Filipinos Need to Know That Having Dark Skin is Okay

By Shane Haro
Editor-in-Chief | HAPI Scholar

“Dito sa Silangan ako isinilang
Kung saan nagmumula ang sikat ng araw
Ako ay may sariling kulay: kayumanggi
Ngunit hindi ko maipakita tunay na sarili”

– FrancisM, “Tayo’y Mga Pinoy” (1992)

In 2022, Filipinos are more socially conscious than ever due to the internet.

It did not use to be this way. When I was growing up in the early aughts, our culture was openly homophobic and misogynistic – so normalized were these attitudes that positive portrayals of women and queer Pinoys on local TV were as rare as a blood moon. That seems to have changed over the past decade as social media blew up. Filipinas and the LGBTQ+ community, voicing their experiences to millions of netizens, grew into their power and opened the eyes of many.

Yet despite all the progress Filipinas and the local queer community have made in legitimizing themselves in the cultural eye, there is one aspect of our Filipino-ness that we as a people seem to have trouble embracing: our skin color.

Historically, Filipinos are brown-skinned due to our ancestors being of predominantly Malay stock. Mind that melanin is a naturally-occurring pigment in human skin that evolved to protect us from diseases like skin cancer; it does not define a human’s worth. The notion that it is shameful is absurd, especially considering that it has likely saved your ancestors from cancer at some point (and thus ensured your existence).

Nevertheless, during the Spanish Colonial Period, melanin got politicized among Filipinos. Much like how blackness became associated with slavery during Slave Trade-Era America, brownness became associated with the “inferiority” of the indios.

melanin got politicized among Filipinos

For 300 years, Filipinos were made to look up to white-skinned peninsulares as Dons and Doñas and compelled to serve them. Some Spaniards intermarried with Filipinos, giving rise to mestizo families. Together, this class of pure- and half-blood Spaniards living in the Philippines enjoyed advantages such as not having to do manual labor or pay tributos. Indios were expected to stop and greet them in the streets and prioritize their demands.

As this class disparity lodged itself into Philippine society over the next three centuries, Filipinos began to romanticize and desire aspects of the Don and Doña lifestyle – including white skin. In their eyes, it morphed into a symbol of privilege: the only people who never got a suntan were the ruling class of white and half-white colonists, after all. Everyone beneath them was a shade of bronze.

Of course, we all know how that historical period ended. Filipinos decided they could rule their country just fine on their own and kicked the Spaniards out, growing into their power as a people. There was no longer a need to see whiteness as a status symbol past that point as Filipinos, in their brown-skinned glory, had taken over the show.

…Except that 124 years later, millions of Filipinos are willing to bleach their skin with glutathione to look whiter. Below is a look at the current state of local beauty standards:

We may have kicked out our oppressors but our internalized racism stuck around.

Skinferiority Complex

The local entertainment media holds a lot of influence over the lives of modern-day Filipinos. In a few strokes, it could help deconstruct the “white is might” mentality so prevalent among us by embracing the beauty of brownness. Instead, it chooses to feed into the status quo.

Above are actual projects released by major Filipino film studios. Let’s focus on Gluta for a moment. In it, lead actress Ella Cruz plays an Aeta girl who aims to win the Miss University pageant and prove that brown is beautiful. It is an empowering narrative we could all get behind, except Cruz is a light-skinned city girl who had to put on brownface for the role. In a single stroke, the film manages to undermine its own message and makes things worse by relegating Aeta actors to supporting roles.

Gluta got lambasted by progressive Filipinos online, but it nevertheless represents how other Filipinos perceive brownness as a kind of costume. Gluta is not the first local movie or series to devalue brown people in this way. In fact, it is just the latest entry in a long list of moments where Filipino pop culture makes a comedic mockery out of dark-skinned people.

Not even Senators are safe from this morbid colorism. Nancy Binay often gets targeted on social media for being maitim and has even had to speak out against it. A Philippine Senator – someone elected by Filipinos to empower them – is being harassed by Filipinos for having natural Filipino skin.

When did we lose the plot? How can we go from proudly cheering “Pinoy pride!” one moment to openly mocking our native brown skin the next? In our bid to chase white (and Far Eastern) aesthetics, we have fallen into the same old mental traps that colonized Filipinos were supposed to have already broken out of.

A Conundrum

So how do we go about fixing this nationwide skinferiority complex, then? How do we move the needle when it comes to this conversation? As self-love comes from within, Filipinos must reassess what it means to be Filipino.

If you are a brown-skinned Filipino reading this, I implore you to let it glisten in your next Instagram post. The local language your parents taught you growing up? Speak it loudly and proudly. You may not have realized it yet, but empowerment comes from pride. When you proudly embrace the unique language of your province, you effectively defend it from cultural deletion by nefarious forces. The same principle applies to skin complexion. Once you understand that brown skin is not only okay to have but to celebrate, you have cracked the code.

Suddenly, those people who pick on you for being morena do not sound so sensible; they seem hateful and bigoted. That commercial where they worship white-skinned Filipinas? Suddenly it does not feel inspirational; it feels out-of-touch. In these and plenty of other cases, a bit of reframing can go a long way.

We are victims of Eurocentrism, and not every Filipino will admit that. But this problem is fixable so long as we are willing to confront and work on it.