I was one of those Filipino kids who was born and grew up with really dark brown skin. The technical name for the Filipino brown skin tone is kayumanggi, which I guess is the Tagalog word for the color brown too.
You’ll also often hear the term morena or moreno to refer to individuals in the Philippines with darker brown skin.
Among my sisters and cousins, I was the darkest. I got teased a lot for it – at home, at school, at the neighborhood. I was called “negra”, “itim”, or “ita”, which were all derogatory remarks aimed toward those who were dark-skinned.
When I was growing up in the Philippines, the beauty standard was mestisa, a Spanish-borrowed word that we associated with fair-skinned girls and women.
I mean, you saw this everywhere.
Movies, TV shows, commercials, bill boards, magazines, pageantry, singing competitions – you name it.
You hardly saw anyone in the “show business” with brown skin. If you did, they were typically comedians or took on the roles of those being deliberately made fun of, specifically because of their dark complexion. They were also often portrayed as the poor, undesirable ones.
When I was a kid, I did not think of myself as beautiful. In fact I can’t remember a time in my childhood when I felt that I was. Of course, my parents said otherwise, but to me, they only said it because they were my parents.
Deep in my core, I truly believed I was ugly because I was not fair-skinned, or maputi.
I remember when I was in first year of high school, my teacher and our “muse” casually said I could represent my class section in the upcoming school beauty pageant, because I had both “beauty and brains”.
They called me “black beauty” [of course, now that I am in America, I definitely won’t consider myself that as I feel it rightly belongs to my black sisters].
Even though they probably meant well, even that phrase still had me offended. It couldn’t just be “beauty” period?
I remember scoffing and laughing, truly mortified that they put “beauty” and my name in one sentence. Hello, were you talking about me? And this was coming from the class muse.
[In the Philippines, one of the class officer positions was the Class Muse, who was the “face” of your class section at school events. They were nominated obviously for their pretty faces, and you guessed it: they were usually fair-skinned. I was Class President at this point; thinking that I could compensate for my lack of “beauty” with my brain instead.]
Needless to say, I turned down the pageant.
Whenever I saved up enough money in my piggy bank, usually from loose change or even the little baon (allowance) I got, the first thing I always did was go to the retail store, or what we called the “sari-sari store”, and buy whatever the latest skin whitening fads were on commercials that I’ve secretly taken notes on.
I always hid this from my family; afraid of getting teased further.
I tried it all: whitening lotions, whitening soap bars, whitening toners, whitening face washes – I mean, everything.
Of course, none of them worked!
For one, I wasn’t consistent with my use of these products because once they ran out, I wasn’t able to afford another. Plus, my always being out in the sun didn’t help either. Not that I had any other choice; we walked to and from school, as well as on store runs for the family.
the damage
There was one particular moment that I will never forget.
I must have been 11 or 12, but I remember taking one of those bleach bars used for handwashing laundry whites, we called them bareta, into the “shower” with me.
Okay, we didn’t really have “showers”. We usually had a bucket of water in the bathroom that we called timba, and used a tabo to scoop water out of it and wash ourselves with it.
Anyway, I took this bareta and vigorously scrubbed myself with it using a loofa.
I thought that with enough force and duration, it would surely work and make my skin whiter. I especially focused on my knees and elbows, because I got teased more for how dark they were.
Of course, my skin only turned red and got irritated from the harsh chemicals in the bareta.
I didn’t realize this then, but when I look back now, this was how the media had damaged me, my sense of self-worth and -confidence.
I’m sure many other young girls in the Philippines experienced this kind of damage on their self-image as well.
the shift
When I started sophomore year three months after coming to America, one of my classmates said something that truly shocked me and I will never forget.
“I love your skin tone!”
I’m pretty sure I blinked at her and my jaw dropped. I wasn’t sure I heard her right. She was the perfect image of the “All-American” girl I admired growing up- fair skin, blond hair, blue eyes.
Come again?
In my 15 years alive at that point, no one had ever said they loved my complexion. In fact, it was always the opposite.
I grew up believing I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t beautiful, I was ugly, I was never going to be liked by any boys, because of my dark skin.
This was simply the message I received from society, from family, friends, and even myself.
This was further reinforced whenever my mom (likely without meaning any harm by it) often bought me clothes with the “uglier” colors, claiming they looked better in my darker complexion.
She was probably right, but of course, they were always yellow, lime green, and any other color than the “pretty” ones my sister got: pink, purple, red, etc.
I often felt pushed farther and farther into the “ugly” girl corner.
But, the longer I stayed in America, the more and more I saw it.
Fair-skinned women – the very ones I admired and envied all my life, the “true” definition of beauty – went to tanning salons or laid under the sun for hours until their skin burned or turned into the color of mine.
It had me thinking of my younger self in the Philippines, as well as every girl I knew there who did exactly as I did, how we wished we were more “white”.
And here “white” women were wishing their skin was brown.
What gives?
the acceptance
I decided then that no matter where you were in the world, people always wanted what they didn’t have.
We were never satisfied with who we were.
We always wished we were this or that, hating ourselves for who we actually were.
Always wishing we looked more like her. Never liking the one we saw in the mirror every day.
It took a long time to unlearn everything I believed about myself. To reverse the words I told myself, to forget what others said about that young girl who scrubbed herself with a bleach bar, and to truly believe that maybe my parents meant what they said. That they weren’t just saying that because I was their kid.
Of course, while healing my inner child of this “lie” I was told all my life, I soon learned that this type of prejudice exists in other countries too. Yes, even in America, much to my disappointment.
But the biggest shift for me was accepting myself and embracing my brownness, regardless of what others said.
I learned that self-acceptance and love were the antidote to this particular prejudice and hate, especially if it is towards our own self.
my hope
I don’t know how it is in the Philippines anymore, since I left 18 years ago now. I’d like to believe and hope that more and more celebrities, tv personalities, and now, online influencers are proudly representing the Filipino kayumanggi.
That instead of using their platform to promote products and treatments to make their skin lighter, they embrace their brown skin so that other young girls who are watching them will start embracing their own.
That they stop promoting only fair skin as the preferred beauty standard.
That they represent those of us who are brown, too, but in leading roles instead of the poor, looked down on and mocked ones.
Because if I’d seen even one of them as a kid, perhaps I would have not taken that bleach bar with me to the shower. Perhaps I would have bought myself a snack or a nice pencil with my money instead of useless whitening products. Perhaps I would have not shrunken myself into the corner and hid in the shadows. Perhaps I would have loved the lime green shirt my mom bought for me. Perhaps I would have believed my parents when they said I was beautiful.
To my morena and kayumanggi girls out there, I hope you know you are beautiful exactly as you are. Know that in other parts of the world, your beauty is actually admired. Don’t change who you are because you’ve been told lies about what beauty is.
Most importantly, I hope you love and admire yourself for it, and it doesn’t take 15 years for you to love, embrace, and be proud of your dark skin.
