The bald and the beautiful
July 16, 2006 | 12:00am
Diagnosed with cancer in March of 1996, my mother passed away in July of that same year. Ten years now if I’m counting, and I still vividly remember the days I’d spend with her in San Francisco, where she opted to do her chemotherapy. My Mom was a true character, known for being outspoken; and while one could only suspect how easy it would have been for her to surrender to despair, she’d always put on the bravest of fronts when us children were around. In the middle of her sessions, she once turned to me, scoffed at the wig or headgear she’d wear, and joked, "I’m like some soap opera, just that it’ll be called The Bald and the Beautiful!" And while we both laughed at her comment, one could discern how her vanity, every woman’s prerogative, was being pummeled by what she was undergoing.
I was reminded of this exchange the other day when Romina Urra-Gonzalez approached me, asking if I could write about this activity she’s intimately involved with as one of the Board of Trustees of the Rustan’s Essenses Foundation. Launched last June 29, the Look Good-Feel Good Workshops are conducted monthly to help boost the self-esteem and well-being of economically challenged cancer survivors. Consisting of makeup application demonstrations, skin and nail care techniques and actual make-overs, the workshops aim to enhance the confidence these women can possess as they face the rigors and challenge of their lives as cancer patients/survivors. While June 29 was hosted by L’Occitane and Murad, the one on July 27 will be held with Laura Mercier, and the one on Aug. 31 by Nars. Held at the Essenses Tea Bar at the Rustan’s in Makati, there’s one tentatively set for Sept. 28, hosted by La Prairie and Dior, to be held in Cebu.
Kara Alikpala and I Can Serve Foundation collaborated with the Fight For Life Support Group in bringing the participants to the workshops. A non-stock, non-profit foundation, the Essenses Foundation is community-driven, women-focused and customer-participated. With every P500 purchase at the Essenses stores and the Cosmetics and Toiletries sections of Rustan’s, P1 goes to the Foundation, and directly benefits their women-oriented programs.
When I mentioned to some people that I’d be writing about the workshops but that I’d be entitling the section in the manner that I did, ignorance of the connection to my Mom, I had them searching for ways to tell me "Very Bad Idea." And I do understand where they were coming from. To some, it will sound callous, demeaning or even just flippant, that I can refer to cancer victims in such a jocular fashion. But I stand behind my Mom and how she would have laughed and said that it’s all so true – that if there was one thing that any cancer patient had to really hold on to, it’s their sense of humor. The humor may be grim, black or gallows, but nevertheless, you hold on to it as a vestige of hope, and as a means of maintaining some balance and perspective for the tragedy that’s swirling around your life.
And corollary to that, it’s to the credit of institutions such as Rustan’s and their Essenses Foundation, and to people like Rhoda Campos and the officers and members of the Foundation, that efforts are continuously being made to give women in dire need some lifeline to cling onto. There are numerous ways that this can be achieved, all worthy and all necessitating some form of devotion and commitment. That the Essenses Foundation formulated this specific manner means I salute them for finding some way to transform their mission-vision into something concrete. The faces and smiles of the participants to the first workshop are proof positive of that.
The landscape of Philippine television has so changed over the years that you’d have to be pretty long in the tooth to remember a time when our late night news didn’t have to be so literal and hit the airwaves around midnight. You could have ascribed it to the encroaching specter of the pre-eminent Entertainment grid, the push for the "Allmighty" audience share and ratings game, the influx of more expensive sitcoms, dramas and canned shows with costs that required primetime rates to keep sensible from a business point-of-view – whatever the reason, the nightly News Show that our lolos and lolas could enjoy at 9 p.m. started shifting imperceptibly. As time passed, it would beam at 10 p.m. and then, thanks to commercial loads and the flexi-time of prime time shows or basketball games, 10 would not be a hard and fast rule. I know for my parents, that would be something of a frustration – 10:10 p.m. on a Tuesday night, then 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday and 10:05 p.m. on Thursday – one just couldn’t predict when the news would go "on air."
For the last couple of years, this situation of the nudging of the late night news programs on our two major networks had so exacerbated that one was lucky to even get the program beaming before midnight. More often than not, one would fall asleep and it would only be "News Flashes" after the evening news shows that would give us an indication of what tomorrow’s headlines would be.
July 3 then was something of a landmark in the annals of news on television. Flying in the face of conventional wisdom, the news show Bandila was ushered in on ABS Channel 2, with a hard and fast 10:30 p.m. airing time.
Anchored by fellow Allure columnist Korina Sanchez, Ces Oreña-Drilon and Henry Omaga-Diaz, the show debuted with a scoop – the tape of Gen. Danny Lim withdrawing his support for the President during the recent February coup attempt, a tape that had previously gone missing. Fast-paced and hard-hitting, Bandila came to us as a shining example of how investigative tele-journalism could mesh with your basic news-reading format and provide us with encapsulated but trenchant news dissemination and reporting. This early, the show has much to say for it; and the impeccable credentials of the three anchors augur well for its finding favor among viewers who are more than happy just having the option of watching late night news at a much more reasonable time.
The line-up of anchors and the two hyphenated names had me wondering in jest if Korina should not join the bandwagon post haste and find herself with her own hyphenate. No prize for guessing what I’m suggesting! But humor aside, it will be interesting to see if the advertising community and a significant enough number of viewers support this corporate mandate of a news program infiltrating prime time.
Maria Ressa, Charie Villa and Luchie Cruz-Valdes make up the triumvirate that’s responsible for the face of News & Current Affairs on ABS, and it is to their credit that they argued the case for, and persisted, turning this hoped-for timeslot into a reality. In the same vein, Gabby Lopez and Charo Santos lent them that all-important "ear" and granted them this programming innovation. I know there’s a bit of irony in registering this as an innovation, but in this medium where money not only talks, but hollers, this shifting of news to 10:30 p.m. can only be seen as "practically revolutionary." Long Live the Revolution!
I was reminded of this exchange the other day when Romina Urra-Gonzalez approached me, asking if I could write about this activity she’s intimately involved with as one of the Board of Trustees of the Rustan’s Essenses Foundation. Launched last June 29, the Look Good-Feel Good Workshops are conducted monthly to help boost the self-esteem and well-being of economically challenged cancer survivors. Consisting of makeup application demonstrations, skin and nail care techniques and actual make-overs, the workshops aim to enhance the confidence these women can possess as they face the rigors and challenge of their lives as cancer patients/survivors. While June 29 was hosted by L’Occitane and Murad, the one on July 27 will be held with Laura Mercier, and the one on Aug. 31 by Nars. Held at the Essenses Tea Bar at the Rustan’s in Makati, there’s one tentatively set for Sept. 28, hosted by La Prairie and Dior, to be held in Cebu.
Kara Alikpala and I Can Serve Foundation collaborated with the Fight For Life Support Group in bringing the participants to the workshops. A non-stock, non-profit foundation, the Essenses Foundation is community-driven, women-focused and customer-participated. With every P500 purchase at the Essenses stores and the Cosmetics and Toiletries sections of Rustan’s, P1 goes to the Foundation, and directly benefits their women-oriented programs.
When I mentioned to some people that I’d be writing about the workshops but that I’d be entitling the section in the manner that I did, ignorance of the connection to my Mom, I had them searching for ways to tell me "Very Bad Idea." And I do understand where they were coming from. To some, it will sound callous, demeaning or even just flippant, that I can refer to cancer victims in such a jocular fashion. But I stand behind my Mom and how she would have laughed and said that it’s all so true – that if there was one thing that any cancer patient had to really hold on to, it’s their sense of humor. The humor may be grim, black or gallows, but nevertheless, you hold on to it as a vestige of hope, and as a means of maintaining some balance and perspective for the tragedy that’s swirling around your life.
And corollary to that, it’s to the credit of institutions such as Rustan’s and their Essenses Foundation, and to people like Rhoda Campos and the officers and members of the Foundation, that efforts are continuously being made to give women in dire need some lifeline to cling onto. There are numerous ways that this can be achieved, all worthy and all necessitating some form of devotion and commitment. That the Essenses Foundation formulated this specific manner means I salute them for finding some way to transform their mission-vision into something concrete. The faces and smiles of the participants to the first workshop are proof positive of that.
For the last couple of years, this situation of the nudging of the late night news programs on our two major networks had so exacerbated that one was lucky to even get the program beaming before midnight. More often than not, one would fall asleep and it would only be "News Flashes" after the evening news shows that would give us an indication of what tomorrow’s headlines would be.
July 3 then was something of a landmark in the annals of news on television. Flying in the face of conventional wisdom, the news show Bandila was ushered in on ABS Channel 2, with a hard and fast 10:30 p.m. airing time.
Anchored by fellow Allure columnist Korina Sanchez, Ces Oreña-Drilon and Henry Omaga-Diaz, the show debuted with a scoop – the tape of Gen. Danny Lim withdrawing his support for the President during the recent February coup attempt, a tape that had previously gone missing. Fast-paced and hard-hitting, Bandila came to us as a shining example of how investigative tele-journalism could mesh with your basic news-reading format and provide us with encapsulated but trenchant news dissemination and reporting. This early, the show has much to say for it; and the impeccable credentials of the three anchors augur well for its finding favor among viewers who are more than happy just having the option of watching late night news at a much more reasonable time.
The line-up of anchors and the two hyphenated names had me wondering in jest if Korina should not join the bandwagon post haste and find herself with her own hyphenate. No prize for guessing what I’m suggesting! But humor aside, it will be interesting to see if the advertising community and a significant enough number of viewers support this corporate mandate of a news program infiltrating prime time.
Maria Ressa, Charie Villa and Luchie Cruz-Valdes make up the triumvirate that’s responsible for the face of News & Current Affairs on ABS, and it is to their credit that they argued the case for, and persisted, turning this hoped-for timeslot into a reality. In the same vein, Gabby Lopez and Charo Santos lent them that all-important "ear" and granted them this programming innovation. I know there’s a bit of irony in registering this as an innovation, but in this medium where money not only talks, but hollers, this shifting of news to 10:30 p.m. can only be seen as "practically revolutionary." Long Live the Revolution!
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