Who has recently tossed this once-derogatory phrase at somebody who tips up a chin for the native? Not since the world shrank with migration, global commerce, travel and the wonders of communication technology, could a Filipino, accuse, say, the other of that mentality—such as someone playing chic at Starbucks in skinny or ripped jeans, oversized shirt, matching half boots or high-topped Converse sneakers, add to that, a blond or auburn-streaked head, mimicking “fashionistas” the rest of the world—because chances are, they mirror each other.
More than attire, as we know, ways of altering looks have made it possible for many to sculpt both profile and body to a stunning stranger, like a seatmate I had in high school, who I couldn’t point to in a reunion photo. Panic gripped me at the thought of losing my memory, until I learned that everyone who shook her hands, did so limply, uncertain with her widened eyes, higher nose bridge, thinner lips set in a classic mestizo face—no hint at all of who we once knew. Apparently, she seized the moment, candidly saying to everyone, “I suppose, you don’t recognize me?”
You and I could surely unravel endless threads of conversation on this, drawing from intimate sources like our families—does not almost every Filipino claim to have a drop of Spanish or other European blood, and later the more obvious American blood in his veins? It’s so spontaneous for us to take note of any trace, like Teodie, a cashier at Safeway, who somehow brushed off the first-ever honor for the Philippines at the Cannes Film Festival, focusing instead on Jaclyn Jose’s profile from her shot on the stage, waving the Palme d’Or, “Hindi naman siya nahuhuli sa itsura ng mga iba,” meaning, rivals Charlize Theron and Marion Cotillard, the judges and other stars.
What’s this about looks so ingrained in us that we’re beyond help? Teodie’s reaction harked me back to Mabel Elmore, who with a flood of Filipino, among other immigrant votes, seated her as (former) BC Member of Parliament, I suspect not only on her merits, but specially, her mestizo features from a Canadian father. I, too, had been guilty a few times like recently, on first meeting Nieves’s granddaughters from a son, who had two daughters with a Metis (a mixed-race BC First Nations from French and British unions), I couldn’t but gush “Ang gaganda! Dalhin mo sila sa Pilipinas, siguradong magiging artista ang mga ‘yan.”
Even Filipino traditions, though celebrated as a matter of sentiment among immigrants, smack of such mentality. For instance, the Santacruzan, a favorite, that the PhilVets Memorial and Cultural Society of BC, of which I had been involved once, to perk up Independence Day rites, at first, seemingly out-of-context, in the end, turned out as expected—a celebration of beauty, into which the religious tradition, by itself of colonial origin, has since metamorphosed. Held in an artificially lit ballroom, sans the moon and half-darkness of Philippine streets, the spotlight on the Red, White and Blue, soon swiveled to the pretty sagalas.
Still, when not referring to looks, “colonial mentality” hits even harder, like when gawking at a long-ago imagined place. Take my aunt on a visit with me to Victoria—as the bus slinked along the bay, which the Empress Hotel, the Parliament buildings and grounds frame, she burst out, “Parang London!” where she has never been. More dramatic than her, on first walking into the hush of Montreal’s Notre-Dame Cathedral, I melted on my knees, teary-eyed over the magnificence I recognized from postcards of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris.
With us, Filipinos swarming the globe, living where we used to just dwell in dreams, and among peoples whose skin color and features we had always idolized, exposure should have desensitized us by now, and swept the phrase into disuse or robbed it of meaning, and yet.