It’s Not Just About the Color

I come from a country obsessed with white skin. Olive skin, albeit beautiful to many Western eyes, is seen as a badge of poverty. True, many Philippine beauty queens had olive skin, tanned and bronzed and made as smooth as silk. But they did not get commercial spots or film roles – not like the women who were fair skinned, who used “block and white” and similar whiteners (see above) in an effort to “perfect” their skin. I grew up with a mestizo father, and fair-skinned mother and sister. I alone was not fair-skinned, or white, like them. Hence, my mother invested heavily in bleaching creams and retinoic acid, starting me off with dermatology at the ripe old age of ten. Once, I chided her, albeit jokingly, “Mom, why are you so obsessed with getting white skin?”

“Because white skin is clean,” she retorted angrily.

I had never felt more humiliated than at that moment, as I gazed sidelong at a mirror and eyed my apparently less-than-perfect skin. My mother had not directly scolded me, nor had she intended to appear racist – but she had shown me what the media and my peers would later reinforce. That having white skin meant that you were healthy, and any other color was a sign of sickness. That having white skin meant that you were clean, and any other color was a sign of putridity. I can only vaguely trace it to the long years of colonization of the Philippines, where we fell beneath Spanish, and then American rule – and where adaptation of the habits of colonizers meant not only survival, but wealth. If you knew Spanish during the Spanish occupation, and if you dressed like the Spaniards, then you were supposedly respected. If you knew English during the American occupation, and if you dressed like an American, then you were supposedly paid more attention. In this new occupation – or should I say preoccupation? – with fair skin, I find a new invader: an illusion of beauty powered by Western mass media. To be globalized means to be Westernized, and it seems that the fear of lacking a global perspective drives many to fall into the trap of a Western worldview. To be native, the fear states, is to be backward; and to be backward may translate into poverty in the global economy. Hence, speak English; worship the dollar; act like someone from a Superpower Country; and if possible, look like someone from that country. If you can’t look the part, you can’t get the dollar; if you can’t get the dollar, you go hungry. It’s a leap of logic, but it seems fitting for an impoverished Philippines.

In reading the first day’s readings on how skin color seems to allow people to bend the rules, I find myself in that afternoon once more, when I scoffed at my mother’s obsession with white skin. I find myself thinking of how I, the “Other”, had to suffer being called ugly because I did not have fair skin; how I had to be inspected more thoroughly than my family before I entered the mall, because I didn’t look as “rich” as they; how I endured being laughed at for purportedly being adopted because I did not have the white skin of my parents. I am not angry – I am only challenged, because I have fought against the stereotype for years by earning high grades and always coming out on top. However, I find myself sighing: how much longer must I fight to get the attention I deserve if only to tell people that there is more to love in me beneath my non-whiteness?

My Name is Not Color

I am not the olive that wraps my soul. I am not the brown that holds me in. I am not the blush that bursts with the blood of a thousand passions caged by rules.

But I am a soul, you see
I know how to weave such weeping words that droop like willows from a stagnant page
I know how to dry the tears and paint the sunsets and spill forth the rivers that flow through my imaginings
I am not olive

I am held in
Prisoner behind the bars of labels laid upon a weaver and painter and architect of worlds of words
Soul like dove fluttering and laughing in a cage that fails to clip her wings
I am not brown

I am blood
Passions
Wants and wishes and dreams

I am not mere blush.

I am not painted upon this canvas, made to assume the colors you wish.