Pele-pino! Pele-pino! Color Confusion.

When I was a kid, Filipinos wanted to be WHITE. I knew girls who bleached their hair with hydrogen peroxide to get the "blond" look (honest!) and walked around with umbrellas to protect their skin from being burned by the Philippine sun.   Filipino artists (singers/actors) were mostly western mestizas/half-breds who copied white entertainers from the U.S.   To be called "negro/negra" or Aeta (Philippine aborigine) because of your dark skin was among the worst insult you could level at a young Filipino.  (I'm sorry for using the N word, but that's the word Filipinos used during my youth). 

Fortunately (I guess), I was lighter skinned than a typical Filipino so despite my naturally curly hair I avoided the trauma of being called a "negra" or Aeta.   I actually was often complimented for being light skinned, sometimes even called a Vilma Santos look-alike (a light skinned movie star).  That was dumb but good for my young ego.  And although misguided, I owe a lot of my sass and confidence from the stupid notion that I was of the RIGHT color.

Then in my early 20's I came to America and realized that WHITE people actually wanted to be dark.  Since I was darker than white people I was still the right color after all.  In my pursuit to emphasize my right color, the sun that used to be shunned became my friend. Just a few minutes out in the sun, and I got what white people covet, a golden tan.  I wasn't alone in this insanity.  I knew a lot of Filipinos who went tanning. Except when they go home to the Philippines, of course, then they spend days away from the sun to get the pale-look back so the Filipinos back home don't tell them in characteristic tactlessness that they are "Negro".  So ironic. Tsk! Tsk!

However, as I got older and became more American, I noticed a change in the mentality in the younger Pilipino generation.  First of all,  they're not Filipinos or Flips. They're not even Pilipinos.  They're now Pele-pinos.  It seems to me, Filipinos no longer think it's great to be WHITE.  It appears now a days they'd rather be BLACK.  Ghetto became high-fashion.  Even my adult brothers who lived in the Philippines until two years ago, came to America looking like they just stepped out of some hip-hop/rap publication.  They were gang-stah! You should see the bling on Jessin (my second to the youngest bro.  I mean, BROTHER as in boy sibling not Yo, Bro!) He wears diamond (cubic zirconia, wanna bet?) on his ears bigger than all the real diamonds I own combined.  (What the eff, Dawg?)

What was even more perplexing, a young relative who has been in the States less than a couple of years and doesn't even know how the U.S. government works, and probably doesn't know the name of her congressman is in love with Obama and joined the Obama bandwagon with fervor. Don't get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with liking President Obama, but plezzzz just have a better foundation for liking his politics and swallowing it hook line and sinker than he is a cool black dude.  Seriously. 

The following Black Eyed Peas 2006 video I believe speed-dialed today's young Filipinos' obsession with BLACK pop culture.   Probably in the same way Farrah Fawcett's hair-do made Filipino girls of my generation wished they were WHITE and blonde.   (By the way, how come Filipino mothers are always portrayed as caricatures?)

White. Black. Pale. Tanned. The young Filipinos obsession with the color spectrum is sometimes confusing to me.  What the heck is wrong with just being brown? Regardless, no matter what the current popular skin color is, I think Filipino artists are hecka talented :-) and it makes me proud to be Pele-pino! Or Filipino! Or Pilipino! Whatever!  (Although it seems the mothers of the girls in this video, did not teach their daughters about the fashion modesty of Maria Clara. Oh, wait never mind. She's a Spanish meztisa, and she is so 18th century. A white Filipina and not a black Pele-pina!)

POSTED BY MARIVIC