Beauty queens

The leftists think she could have said something more nationalistic. Feminist activists, for their part, dismiss beauty contests as little more than glorified cattle shows.

But the prevailing national sentiment, of course, is euphoria over the fact that after 42 years, another Filipina has been named the most beautiful woman in the universe.

“Ang Pinakamagandang Hayop sa Balat ng Lupa” – literally, the most beautiful animal on the surface of the Earth – was a movie released in 1974 that launched the show biz career of Gloria Diaz, the first Filipina to win the Miss Universe crown in 1969.

The movie was released in the second year of martial law, when the Marcos dictatorship kept sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll locked up in a closet. But “Pinakamagandang Hayop” got away with what at the time was classified as a “bold” movie that showcased the curves of the first Filipina Miss U. Pinoys were titillated by stories that Gloria Diaz shunned underwear and padded around naked at home.

By the time Diaz entered the movies, Pinoys were cheering for the country’s second Miss Universe, Margie Moran, who was crowned in 1973.

Much was made of the fact that both Pinay Miss Us had an overbite. Gloria and Margie must have spelled bad business for Filipino orthodontists for several years. Even after more than a decade, when Pinoys waited in vain for the Miss Universe crown to go to another compatriot, talk persisted that an overbite works like a charm and our pageant candidates must have one if the country wants the title again.

Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach, the Filipino-German model who was crowned the other day as this year’s Miss Universe, does not have an overbite, but she shares the exotic looks of Gloria Diaz.

Pia’s victory is another reflection of evolving concepts of beauty, which are often related to power, social status and attitudes toward sex.

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I grew up with Caucasian beauties dominating Philippine cinema, whose stars symbolize the average Pinoy’s concepts of feminine pulchritude. Back in the day our local stars looked like Elizabeth Taylor or Audrey Hepburn, with large, expressive eyes, thin lips, aquiline nose and fair skin. Voluptuous bodies were preferred; Twiggy types played supporting roles.

Between the movie stars and the images of Jesus Christ with the pantheon of Catholic saints – almost all of them white except for the Black Nazarene – a Pinoy kid with kayumanggi or brown skin and button nose can develop an inferiority complex about her looks when in the company of Caucasians.

It did not help that the country was colonized by white Europeans for 400 years and then by Americans. If colonizers, movie stars and even God look white, children might suspect that people with brown skin (or yellow with slant eyes, like the Tsinoys) belong to an inferior race. In our country, a dark complexion also denoted working in the fields or other forms of menial toil and was associated with low social status.

So it was a big deal when Nora Aunor – with her slight build, Malay face and kayumanggi skin burned darker by the Bicol sun – won Pinoy hearts with her “golden voice” and became a show biz superstar.

“Guy and Pip” – Nora and Tirso Cruz III – were our first AlDub. Nora’s challenger was Vilma Santos, who is fair-skinned but no Caucasian. If you look at her photos from when she was a teenager with a snub nose, you would believe stories that Ate Vi had a nose job.

That was the society that was stunned by the victory of morena beauty Gloria Diaz as Miss Universe.

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These days, if we go by the proliferation of whitening creams and soaps, it looks like fair skin is still coveted by Filipinas. But Asian beauties (in K-pop and Korean telenovelas) have joined Caucasians as paragons of beauty.

In my youth we were told that the ideal vital physical statistics was a 24-inch waist combined with 36-inch hips and 36-inch upper body circumference, preferably with cup-C breasts.

Today, thanks to models like Kate Moss and Hollywood stars like Keira Knightley, overwhelmingly endowed is out except perhaps in porn sites. Thin lips have been replaced with the full lips of Angelina Jolie. Her large, expressive eyes, like those of Knightley, remain desirable, if we go by the popularity of cosmetic surgeries for eyelifts and lid jobs among Asians with monolids.

We’ve gone from the voluptuous, well-fed look of Marilyn Monroe to the other extreme: the reed-thin body of supermodels. For the ordinary Pinay, that kind of thin is often as impossible to achieve as the curves of Pamela Anderson.

Pia Wurtzbach has a combination of both: slim with no excess fat anywhere, and voluptuous where it matters. She got her mother’s skin but she also has European features. Like Gloria Diaz, Pia looks like a Filipina.

I’m a firm believer in the saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I’m also aware that girls’ self-esteem can be affected by concepts of beauty in their society.

When young girls look at crowned beauty queens, it helps to see the winner looking like the kids’ reflection in the mirror.