Another week, another expat marriage ends. “Go east, young man,” many an expat is told, “but beware the charms of the women of the Philippines.” Some of the multinationals’ human resources departments—as well as the CEOs of certain companies—have been known to be blunter: “Keep your dick in your pants, my boy, and don’t fuck around with the local lassies, or that will be your undoing.”
The “island souvenir”
Because many such men, young or old and generally white, tend to cling to orientalist views of the Filipina, the subtext in those words of warning usually pertains to a certain stereotype—sometimes called the “island souvenir.”
While the term perhaps conjured dusky-skinned and long-haired “native” women amidst tropical palms and white sandy beaches, it essentially objectifies and demeans such women, reducing them to exotic playthings to pick up from a holiday, ready to fulfil the sexual fantasies of leery men with an Asian fetish.
There are more uncharitable terms bandied about to refer to the women—hooker, puta, prostie, pokpok, among them. I’ve also heard the word “tarsier” used to describe the tiny, wide-eyed Filipina clinging onto the arm of a foreign man, often white, often clad in shorts, and often referred to as AFAM, an acronym for “a foreigner assigned in Manila” that has since gained currency as a blanket term for any boyfriend, husband, or date of foreign extraction.
A transactional relationship
Implicit in the island souvenir-AFAM relationship is its transactional nature: The woman embodies the man’s orientalist fever dream of a woman who is silent, subservient in and out of the bedroom, and super grateful in return for the promise of a better life for herself and her family with a foreigner who earns in dollars.
But there is, of course, a disparity here. It’s rarely a union of equals.
It is, in effect, an extension of the same imperialist structure that allowed the military-sexual industrial complex to flourish during the Vietnam War, when American soldiers—on R&R in the Philippines after indiscriminately bombing Vietnamese men, women, and children with napalm—swarmed all over the bars of Olongapo and Angeles City. The kind who forgot, intoxicated by alcohol and atop the pliant body of a bar girl who was gyrating on a pole just minutes before, that they were mass murderers.
One group of people they killed; in the arms of another, they sought atonement for their sins. In this cathedral of wantonness, it was Asians that they fucked, one way or another.
One group of people they killed; in the arms of another, they sought atonement for their sins
And so it continues. The soldiers have been replaced by tech bros, entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, hotel managers, bank executives, diplomats, logistics officers… They’re not necessarily strapping young men with toned physiques. Many are overweight, with bellies folded over their waists, hardly the picture of male pulchritude. They burn instead of tan.
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Tale as old as time
More often than not, their attractiveness is predicated on the delusion of the superiority of their passport, their intelligence, and their earning capacity, with only the last one being largely true.
More often than not, their attractiveness is predicated on the delusion of the superiority of their passport, their intelligence, and their earning capacity
The expat grapevine is currently on overdrive as a tale as old as Filipino time dominates dinner party conversations. A man in his 50s, corpulent, arrogant, white (of course), and nothing to write home about with regard to his looks, left his wife of over almost 30 years—vivacious, attractive, worldly—for a caddy practically half his age.
My first reaction upon hearing this was, “He turned out to be gay?”
Unbeknownst to me, caddies these days at exclusive golf clubs are women. The younger and sexier, the better. They are the new GROs, those oft-disparaged hotel employees who would welcome businessmen in the past.
At any rate, this caddy at 29 comes with baggage of her own: a nine-year-old child. And the man—who holds a senior position in an international company—has now installed them in an upmarket BGC apartment. Her caddying days are clearly a thing of the past.
I understand the wife’s bitterness at her marriage being shattered and her family breaking up. I understand her sadness at having to give up a decade-long life in Manila that she considered to be full and blessed.
And I understand her initial fury at the caddy, who does appear at first glance to be of the stereotypical island souvenir variety.
The winner takes it all
Just as the island souvenir is a trope, so is that of the younger other woman out to destroy what might have seemed to everyone else a solid marriage.
As the cliché goes, it takes two to tango after all, and however suspect the woman’s motives might have been, it is the man who almost always initiates the pursuit of the hot young thing who pays him a modicum of attention.
The young caddy, no doubt, smiled, helped him carry his bags, and showed off her brown legs while driving him around the golf course, as she was likely trained to do. Sensing his more than passing interest in her, she must have made the calculation that this man could be her and her daughter’s meal ticket out of the hustle of the caddying life.
I can’t say I really blame her. Many women in this country have very few options for social and economic advancement. It is a structural issue, of course—a legacy of the chronic overall economic mismanagement of the Philippines by successive governments and their leaders, not to mention the declining standards of public education that really limit the job opportunities available for women of a certain class. Nurse or maid, take your pick. The prettier ones could aim for a beauty pageant title, but even that requires some capital outlay.
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Many women in this country have very few options for social and economic advancement. It is a structural issue, of course
The spurned wife, if you ask me, is the winner here. Once divorced with a handsome settlement, she will have been absolved of the marital burden of caring for an older and possibly infirm man in the twilight of their years together.
He is now the caddy’s responsibility. Until she leaves him for a better prospect, that is.
In the meantime, the caddy will have to endure—quite literally—the heft of his overweight body on top of hers every night. But at least she and her daughter have food on the table.