Category Archive for: kawomenan

komentaryo

cheche lazaro retires

It is rare to meet a woman you would trust with your life, but here was Cheche Lazaro, telling me about why she was retiring, what it is she’s most proud of, and where she will go from here—it was difficult not to be overwhelmed. After all, Cheche’s Probe Productions has so many awards tucked under its belt, and even more achievements that are invisible and non-material.

One such intangible honor is this: for my generation (I was born in the ‘70s), The Probe Team was a crucial touchstone for journalism, known for going the extra mile, crossing that roaring river, and taking a free fall off of a cliff—all for the possibility of a story, something the Philippines has always had in abundance, with too few tellers to tell them. Journalism was (and in some ways still is) a battlefield, fraught with danger and opponents, with the possibility of things exploding just under one’s feet an ever-present companion. As a truthsayer, Cheche Lazaro has been a hero in this field for a long time, so her retirement in many ways marks the end of an era.

click this for the rest of it!

kultura

objectifying the male? check!

So congratulations are in order, or at least, a shout out, literally: Mabuhay Ang Federasyon! The landscape of male objectification in cinema has evolved because of you. I might complain, but I do with all my heart, appreciate it. After all, plenty needs to be said about the fact that women can now fawn if they wish to. And that is thanks to you my gay bestfriend who has become the bigger market.

basahin ang kabuuan dito.

kultura

check out charice’s cheeks, or it’s a vicky belo world, good lord, save us!

and no, this isn’t about hayden kho, at this point staying in bad relationships and publicizing them seems more stupid than it is unacceptable. but really, the way this woman has crossed that line between selling beauty and making it an ideology, even a religion, as if beauty is the end all and be all of our lives, and no do not tell me about artistas.

because there are plenty of artistas who don’t have, and will choose not, to go through medical and dermatological procedures to be “perfect”, plenty artistas who in fact refuse perfect and say, well, i’m talented, and what are  you?  we grew up seeing Judy Ann Santos’ big cheeks, and what did she do? when it was time she lost weight and lost it, too. Iza Calzado was a big girl on television, and yes with fuller cheeks, and the next this we knew she had lost weight and was being healthy about her diet.

there was no Belo to do an injection here, a tuck there, no Belo to tell them, well, this is what you need to be pretty. because what is this pretty that Belo sells? plumper lips? less of a chin? pointed noses? deep-set eyes?

botox on those cheeks para “mawala ang bulge”? thermage on the face para “lumiit ang mukha”? good lord, Vicky Belo, when does it stop? and at what age,  praytell?

because to have even allowed Charice Pempengco to go through that botox procedure, one that’s suppose to bring back how the international singer looked three years ago! is just sick. three years ago she was 15! tell me, show me, how important it is that an 18 year old girl look like she’s 15. tell me how this is all important, the enterprise of the cheeks, let’s all get smaller faces people, this is what’s deemed important by the best-looking woman on the face of this third world planet.

and please, read up on the order of events, and realize that this whole TMJ ailment that they now say Charice had, ergo the botox and thermage? it happens after the fact. and really, if there was an ailment, why not go to a real doctor? Belo meanwhile had what seemed to her a perfectly rationale, albeit shallow, explanation for why she herself recommended these procedures to this young girl. Charice herself would go on to say that she wanted to look “fresh” for her Glee role.

well honey, that show has a guy in a wheelchair, an overweight girl, a chinky-eyed pale teenager, and big-mouthed wide-eyed lead star. the whole point of Glee is that these highschool nobodys, these stereotypical outcasts, find their voices and selves in the glee club through sheer acceptance of their flaws, as it is the realization of their talents. and i say to your supporters, google it and read up.

looking “fresh” is farthest from Glee’s repertoire. and so are smaller cheeks. elsewhere in the world, it is not a Vicky Belo aesthetic or ideology that rules. now Charice appears in websites like famousplastic.com and awfulplasticsurgery.com. how can that be a good thing?

radikalchick.lit

in process: travel with no man

speaking literally, in the sense that you carry your own bags, with no real options for help, no man to take pity, at least no man that’s yours. and this is the story of you, having a boy all the time, since you were in college to post-grad, working as teacher, living alone. there was always a boy.

and you do this on purpose of course, calling all your men, boys.

because that’s how they become, you find. they become such in the course of time, because you have the temerity to stay in relationships even when there were signs that told you to go, leave, walk away while you can. but alwaysyou see it through to what are generally painful ends, thinking it right that you do so, there is no other way,  you are proven wrong not soon enough.

and you struggle with your heavy bags and pray to the heavens that you’re going in the right direction to your bed and breakfast. you get to your room and find it unkempt, the last customer just left, the one who’s responsible missing. you get to the Eiffel tower by pressing on, you get there hungry, and with blisters on your feet, you chide yourself for these mistakes, no one else is at fault. you are always at fault.

you are in the Metro and it’s dingy and smelly, yet you need it to find your way, so you deal with its smell and chew some gum, light a cigarette. you plod on with a confidence that’s mistaken for certainty, you always know your way, you’re the one who knows what to do.

you shuffle through too many Metro stations, you walk through long unfamiliar streets. with blistered feet, you take some photos, plenty of them bad, some of them good. you have no conversation save for what’s in your head, and in there it is plenty and dynamic and brilliant, you wonder who can get it.

you wonder where you are. except that you’re here, where it’s clear what you’re up against and where you need to go. this is more than you’ve known of yourself since you’ve had a man. you should know to take this one as a sign.

kultura

Boob slips in the age of technology, Or the victimization of Anne

If there’s anything that Anne Curtis’ swimsuit malfunction highlights about us all, it’s that we are ill-equipped to handle the advance of technology. And I mean, all of us, those who hold cameras in our hands, and those who love being in pictures. In this sense, Anne Curtis is a victim of both the one who shoots, and she who has enjoyed being shot, and even makes a living out of it.

Because in fact, the victimization of Anne could’ve began with the fact that the show’s production allowed people to watch the show with cameras and camera-phones in hand – the more famous shot of Anne has her dancing on stage, right breast exposed, a gazillion hands with camera-phones aimed at her from the audience below. A less famous shot is one that’s taken from the other side of the stage, in a higher position, maybe a tree?,  and has Anne being carried by Sam Milby, in the same dance number.

The fact is, we have allowed cameras like these in public exhibitions such as this, because it’s free pre-publicity: in the age of Twitter and Facebook, everything is a status update and photo upload away. Propriety, obviously in this case, be damned. (more…)