My first images of Filipina beauty unfolded from the pages of my mother’s album, with pictures of Manila Carnival queens during the ’20s and ’30s. I was 7 years old, and I lingered on the pages showing the pictures of beauteous Miss Philippines; Miss Maria Katigbak of Batangas was the kayumanggi, Miss Pacita de los Reyes was fair-complexioned and mestisahin. Both were dressed like a queen and wore a bejeweled crown on their heads.
In the same album, the graduation picture of my mother and her classmates from Holy Ghost College and University of Santo Tomas showed them all shy and virginal, with their flat, shiny, and neatly combed hair parted in the middle, in white silky dress with a closed-neck collar, brown stockings and black high-heeled shoes.
Class photographers of that time seemed skilled in drawing out the mahinhin look: chin slightly down, face slightly angled to the left, steady eyes at the camera and a very hesitant smile from the lips. No one is sexy by today’s standards.
For my mother, her classmates and beauty queen friends, love and courtship would happen within the mahinhin context. Sincerity and loyalty were tested by time. “Walang matimtimang birhen sa matiyagang manalangin.”
I was not sure whether my late mother, Inay Aurea, a probinsiyana beauty in the early ’30s, was mahinhin (coy and shy) or indecisive, or a procrastinator when it came to bitawan ang kanyang matamis na oo. It took my father six years to court my mother, excluding his proclaimed crush on her as early as grade six.
My father wrote hundreds of love letters (which I’ve read secretly), pleading for my mother’s love and affection. Mahinhin is also a quality of being hard to get.
One aspect that stands out in a Filipina is the idea of pakipot. To men, pakipot is both thrilling and frustrating. It drives men crazy, crazy enough to gather their wits and play the game of patience and perseverance. There’s agony and ecstasy in uncertainty, but ahh, victory is sweetest in the end.
The ultimate reward
The flip side of the mahinhin is tapat umibig. (“Ikaw lamang ang aking iibigin hanggang sa huling yugto nang aking hininga.”) It’s the ultimate reward for a man’s patience, service (sumalok pa nga ng tubig, eh), loyalty, plus courtesy and respect accorded to the girl’s parents.
The tapat na pag-ibig of a Filipina wife often turns out to be grossly exaggerated to the point of being tragic. It is common that a philandering husband is able to keep his Ks (kerida, kulasisi, kalaguyo) because his wife is suffering in silence, hanging on to her obstinate belief that “sa akin naman siya (the philanderer) uuwi, at sa kandungan ko siya mamamatay.” Whew! Martyr!
Filipina beauties come in three variants; the kayumangging kaligatan, the maputing tsinita and the mestisang Española.
Kayumanggi is dark or golden brown skin, the color of descendants of the Malay race originating from the Indonesian archipelago and Malaysia. Kayumanggi beauty looks exotic with her dark eyes and long black tresses. She possesses the mysterious allure of conservatism born out of obedience to the tribal laws on monogamy and the influence of the Catholic church, which preaches the virtue of purity of womanhood and the sanctity of married life.
The kayumanggi type is typical in Bulacan of North Luzon all the way to the Tagalog regions of Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Cavite up to Sorsogon at the tip of the Bicol region.
The tsinita manifests the inclusion of Chinese blood through intermarriage.
Fair smooth skin is premium to many Filipino men. Opposite attracts. The tsinita’s chinky eyes have their unique appeal. It signifies the delicateness of the femininity and the doll-like features of Chinese women. Many tsinita beauties come from Manila and Pampanga, the adopted province of the Chinese from Parian, who rebelled against the Spanish government and sought refuge in me keni land to escape from the wrath of the guardia civil. Tsinita beauty stands out in the crowd because of ivory white skin and chinky eyes.
The mestiza Española beauties are few, but scene-stealers. They are offspring of the elite Spanish families and bureaucrats during the Spanish rule. During the Spanish times they lived in the big houses in the old districts of Manila: Intramuros, Quiapo, Santa Mesa, San Miguel and Ermita.
Unreachable
In the South, Zamboanga City is mestiza country. They stood out in a crowd because of their European features, haughty and well-dressed. They spoke Spanish, a language with beautiful, foreign-sounding syllabication (este señorita, que bonita). They were also unreachable to most Filipino men because they tend to love and marry their own kind, a mestizong pakonyokonyo.
Many said that Jose Rizal’s great love was the unfulfilled one, Leonor Rivera of Tarlac, but he ended up marrying an English mestiza, Josephine Bracken, to legitimize their romance at the last moment, before he was executed at Luneta.
In the ’50s and ’60s, the world became highly aware of the stunning beauty of the Filipina.
We won the titles in the Miss Universe and Miss International beauty contests, big events complete with pageantry and shown on television to a worldwide audience. Gloria Diaz, Gemma Cruz (a friend from Maryknoll); Monina Yllana (another friend working in an ad agency); Margie Moran, Aurora Pijuan; and Charina Zaragoza (also a friend and daughter of my landlady) were some of the winners that radiated Filipina pulchritude around the world.
They fascinated the West with their unique gracefulness and mystique inherent in Asian women, and enhanced by the eloquence of Western education. The beauty of the modern Filipina has evolved with an Oriental sophistication, but still keeping, deep in her heart, her Maria Clara modesty.
All women, no matter what nationality, share commonalities, in terms of physical, psychological and emotional makeup. They all share the same fundamental femininity—the need for love, attention, and loyalty from her sweetheart or husband, a natural instinct to nurse and care for babies until adulthood.
Filipino men who have worked in a foreign land, who courted or made love with the women from other countries, often swore, “iba ang Filipina.”
Iba ang Filipina distinguishes the race and culture of the woman. So, what are those differences?
It’s really the upbringing, that mixture of Christian spirituality and democratic freedom of thought. Democracy has given her the language and ideas to communicate with the world, and Christianity has shaped her femininity so oriented toward the sanctity of marriage.
Ideal object
Iba na ang Filipina makes her the ideal object of love and marriage, from the time of Maria Clara up to today’s pretty faces, Megan Young and Ariella Arida. The world is crazy about them.
Today’s trendy consumerism makes it easy to conclude that the Filipina’s moral values have changed. Not true. Try courting one, an honest-to-goodness one, raised in an average, solid and functional (not dysfunctional) Filipino family where respect and love for parents exist, and you will fail to satisfy your lasciviousness at her expense.
Don’t be fooled by those pretty, smart and cosmopolitan girls sipping white wine at Greenbelt sidewalk cafés. Don’t be fooled by their trendy, bare-bellybutton getup as a sign of licentiousness. These girl yuppies get regular counsel on proper decorum and a wholesome life from their moms and dads. Many of these mod Filipinas will never go for infidelity in marriage or two-timing boyfriends.
Most Filipinas are Mass-goers. Single or married, they pray a lot. They pray for true and lasting love—never for free sex. If one wants to find out whether a woman’s morals has loosened, go to a country where singles bars abound, where the modus operandi after a few drinks is, “Your apartment or mine?” A Filipina will call a girl who goes to a singles bar to find a throwaway lover, a whore!
I am of the impression that girls from America and many European countries tell you off right away, yes or no, whether it’s a date or the bed. No game to play. A real bore for Filipino men.
As always, since time immemorial, the Filipina beauty today, no matter what the hype, fashion, and lifestyle trend is, will always be the object of the Filipino man’s dream.
“Pakakasalan ko siya kahit na sa sampung simbahan.” So goes the Pinoy lover’s hyperbole.
E-mail the author at
hgordonez@gmail.com