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the correspondents' crew of abs-cbn did a segment on the filipinos' desperation to have white (not just fair) skin. here are some points i brought up in the interview:
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- many filipinos are proud of being brown-skinned only when they are abroad and among fair-skinned westerners. when they return to the philippines, they are back to being disgusted with their brown skin.
- through its media campaigns, the cosmetic industry in the philippines has succeeded in ingraining in filipinos a deep-seated shame for brown skin. what a difference it would be if the ad campaigns were instead directed at making filipinos proud of their ethnicity and malay appearance. the cosmetic industry would still earn billions from selling products that enhance the health, glow, and beauty of brown skin.
- how funny (and sad at the same time) that in beauty contests, our representatives are almost always of mixed breed (e.g., fil-am, fil-indian, etc.). this just reinforces the belief that filipinos can only be beautiful "kung malahian ng foreigner." rather than aiming to meet western standards of beauty, we should instead showcase the beauty of the brown-skinned pinay (whether we win or lose!) as an aside, i also believe that filipina beauty contestants should have a translator during the "question-and-answer" portion. the purpose of this would be to showcase the filipino language and the dialects that we have.
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there's much more i said during the interview but can't recall at this time. i just want to end with this thought: if we filipinos really start believing that brown is beautiful, people from other countries might envy us and want to be filipinos themselves!
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