baton twirler in grade school, and I remember a teacher of mine would rub a lighter make-up all over my legs, to hide my scars, to hide myself.
So I grew even more insecure. I did not know any better, I was naive, so I followed the herd like a sheep. I ended up being so obsessed with whitening that I would go with friend to underground drip-shops in college to do gluta IV drips.
It’s funny because I loved going to the beach. What many people didn’t know was what I did after every beach trip. I would load up on whitening soap, lotion, face wash, toner, gluta capsules, gluta injections, you name it and I’ve done it.
Growing up in this country where you see that every actor, model or those who belonged to the socialites are white or half-white-foreign. You’re taught to see THAT as a standard of beauty and everything else otherwise was unacceptable. Surprisingly up to date, no one sees that there is anything wrong with bleaching your body to achieve a certain color or the damages bleaching does to your skin.
This “white-skin” obsession has been there since the Spaniards colonized the Philippines. It brought the social classification, where if you were working under the sun all day you were a laborer or a farmer while those who did not have to spend a day under the sun belonged to the rich elite social class.
Years of colonization has affected how Filipino modern society perceives skin color. Where “white” is superior and “brown or black” is inferior. This social classification is not just something we see in Filipino society, but also in other countries, from the Chinese obsessing with “white jade” to symbolize nobility and wealth, the Japanese and their extremely white geisha depictions, to western countries where racism and colorism still exists.
Sadly, you still see it today with kids calling brown/dark skinned people “negra or negro”. People poking fun of a former Vice-President and a Senator for their family’s bronzed skin.
I just woke up one day realizing that I was mindlessly using whitening products without asking; “Why?”. I found out that 100% of the products I used had whitening and these are products I’ve been using since I was a teenager.
And I have heard this story countless of times, Filipinas who are in love with the sun but cannot be in love with the melanin that comes with. I decided to embrace who I was. The narrative of dark/brown skin social classification changes when we start celebrating our individual beauty.
I’m taking back years of rebelling against who I was and what I thought was beautiful. I am embracing the sun and my ancestors who are farmers, fisher folks, and rebels for they are the ones that fed and fought for the land I call home and the skin that the westerners once discriminated but are now envious of.
