Feeling totally beautiful

Not too long ago, I was an awkward girl. Imagine me still tall and lanky but with bushy eyebrows, braces, and a dubious sense of style, if any. I was a rather homely kid practically void of all pleasing aesthetics to the human eye, and literally had a face that only a mother could love.

Okay, perhaps there’s a little bit of exaggeration on my part. But when you’re the younger sister of a girl who was an overachieving cheerleading heartthrob, it’s hard to feel anything close to cool when you’re a flute-playing drama club geek. Even as I slowly crept into adolescence, my body refused to morph into any semblance of having womanly curves.

Through the years, I continued to silently struggle with my looks. However, one epiphanic summer, we had a family trip to Europe to visit my brother Robby in Norway, where he was living as an exchange student for a year. In the little town of Stokmarknes, a few of my brother’s friends and neighbors had come over to his foster family’s home to meet us. 

One of them, a boy, stared at me the entire afternoon to the point that I felt uncomfortable. He finally mumbled something to my brother I couldn’t understand, and Robby translated, “He says you’re the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen in his life.” At that point, my 14-year-old self thought that maybe I wasn’t such a troll after all. And who cares if this Norwegian boy was actually only eight years old? The point is, it was the first time those words were ever uttered to me. 

Not that my ego went on a sudden inflation after that. As I entered the modeling world with trepidation, I again found myself battling with the idea of what Filipino society held as the gold standard for beauty. Seeing a billboard of myself felt even more strange as it was flanked by other images so different from my looks—fair skinned and with an inter-racial aesthetic.  

I remember clearly when Dove launched their Campaign For Real Beauty in 2005, they challenged this long-held ideal of beauty that’s been ingrained in the Filipina consciousness for many decades. Billboards, posters and ads of women in different shapes, sizes, skin color and age polarized the scene. Perhaps the most famous and controversial of the tick-box ads was the one displayed on EDSA, with a beautiful and curvaceous lady asking the question, “Extra-large? Extra-sexy?”

The one that caught my eye was “Flat? Flattering?” featuring a lady with small breasts. While I’ve come to fully accept that my body will never make it to Baywatch status, seeing ads like this assured me that size doesn’t always matter. At least, that’s what she said.

It has been 10 years since Dove entered the Filipino market and redefined our perception of beauty. They weren’t all about achieving a certain skin color, or looking a certain age, but instead they celebrated the age-old adage of discovering real inner beauty. To kickstart their 10-year anniversary, they recently launched “Dove at Ten: Totally Beautiful” in Tagaytay Highlands. 

In this two-day getaway, the women were given a unique treat to pamper the body unlike any other. We’ve heard of a manicure and a pedicure, but have you ever had a pitticure? At the Spa Lodge, guests were given underarm pampering of exfoliating, massaging and all the TLC your much-neglected pits deserve. 

After being receiving their spa indulgences, it was time to feed the tummy and nourish the soul with an outdoor dinner to appreciate nature’s beauty at Belle House 2 followed by a guided meditation to reflect on our true inner beauty. It was a day of total beauty from head to toe, as well as inside and out.   

Sure, there are days when we wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and zero in on our thunder thighs or muffin top. But the point is that, like the little Norwegian boy who found my dark skin, bushy eyebrows and overbite smile attractive, sometimes beauty is simply about perspective.