Editorial - Racism is in the mind, not in magazine covers

It is sad that the men’s magazine FHM Philippines developed weak knees from a barrage of negative comments regarding its proposed cover for the March issue, which it posted online, and decided to scrap the cover in question.

The cover, featuring a photo of a fair-skinned model in a bikini surrounded by three other bikini-clad models who were dark-skinned and titled “Emerging from the Shadows” elicited a barrage of “racist” accusations that the magazine was forced to apologize and scrap the cover. 

Nobody, least of all magazine editors who are presumed to be responsible and expected to act in good faith, would deliberately do something that can prove costly to credibility as well as financially. 

If there was anything racist at all in the cover, it was in the minds of those who drew meanings in the skin colors of the models. In this politically correct world, people have long ceased to make such distinctions. To find such distinctions now is to be racist.

Before some polluted minds started drawing conclusions from what they thought they saw in the magazine cover, many other normal-thinking people who also saw the cover saw only the beauty personified by the models. It never occurred to them that the girls had different skin tones.

Admittedly, skin tones are an issue to Filipinos. But only as a matter of beauty. The Philippines, thankfully, has never been a country where the color of one’s skin is a race issue. Racism never set foot in these islands. Let us not start instilling racist concepts now. 

What those who are on the prowl for issues to espouse should go looking for instead are those that are right before our noses. Instead of seeing racism where there is none, maybe these crusaders should start raising hell about, say, illegal drugs now ripping this country apart.

Here is a fight they can really help in, given the massive reach of the Internet, and the persuasive powers of social media. The illegal drug problem is more destructive than something that does not even exist here, like racism.