It was difficult to celebrate Women’s Month at a time when the Pinay remains under attack, even when she’d like to think otherwise. To me it happens on the level of a beauty industry that has standardized what it is we mean by beautiful, as it does happen on the level of a Catholic Church that continues to take a stand against the Reproductive Health Law, after we have fought for it for 14 years. Scientific and common sense would tell this Pinoy Catholic Church that RH is nothing to fear, but we know how sometimes what we refuse to understand is the scariest thing.

We also know that at some point, the most absurd things | images | words can be so normalized by the media and the celebrity culture, that these cease to be absurd.

In that sense, it seems that a couple of days late, it is precisely the right time to celebrate the Pinays who are the dissenting voices and images in a sea of women who have been standardized by the beauty industry and celebrity culture. At a time when whitened skin and fake bodies have become the standard, at a time when we are telling our young girls that they need to look—and be—a certain way to achieve their dreams, here are the Pinays who seem to navigate their celebrity with an amount of independence.

So no, this isn’t about the thoughtless and careless celebration of self, as it is acknowledging those women on TV, online, in advertisements, who are able to navigate the shallowness of this current beauty and showbiz industries. Here, the Pinay celebrities who refuse to be boxed, sealed, delivered as mere puppets of impossible perfection. Because yes, nobody’s perfect. And someone who sells perfect?

It’s close to irresponsible.

click here for the list of 12 (turned 17) Pinays!