Colorism in the Philippines
[Music]
so i’m filipino
and the last time i visited the
philippines i ended up catching a cold
so i went to the drugstore to buy
medicine for it and i was walking
through the store
and i came across an aisle like this one
and at first the only thing that was
even remotely remarkable about this
aisle
was the fact that there was just an
utter abundance of lotion there
and i mean who would ever need that much
lotion in their life that was pretty
funny to me
but upon a closer look i realized that
all of the products that were there
were for skin lightening
and for someone like me who’s on the
darker end of the skin color spectrum at
least by filipino standards
i wondered why would someone ever want
to strip their skin of its pigment
i mean first of all it’s expensive and
it seems unnecessary and as you’re
essentially
bleaching your skin it is obviously
painful
but the sad truth of it all is that in
the philippines
having dark skin equates to being dirty
ugly
and poor it’s the reason why people
don’t leave their house without
umbrellas
even when it’s not raining why they wear
full length pants and long sleeve shirts
in 110 degree weather and it’s why
someone like me
would walk into a drugstore fully
stocked
with skin lightening products
and in that moment when i was looking at
all those products on the shelf that
seemed to tell me that i shouldn’t look
the way that i do
i had never felt like more of an
outsider
and i had never felt more ugly
so why why is skin lightening so
prevalent in southeast asia particularly
in the philippines
well long story short the philippines
has a very long history of colonization
one that accumulates to hundreds of
years even and during this time
native filipinos were forced to
relinquish their beliefs in favor of
eurocentric ones
that their white oppressors believed
were superior to theirs
and one of these was a new class system
in which your skin color was a factor
i.e the lighter your skin was the higher
your status was too
and soon enough filipinos began to try
to fit into this
white beauty standard of fair skin that
was being imposed upon them
and sadly this colonial ideal of
anti-brownness has never left the people
of the philippines
even now my grandmother tells me bianca
you’re so pretty
even though you’re dark and comments
like these comments about my skin
they rarely bother me as someone who has
always looked different from the people
in my family as you can see here
me on the right i’ve always had darker
skin than my relatives
my skin color was always a topic of
conversation in my family
they teased me about it all the time it
was even a long-standing joke that i was
far too dark to be related to my
brothers or my mom and that i just had
to be adopted or something
so i was used to it by now i was used to
the unwanted attention the mean comments
the criticism but it didn’t ever bother
me that much because i knew they didn’t
mean it
to them it was just funny but what my
grandmother said
she truly meant it that i was only
pretty
for a brown girl and that she would
never see me as truly
and wholly beautiful and that was what
hurt me the most
that i simply could never be beautiful
in her eyes because my skin was brown
instead of white the first time my
grandma told me this
i went to my mom about it and she could
obviously tell that i was bothered so
she reassured me that
you know my skin was something i should
be proud of i shouldn’t feel insecure
about it it was something that made me
beautiful
but how was i supposed to believe her
after all i had grown up watching
filipino actors and actresses on tv and
they were all fair-skinned
and even if there was a dark-skinned
actor or they received far less screen
time
and they were usually just there for
comic relief i started to feel even
worse when i would watch the miss
universe pageants
on television every year and i started
to notice this pattern that the
philippines had to send contestants
who were half white and half filipino
and they all had fair skin
and obviously these women are
intelligent and gorgeous but
that made me think why could i never see
myself in these women
why was it that they never looked like
me if these women were supposed to be
the embodiments of beauty and grace and
what it truly meant to be the ideal
filipino woman
then why did an eye look like them
was it because brown girls like me were
we just not worth
being shown maybe we weren’t beautiful
at all
i wanted to be them so i wore sunscreen
all the time i avoided the sun
at all costs and i would aggressively
exfoliate my skin
every single day in hopes that i could
scrub off the color off my face as if it
were dirt
it was terrible and i’m ashamed of
admitting it now
and as unhealthy as it sounds i found
satisfaction in feeling like this gap
between me
and those fair-skinned women that i had
always envied was getting a little bit
smaller
that with every layer of skin that i was
scrubbing off i was getting closer to
what i thought it meant to be beautiful
and after some time of trying to
actively lighten my skin i was
experiencing
physical pain from it my skin was
excruciatingly dry
i had scabs on my face i was bleeding it
even became difficult for me to focus in
school or even fall asleep
because i was in so much pain and that’s
when i realized that
nothing was worth hurting that much
that my skin the skin that i have now it
is the only skin that i will ever exist
in
so who cares about what some colonials
from hundreds of years ago
had to say about what is beautiful and
what’s not
i should be taking care of my skin i
should love it and appreciate it
and you and i and all of us should just
radically accept ourselves for who we
are
as we are and not feel that we have to
change how we look
for anyone but ourselves so i tried to
do just that
i broke my skin lightening habits and
slowly but surely
my perception of beauty and my
perception of myself too
it changed and now i think how could i
have ever been ashamed of my skin
ashamed of the color of generations of
native filipinos who not only existed
but thrived long before the spanish
colonials thought they had discovered
them
and i’m proud to say that now i can look
at fair-skinned women that i once envied
and not feel any ounce of jealousy that
i can look
in the mirror and appreciate my skin for
what it is
a product of the history resilience
and beauty of the filipinos who came
before me
unfortunately this is not a realization
that everybody comes to
today the skin lightening industry an
industry built off of the self-hate
and insecurities of vulnerable
individuals is a multi-billion dollar
industry
millions of people worldwide they’re
willing to buy pills
undergo surgeries just to lighten their
skin and the people
who can’t afford the surgeries or the
medication to
achieve the look they’ll buy cheaper
products
with dangerous chemicals in it some of
which have even been linked to having
mercury poisoning
and colorism has effects far beyond just
a person’s confidence
or their physical health people with
darker skin at least in the philippines
are more likely to get bullied for their
appearance
they have harder times getting hired
over fair-skinned individuals
and the colorism they face has been
linked to depression anxiety and other
mental illnesses
so what can we do to stop this problem
obviously there’s no overnight solution
but there are small changes that all of
us
myself included are capable of that can
make all the difference
for one thing just being more careful
about what you’re saying goes a long way
for example i know that it would always
really hurt my feelings
when a friend of mine or family member
would say something along the lines of
oh i don’t want to stay in the sun too
long today i don’t want to get too dark
and i know that someone you know who
looks like me or is even darker than i
am might feel similarly
so just practice sensitivity
and think about how your words can
affect others and their self-esteem
secondly support dark-skinned and
brown-skinned southeast asians
you know watch their movies listen to
their music read their books
make them feel like they’re important
tell them that you value them
go out of your way to uplift them
because letting them know that they’re
appreciated and being kind to them
can mean so much more than you think
and finally never stop fighting colorism
because it’s a global issue it doesn’t
just affect filipino people
colorism affects people all over asia
the latino community
indigenous people and it especially
affects people of african descent
so keep seeking information about
colorism and have conversations with
people who are affected by it
and ask them about their experiences
because you and i we still have a lot to
learn
and the more we try to educate ourselves
the closer we will be to a solution
and although eradicating this kind of
discrimination
altogether is no easy feat i am hopeful
and i am confident that through a
collective effort we can end colorism
once and for all thank you