Little white lie

It was a cursory check on the well-being of a new resident of the city. "So, how went your first week in Cebu?" The respondent laughed. In her distinct French accent, she narrated her brush with the local cosmetic counters. "So many whitening products! You 'ave whitening cleansers for the face here. Whitening moisturizing lotion for the skin. You even 'ave deodorant to make your underarms white. In fact, Clarins (a solid traditional French brand) 'as a line of whitening products I 'ave never ever seen in France!"

The age old debate on skin color and Filipino values, but my thoughts didn't run the same course. While agreeing with her that yes, it was odd that so many Filipino women wanted to become lighter, when it was the fashion in Caucasia land to be tan, I suddenly thought, "Well, so what?"

Is it really the case that when Filipinas want to have lighter skin tone, it's a manifestation of their subconscious desire to become white? And thereby proof of the unconscious acknowledgement that the white race is superior to the brown race?

Certainly that was the conventional 'nationalist' theory when I was being indoctrinated in college. Be proud of being brown, screw the conyo kid. (I'm spelling conyo the way I want to, ok?) In fact, being labeled a 'conyo kid' became something derogatory, a term that migrated from children of Spanish extraction to the vain, the frivolous, the dilettantes, the party-goers.

In some circles, it then became a thing of shame to be labeled 'conyo'. Children of old-blood Spanish families were offended when you called them conyo. They would vigorously oppose the label, despite the fairness of their skin and the blondness of their hair.

On the other side of the coin, it was also embarrassing to admit to wanting to have lighter skin. To admit that would mean a concession to the blindness prevailing among the middle and lower classes that white is beautiful. In fact, it meant you were admitting to being a member of that class. I mean, anybody who'd ever been on an airplane to the States knew that tans were the thing in America. So, the browner you were after summer, on that first day of school when you stepped inside the classroom in your crisp white outfit, and the more pronounced your tan lines, hey, the more you were worshipped.

So, brown was beautiful, and this was the point enunciated by the French mademoiselle in her not-so-well enunciated English.

But this got me to thinking. If white people thought brown was beautiful, and we scoffed at brown people who wanted to become white because white people thought that brown was beautiful, does that mean we've suddenly been caught in this vicious cycle of again echoing the thoughts of white people, and conforming to their idea of beauty, and ultimately, acknowledging the superiority of their intellectual analysis of our own thoughts on beauty?

Such a conundrum. Are we again aping the west? So what if white people think tans are beautiful? If our standards of beauty dictate that light luminous skin is beautiful, then shouldn't we just accept this instead of trying to change women's perspectives? Why do we have to convince our women that they should accept their natural skin tone?

If Philippine culture pressures women to spend a fortune in lightening products, is it an argument for a change in feminine mentality just because western culture pressures women to buy tanning products? Have we again been robbed of independent thought?

After taking a poll of the few Asian countries I've been fortunate enough to visit, I realized - hey, it's not just in the Philippines where white is beautiful - it's all over Asia. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia all have healthy beauty industries catering to the anti-melanin drive. And for sure, not all these countries underwent Spanish and American rule, although they did go through colonial periods. So, is this really colonial mentality?

Hard to tell. All my life, I've imbibed tv and print ads for the Oil of Olay products that my mom always used. These ads drummed the message: 'Who says I'm going to grow old gracefully? I'm going to fight it every step of the way.' And that's why I applied sunblock before I stepped out of the house this morning.