MAGDARAOG, Sheila Ruth T. 2007-32722
THE BEHOLDER AND THE BEHOLDEN: THE PORTRAYAL OF BEAUTY IN THE CONTEXT OF PHILIPPINE MASS MEDIA “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” – Confucius
Introduction According to Oliver Platt, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” In the most simplistic sense, this quote signifies that the very essence of beauty will rely on the beholder or the looker rather than the beholden, or the object of the looking. What may be beautiful for one may not be beautiful for another, thus, beauty is always subjective and is determined by whoever is looking. In the Philippines, there are several traits that make one stand out in a crowd and be uniformly regarded by Filipinos as beautiful. But before that, it is imperative to know what factors contributed to such notions and concepts of beauty in the Philippines and how these notions might have changed over time, if at all.
Philippine concept of beauty over time – has there been any significant change? In her paper Filipinos and the Color Complex, Joanne Rondilla (2009) asks what the ideal concept of beauty is. She also focuses on the use of skin whitening products and services in the Philippines, and what these products say about the standards of beauty in the country (Maginde, 2014). According to Rondilla (2009) the Filipino fascination for fair skin must be rooted in the country’s more than three-hundred-year-oppression by the Spaniards, closely followed by the American occupation. We cannot deny the fact that these long years of Spanish and American colonization have deeply rooted and ingrained effects on our cultural practices, beliefs, and the like. This must mean that even our sense of morality, our religion, and yes, even our standards of beauty might have been greatly affected by the years under western rule. In the past, American and Spanish cultures tended to prefer fair skinned women, as lighter complexions, to them, signify wealth and social status. On the other hand, darker complexions were equated to manual labor and long hours of toiling in the sun and ergo, were
Magdaraog 2014
found to be unattractive. During that time, thicker waists and wider girths, or those more voluptuous in general, were also considered more beautiful as weight and size then equated to social status / economic class. Back in the day, people thought that if you were fat, you had the means to eat and therefore, you are well off, and if you are well off, you are pretty. These days however, there have been some relevant and quite obvious changes in relation to these views. Wide waists no longer seem to fascinate and attract men of this day and age. It no longer indicates wealth and riches. Instead, people see an image of unhealthy lifestyle full of fastfood and lacking exercise whenever they see a ‘fatter-than-average’ person. Whereas fair skin is still considered stand-out beautiful in most places, especially in third world countries, Rondilla (2009) found that there is a disjoint between the initial assumption that fairer skin is more beautiful, and that tanned skin is less beautiful. In fact, she discovered in her study that Asian Americans (Filipinos born in the United States) preferred to tan their skins more, which is very different from Asian American Immigrants from the Philippines who tend to use whitening products to highlight or even enhance their fair skin. Tanning is quite popular in the USA these days because to them, it means being able to vacation in exotic beaches and tropical countries for holidays, and ergo, is connected to wealth. Fair skin is looked down on and is considered dull and boring because in the USA where everyone already has fair skin, to always have fair skin would mean being stuck at home and not going away for vacations, and therefore equates to being poor. This highlights the differences of beauty standards per culture and its effects on our beauty practices. Another possible reason for Filipinos wanting to be fairer than they are can be attributed to the way Filipinos are being discriminated against in neighboring nations (Shin, 2014). In her article, Jiyang Shin argues that Filipinos prefer to don the Chinese, Korean, or Japanese looks in order to assimilate to nations that discriminate against Filipinos. She goes on further to say that, Such unequal treatment might have gradually developed a sense of inferiority towards people of lighter skin color in East Asian countries” (Ibid). She reasons that Filipinos exhibit a higher predisposition to use skin whiteners in order to be fair in an “…attempt to escape from such discriminations by assimilating into those who discriminate against them” (Ibid).
2|Page
Magdaraog 2014
Qualities that make people ‘beautiful’ in the eyes of Filipinos According to Gueco and Zalamea (2004; in Gaw, 2014): Beauty starts out with possessing one or more physical characteristics through the use of certain products. It is only after these characteristics are obtained that a woman was accepted and even stands out from the crowd, her self-esteem is boosted and success in career, romance, and friendship follow. With this explanation of how beauty is ‘formed’, we realize that a couple of certain physical characteristics must be possessed by a person in order for him or her to be considered beautiful. A quick glimpse at advertisements targeting women will give you a general idea of what Filipinos look for in a person for him/her to be considered beautiful.
Despite the fact that we have long been freed from oppression, our adopted standards of beauty from American and Spanish cultures remain intact through the years. The average Filipinos’ preference for and attraction to fair-skinned people over the morena/o counterparts is proof that we are still somewhat bonded to our colonizers and their old standards of beauty. I say old because, as previously mentioned, Americans and most western countries favor tanned and sun-kissed skin now more than ever because of its implications regarding one’s wealth and status. Just take a look at the roster of Filipino celebrities and consider their similarities. Surely, you will notice that most Filipina celebrities are fair or porcelain-skinned, have pointed noses, straight black hair, and are thin beyond comprehension. Most of them are also partly foreignblooded, be it American, Irish, British, and the likes. In Gaw (2014), Yu (2011) was cited saying, “Filipinos have, for the longest time, favoured the foreign look over what each of them possesses.” This is particularly evident especially in how various whitening products and services keep popping up like mushrooms in the country. Unlike in the olden days, we no longer have to rely on things like milk baths or calamansi scrubs to make ourselves look fairer than we really are. These previously mentioned methods of whitening are all too time-consuming, expensive, and impractical. These days however, we are presented with various options to lighten our skin color. There are the kojic and papaya soaps as well as whitening scrubs which are readily available at Watsons and department stores. There are also glutathione and metathione soaps and injections, if you’re really serious about getting fairer skin. The glutathione, apparently, was not really intended to be used for cosmetic purposes. It is said to help fix the liver with the lightening of the complexion as merely 3|Page
Magdaraog 2014
a side effect. However, right now, glutathione soaps and injections are mostly marketed and utilized for its cosmetic value. Just what does that say about the Filipino standard of beauty based on skin complexion? Some of friends and family have been trapped in the colonial world by still favoring the whiter complexion over their own kayumanggi skin. Most of my high school friends resort to using kojic soaps and sunblock every day in order to get fairer skin. Others resort to photo filters just to look lighter-skinned than they really are. It has even been a joke amongst us because they will edit photos of each other and make the person in the photo look darker and tease that person on and on about her/him being so dark in the past that they can hardly be seen in the photo and that only their teeth are showing. My friends who get teased about their complexions just laugh it off but actively seek measures that will alleviate their situation, i.e. make themselves whiter. They even pass around recommendations regarding the most effective whitening products there are in the market. They tend to try every product there is just to get whiter. Even my own mother is guilty of being part of this phenomenon. In 2012, she went home to the Philippines for my graduation (she’s currently working in the United States of America), and when it was time for her to return to the US, one of her luggage was filled to the brim with whitening soaps and products of all sorts: from papaya soaps, to kojic soaps, to glutathione, and even Belo brand soaps. This ‘obsession’ is quite puzzling to me since she already has fairer-thannormal skin. Which also reminds me of my college friend who is already so white but similar to my mother, is obsessed with being whiter than she already is. Although I myself am not as inclined to looking at white skin as the measure of one’s beauty, I will not deny that I really do find whiter people more attractive, except for men where I think fair means effeminate. Call me judgmental, but to me, there are guys that look good with fair skin, but a lot of them look somewhat too feminine for me. Some would say that my standards for beauty are too high, and I guess this non-inclination to using white skin as a measure of beauty is a factor in that. There are women that are, although fair and porcelainskinned, do not seem pretty to me at all. These women, in my mind, would not be as pretty if they became darker. Unlike darker women who are really beautiful, even if we change their skin color to something lighter, they will still be beautiful or will even be more beautiful after the change. Most of my friends and family will also agree to this, that not all white people are pretty. 4|Page
Magdaraog 2014
Certain facial features will still play a part in their overall look for them to be considered beautiful. This being said, we can approximate that not all Filipinos adhere to the idea that white is beautiful, although most Filipinos would agree that it really does add to the overall appeal. However, it also goes back to the idea presented by Rondilla (2009) that although we seem to have similar characteristics and background as ‘beholders’ (i.e. in the case of Filipino Americans born and raised in the USA, as opposed to Filipino Americans born and raised in the Philippines and then migrated to the USA), our concepts of certain realities will not be uniform. We may then attribute this formation to one of the factors previously mentioned above, which is a person’s level of media exposure. Below, I will discuss this phenomenon further using the cultivation frame analysis or more commonly known as cultivation theory.
Analyzing how media affects the way Filipinos define or characterize what is beautiful using the Cultivation Theory Through the years, several factors have come into play which largely influenced, albeit very subtly, the average Filipino’s standards of beauty, and I will say that mass media representations and portrayal of beauty plays a huge role in forming our concepts of beauty. Using George Gerbner’s cultivation theory, we will analyze how media shapes the Filipinos’ beauty realities. The main assumption of Gerbner’s cultivation theory is that mass media – specifically, the television – cultivates the way people see the real world, through its representations of the world. Initially, Gerbner used the cultivation theory to discuss media’s effects on how the television shapes the viewers’ reality regarding war and violence. However, in our case, the cultivation analysis will be used specifically to assess how mass media shapes a viewer’s concepts of beauty based on the portrayals on media. George Gerbner’s theory is also more commonly used now to analyze all of mass media’s effects on people. According to the Mass Communication Theory website (N.D.), “Cultivation theory states that high frequency viewers of television are more susceptible to media messages and the belief 5|Page
Magdaraog 2014
that they are real and valid.” This means that the more time one spends watching TV or listening to the radio or reading news and posts on the internet will lead them to believe that these messages from the aforementioned channels are accurate and real even when they are not. It is also through this theory that the notion of the Mean World Syndrome was introduced. The Mean World Syndrome’s supposition is that people who are more frequently exposed to media fear that there are more war and violence in the world that there really is, as compared to those who are not as exposed to media and television. It also focuses on the long-term effects on attitudes formed through constant media viewing (Ibid). They also introduced the idea of cultivation differential which describes “the extent to which an attitude on a particular topic is shaped by exposure to television” (Ibid). As for how media affects the Filipinos’ perceptions of beauty, Roy (2010) conducted focus group discussions and focus interviews in order to determine how perceptions regarding beauty were formed and the factors that influenced those idea formations. In her study titled, Ganda Mo: Perception of Feminine Beauty Shaped by Internal and External Factors, she found that a number of internal and external factors contribute to a person’s formation of concepts relating to beauty, including advertisements and media. The study also showed that most people equate beauty with being thin. Despite these things, however, the respondents acknowledged that internal beauty or beauty from within is more important and longer lasting than external beauty. They also stated that beauty is more often related to the outward appearance of a person because it is what is most easily seen. Roy continued to say that most people try to achieve the western kind of beauty because they think it will give them self-fulfillment and wider acceptance from others (Ibid). The study also found that perceptions of beauty also vary across genders (Ibid). This is very true because most of the time, women think being stick-thin is beautiful, but guys think otherwise. I once saw a post on 9gag.com before that highlights this disjoint. 9gag is an online platform for user-generated content where I saw a photo of two women: One is stick-thin, the other is curvy and sexy. Under the photos were the texts describing them as one being the woman’s dream girl, and the other, the man’s dream girl. Although both of these photos fall under the thin/slim side, it still goes to show there are differences in the way people see things, which might be influenced by their sex (hormones) or their media exposure. 6|Page
Magdaraog 2014
Similarly, Gaw (2014) found that light television viewers’ main source of information for coming up with such preferences, in the case of beauty, was Felipe Landa Jocano’s (1997) Philippine Value System as well as their immediate environments. Here, the author highlighted that one views beauty depending on Jocano’s concept of personal na pagtantiya (personal assessment), personal na obserbasyon (personal observation), and personal na karanasan (personal experience). For personal assessment, Gaw states that “respondents thought of certain ideals of beauty primarily because of the comfort that it brings and its aesthetic value dictated by the judgments of their immediate senses.” This personal assessment was also often caused or influenced by their personal observations and personal experiences in their immediate environment (Ibid). In addition, in the case of Gaw’s study, the respondents’ preferences were not as influenced by television viewing, since they were light viewers of television, and was mostly due to this value system. This concept of personal assessment only reinforces the fact that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. Media, according to the cultivation theory, does not immediately affect or influence people after a few exposures. Instead, it takes time, and gradually forms concepts and notions through repetition and hence, retention of various media messages. In short, seeing white, skinny, and straight haired people on TV once in a while will not have quite the same effect or as great an effect as compared to watching ten hours of television every single day, which is actually the average TV viewing. In my case, I hardly watch any television at all and the only medium I constantly use is the internet. I then can assume that the reason I do not have the same predisposition towards whitening and thinness as my friends, classmates, and family, can be attributed to our differences in exposure to beauty as portrayed by media. Whereas they tend to watch television and see a lot of the pretty, white, straight-haired women in their specific roles, I am more exposed to various kinds of beauty on the internet and not just those seen in Philippine television. My high school friends who are exposed to many Koreanovelas and are fans of a lot of Korean celebrities find most white skinned, thin, long-legged women with chinky eyes and wavy hair beautiful. Just recently, while we were in Macau, they kept pointing to random Chinese and Korean women and say that they are pretty, with awe and admiration, but when I turned to look, I found that they were not pretty at all for me. In this case, I can attribute it to my lack of, or less exposure rather, to the Koreanovelas or Korean popular culture in general. They tell me my standards are high, and maybe so, because I am not as exposed as them to these kinds 7|Page
Magdaraog 2014
of looks and therefore, I am not as amazed about these things. Maybe because I am not a fan and I am not in love with the culture like they are. We must also note that the audiences are not the only ones being influenced by the media with the set standards or ideals of beauty being portrayed. Even the celebrities themselves feel the pressure to blend in and become even more ‘beautiful’ than they already are. A testament to this could be the before and after photos of celebrities that can be found online. Many of them, after winning reality shows or singing competitions and vowing not to do anything to change their appearance, go under the knife and change their appearances gradually. They usually start with the nose, and then the glutathione injections or other bleaching treatments, and then they get liposuction from the most sought after cosmetic surgeons in town. And when the audiences or the people start noticing, they will deny having gone through the knife and will pretend all their lives that they were really already pretty since the beginning of time, despite the existence of the aforementioned photos. In the website named Beauty Redefined, Drs. Lexie and Lindsay Kite (2011) highlighted the before and after photos of Hollywood celebrities and how different treatments are done to black girls using photoshop in order to make them look more beautiful. They are, in Dr. Lexie and Dr. Lindsay’s words, ‘whitewashed’, to seem whiter than they are in order for them to be appealing enough to be on magazine covers and billboards. This clearly shows that the mass media industry is one that really influences the standards of beauty in a society.
Conclusion Although many would argue that beauty is something that is not solely dependent on the outside appearance, we cannot discount the fact that people will really tend to evaluate and judge our looks based on our outward appearances. The way we look based on several factors (i.e. height, weight, skin color, size) will affect how people see us, and whether we, the beholden, will be beautiful in their eyes as the beholders. How they see us will also be affected by what they see being portrayed by the media, and the longer and more frequent they are exposed to such images, the more likely for them to apply the same standards of beauty they use to personally assess us and our appearances. Similarly, the less exposed they are to media and its portrayals of beauty, 8|Page
Magdaraog 2014
the more likely they are to rely on their own personal observations and on the influences from their immediate environment, as well as friends, and family. Indeed, the mass media plays a very important role in shaping our attitudes and predispositions regarding this very basic concept of beauty, as well as other abstract concepts such as love, morality, and the like. As communication students, we must then learn to filter and analyze information coming from all kinds of media because these information will shape our realities, sooner or later; consciously or unconsciously, and whether we like it or not.
9|Page
Magdaraog 2014
Bibliography Gaw, K. B. (2014, April). A Cultivation Analysis on the Influence of Children's Exposure to Television in their Definition of Beauty. UP Diliman, Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. Gueco, J., & Zalamea, Z. (2004). Who Says You're Beautiful? The Role of Television Advertisements in How Selected Filipinas Perceive Beauty. Unpublished Undegraduate Thesis. UP Diliman. Quezon City, Philippines, In Gaw, K. (2014). A Cultivation Analysis on the Influence of Children's Exposure to Television in their Definition of Beauty. Jocano, F. L. (1997). Filipino Value System. Quezon City, Philippines: Punlad Research House. In Gaw, K. (2014). A Cultivation Analysis on the Influence of Children's Exposureto Television in their Definition of Beauty. Lexie Kite, L. K. (2011, January 2). Beauty Whitewashed: How White Ideals Exclude Women of Color. Retrieved October 7, 2014, from Beauty Redefined: http://www.beautyredefined.net/beautywhitewashed-how-white-ideals-exclude-women-of-color/ Maginde, L. (2014, May 28). Color Complexes in the Philippines. Retrieved October 1, 2014, from Japan Sociology: http://japansociology.com/2014/05/28/color-complexes-in-the-philippines/ Mass Communication Theory. (n.d.). Cultivation Theory. Retrieved October 1, 2014, from Mass Communication Theory: http://masscommtheory.com/theory-overviews/cultivation-theory/ Rondilla, J. (2009). Filipinos and the Color Complex. in Maginde, L. (2014). Color Complexes in the Philippines. Roy, P. (2010). Ganda mo: Perception of feminine beauty shaped by internal and external factors. Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis. Quezon City, Philippines. Shin, J. (2014, May 27). From Ebony to Ivory: Colorism in the Philippines. Retrieved October 4, 2014, from Japan Sociology: http://japansociology.com/2014/05/27/from-ebony-to-ivory-colorism-inthe-philippines/ Yu, M. (2011). Project Filipina Beauty: An Advocacy Campaign Promoting Filipina Beauty in the Local Market. Quezon City, Philippines, In Gaw, K. (2014). A Cultivation Analysis on the Effects of Children's Exposure to Television in Their Definition of Beauty.
10 | P a g e
