A friend of mine just had her former ex-pinay-now-Amgirl mother-in-law here in France and this morning, she was so eager to finally tell me her inis and relief that her mother-in-law finally left. She was so fed up as her mother-in-law went overboard by being so mayabang, and most especially, as she was told to be tsimay look-alike for having that baluga color.
After doing everything to be as hospitable as possible, that was what she gained. Honestly, when she told me about her adventure with her mother-in-law, I just couldn't help myself from laughing. I was just knocked by the idea that after long years of being in America, this poor mother-in-law still have the same standard of color / social discrimination - branding morenas as lower class citizens and fair-skinned as socialites. Oh well!
Here in Europe, we could trace back this kind of social classification in the Medieval Ages where tanned population were mostly the farmers while the noble families stay as pale white as they could. They even apply talc powders all over their body to get even whiter.
Now, the trend has completely inversed. If you've got a tanned skin, that would mean that you could pay yourself a vacation. If you've got a perfectly uniform tan all over your body, that would mean that you could even pay yourself a vacation in one of the European Nude Beaches. Sosyal ka day! And finally, if you've got a tanned skin all year round, that would mean that you've got a lot of bucks to pay yourself an artificial tan (tanning cream, tanning bed, sun lamps). O di ba.
In my present entourage, everybody envies my natural tan. Hehe, i don't have to pay expensive vacations to have that.
Well, is stereotyping normal? Ewan. The last time I was in Pinas, I was really nognog as I just came back from a long vacation, and most of my colleagues had the same remark: Ay, nakakaitim pala sa France. Buti na lang, I'm not really affected with such remark, proof, I never used whitening creams.
There's one remark which affected me though: Ano ba yan, hanggang ngayon, di ka pa rin tumataba. Well, it's past tense now, no more vitamins, appetizers, food supplements, etc. I just learned to love and accept who I am, and who wouldn't, lahat sila dito, inggit sa kin. I could eat anything I want without worrying about my weight :).
13 years ago
13 comments:
mell, request granted. nakakainis naman kasi di ba. keep cool.
You know what Ana, people who have so much hang ups with color and race are for me stupid and ignorant. Those may be strong words, heck yes, but thats just my opinion. Why must we conform to a certain color and a race? Why can't we just conform to ourselves, to who and what we are notwithstanding all these factors. I guess this is what I love with NL, people here are more open-minded, tolerant (but w/ limits of course), and non discrimantory of the unpopular things.
exactly the same thing why i love it here - no such discrimination. pinoys are just like that, observation lang, they often tag people by the way they look, they dress up, etc etc.
thank you analyse, :D
I lost my cool...
while growing up, i was taunted by peers as well as their parents...
then i thought this would change when i came to the us. americans accepted me w/o question...
a few ignorant Filipinos behaved like those who tormented me back in pinas. :D these were the ignorant ones of our kababayans...
Eh oui, sad to say, c'est comme �a.
Yeah, I remember these people back home using this "papaya" something to whiten daw their skin, lol
I've got tanned skin but I don't need products like this one. Tanned skin is more beautiful than white skin! The problem is that they wanted to look like the Chinese people, flawless daw. haha!! Don't they know that the Chinese people want darker skin now? That 's a new trend sweeping China nowadays! Tanned skin is in and ghostly white is now out!
Oh, how're you doin Analyse? 'psensya ka na 'na-carried away' ako ! haha!! d�sol�e, tagal kong nawala, my modem broke down...na-missed tuloy kita. *sniffs* So, na-po-profit mo na jardin mo?
ingat and bisous! :)
Skin color is such a big deal in Pinas – twisted mentality.
Mell, I had the same experience, and worst is that, in the family, I was the only one with dark skin (morena lang naman). As a kid, I just couldn’t erase the idea that I was an adopted child even if my father had the same color.
Bokidoks, nice to see you around! Tu m’as manqué tellement. I thought you were on vacation. So how’s your modem? My garden? Nice to discover it little by little, we have tulips pala and other kinds of flowers (don’t know the names) and our cherry trees start to bloom na rin. Medyo late bloomers ang mga plants/trees here in Dijon coz of the lower temperature, I passed by Paris 2 weeks ago and most of the trees are in full bloom already! How’s your terrace-jardin?
Schatzli, thanks for visiting. Haha, that one is really funny. I remember when I was a kid, everyone around me pushed me to use an umbrella too, threatening me of having kuto if not. :)
Bleh, I've written about this type of thing before. Such comments show the quality of their mind. Very poor, in the friend's MIL case.
I love being dark. Thank God, I belong to a family of scuba divers and beachcombers so we are all so into embracing our color. Hearing the others say something about it was never really an issue for us.
My parents shop (grocery) at shopwise and I got so irritated last Jan since the whole rack of moisturisers they had were all whitening. Kainis kaya!
@ Ana, di ba medyo masungit ang mga frances, pero i love paris very romantic, when i was there in 97, nakita pa namin si senator drilon at the champs, taking his second honeymoon, the senator is very down to earth, we live near the station of Mairie de Clichy @ line 13, i was doing a telecom training in alcatel...di ba medyo mataas ang standard of living sa paris..
Tin Tin, I guess it will take a long time before Pinoys in Pinas could get over this color coding mentality, there’s just too much discrimination there.
AnP, one of my sisters too is using whitening creams, don’t know what’s her problem with her skin, ang puti na nga e.
Techguy, di naman masyadow, they’re just always stressed out, and they always tend to make things complicated whilst they could actually do it simpler. Sa Paris? Like any other capital I guess, the standard of living there is really high. A cup of café in Paris cost 4€ while it cost only 2.5€ in Dijon, that’s 60% higher!
e di napapansin mo rin na pag bumibili ng french bread ang mga ibang frances e iniipit nila sa armpit ang bread habang naglalakad sila o marami silang dala...
haha, exactement!! at pagdating nila sa bahay nila kalahati na lang ng baguette ang natitira kasi naubos na nila on their way home.
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