The skin-whitening regime: how colourism in Filipino media has led to discrimination and shame
Jen Laforteza
A moment I remember most clearly from my upbringing in the Philippines involves me rubbing a slice of calamansi, or a Philippine lime, on my armpits and elbows. Like many fourteen-year-olds, I first learnt beauty practices from my mum who regularly performed this ritual on herself.
Maybe it was the sharp stinging sensation of the calamansi on my bare skin, or maybe it was the strong – almost desperate – hope I had that it would lighten my complexion. After all these years, this is the memory that has stuck with me.
For the rest of my teenagehood, I bore the pain and discomfort that came with attempts to lighten my brown skin. I used skin-whitening lotions, abrasive facial cleansers, and harsh glutathione soaps on my body, all with varying degrees of pain, and all in pursuit of becoming the beautiful, light-skinned Filipina I was made to believe I should be.
Illustration courtesy of © Jennifer Nguyen (@jendoodler).
So how did we get here? How did colourism become such a deep-rooted part of Filipino society that we carry shame and cast judgement for simply looking Filipino? To understand this, it’s necessary to take a look at the Philippines’ colonial history.
Nearly 400 years of the Philippines’ history was marked by colonialism enacted by nations with a light-skinned populace: first the Spanish (1565 - 1898), then the Americans (1898 - 1946), and, lastly, the Japanese (1942 - 1945). During the Spanish colonial period, a racial hierarchy was introduced to Filipino society, which unsurprisingly placed white Spaniards at the top, and native Austronesian Filipinos and indigienous Filipinos at the bottom.
For the very few natives who were granted elite social standing via their permission to access education and status in life, many adopted their colonisers’ culture. Americans continued this practice when they took over the country – the only Filipinos who were allowed any social status under their colonial rule were the ones who had already been Westernised. This planted the seed in the Filipino psyche that to do well in life, one must resemble their colonisers as much as they can.
This influx of Western influence during the colonial period and even post-World War II only served to uphold the racial status quo that merely favours those with fair skin and those who conformed to Eurocentric beauty standards. Communications Studies professor, Beverly Romero Natividad, states in her 2006 paper, ‘Rendering whiteness visible in the Filipino culture through skin-whitening cosmetic advertisements’, that Filipinos were continuously taught to “venerate white images, such as the Christian God and light-skinned Hollywood celebrities, that represented beauty, intelligence, wealth, and power.”
Fast-forwarding to 2022, skin-lightening products are alarmingly easy to come by in the Philippines. They’re accessible in virtually every supermarket and anywhere else where cosmetics are sold. Their TV advertisements often feature half-Filipino, half-white models and light-skinned Filipino actresses.
Anne Curtis, a half-Filipino, half-white Australian actress sings about how she achieved her fair skin in one week thanks to a whitening papaya soap, while Angel Locsin, a Filipina actress, talks about how “white is beautiful” in another advert, whilst blatantly using beauty filters. Needless to say, both women are already light-skinned without using these products but we, as media consumers, are meant to be convinced that we need them to be at our most beautiful.
Curtis and Locsin are just two examples out of the abundant prominent Filipino entertainment figures who profit from, and are admired for, their ethnically ambiguous appearances. In fact, Filipino media is oversaturated with celebrities that look similar to one another, ones with light skin and tall noses. But the average Filipino does not naturally possess either of these traits. After all, why would we need soaps that promise us whiter skin if Filipinos naturally had that?
While celebrities promoting unattainable appearances irrespective of the general population happens all over the world, the wider issue here is colourism. At its essence, colourism is defined as the “practice of discrimination by which those with lighter skin are treated more favourably than those with darker skin”. Colourism can present itself in a variety of ways based on factors such as a country’s history and culture. In the Philippines, the existence of colourism is most easily observed through the media.
Programmes from the Philippines’ biggest public broadcasters are a prime example of this lack of variety. Weekday schedules such as that of GMA-7, the “most-watched channel in Total Philippines” in 2021, feature the same exact shows with new episodes each day: there’s the morning magazine programme, midday variety shows, evening news, and, to fill the gaps in between, soap operas. TV ads also repeat daily, with many airing several times a day.
If you sat down and watched a full day of these channels’ broadcasts, you can count the number of actors or presenters who have not had their skin lightened on one hand. Our media has a noticeable bias for light-skinned public figures who are not pango (a Tagalog name specifically for people with flat noses) or negro/negra (a name used to point out someone’s dark skin). You’d be hard-pressed to find a celebrity with facial features and skin tone similar to that of your everyday Filipino.
Even worse, indigenous people get zero representation on these programmes unless they’re part of a news report. (And if you do see someone dark-skinned on Filipino TV, it might just be an actress in blackface portraying a poor character like in 2011’s Nita Negrita.)
The problem with this homogeneity in the Philippines’ media landscape is that it becomes hard to escape its influence. For years, Locsin and Curtis, stars of many skin-lightening adverts, were both in shows that aired during the most-watched time slots on TV. The same can be said for many other high-profile celebrities. As a result, millions of Filipinos are exposed to their shows, which are aired alongside their ads telling, or even reminding, you to habitually lighten your skin. Such celebrities are presented as the ideals for beauty, and their secret? They actually have lighter skin.
It doesn’t get more obvious than the Miss World Philippines beauty pageant, which has fervent followers and is nationally broadcasted. Seven out of the last ten winners are half-white, with the other three either having lighter skin or Eurocentric features. In her paper about the idealisation of Eurocentric beauty standards amongst Filipino women, Kristina Baybayan Renault highlights that “by rewarding […] these aesthetics, this gives the message to other Filipinas […] to conform to this ideal.”
However, this overwhelming message of whiter being better isn’t just confined to mainstream media. It’s steeped in everyday life – it’s banal. As a society, we’ve normalised judging someone by their skin tone, from fellow classmates to the most prominent public figures.
Hollywood actress Asia Jackson, who is of African-American and Indigenous Filipino descent, shared on Twitter how she was bullied for her skin colour when she lived in the Philippines. In the case of political figures like Nancy Binay, a senator supporting the controversial United Nationalist Alliance party, she became the subject of many memes and jokes revolving around her skin colour.
Even without direct instances of colourism-related bullying, the preference for whiter skin is so deep-rooted in our society that it’s impossible to avoid. As a child, I was often told to “not stay out in the sun too long or you’ll get too dark” when playing outdoors. My mum would also mention in passing how my skin was darker on my elbows and armpits, sparking my body insecurity during the already-awkward time of puberty.
So, when I came home to celebrities promoting skin-lightening products after a long day of school where all the popular students were light-skinned, I couldn’t escape the feeling that it was targeted at me. From as early as high school, the message that one’s social status is dictated by your skin tone became very clear.
With this veneration of whiteness, we’ve seen that it also comes with judgement towards those with darker skin, leading to very real physical and psychological effects, such as its impact on Filipino women’s self-esteem, as well as our ingrained association of lighter skin with better employment and romantic prospects.
While there is unfortunately a massive lack of qualitative and quantitative research done on preferential treatment for lighter-skinned Filipinos in public spaces like the office, or even privately amongst families, its existence and prevalence in Filipino society is irrefutable. So, with hundreds of years of colourism to go against, what is there to do?
There are some worthwhile actions we can do that involve not just individual change, but also a collective, conscious effort so that others can feel comfortable in their skin colour. This can look like: not commenting on someone’s skin colour, suggesting to someone who does that it’s not right to do so, avoiding supporting companies that profit from skin-whitening, and actively resisting influences that try to convince you to like whiter skin more, no matter where it comes from.
Although tackling colourism in the Philippines will be a long and challenging journey, the wider social acceptance that every shade of Filipino is beautiful is a promising first step to profound societal and cultural change.