Category Archive for: komentaryo

komentaryo

why it won’t matter to Willie

because I can already hear Willie Revillame’s defense, against all the anger directed at him given this video of the little boy contestant who danced, and did so ala macho dancer on Willing Willie. I can hear him invoking the fact that he did not teach the boy to dance that way, that even he didn’t expect that kind of dancing, which is obvious in that viral video, too. I can hear him saying it’s the parents’ responsibility, that the parents themselves must have taught the boy this dance. I can hear him saying: here, in Willing Willie, every Filipino can be himself, and the boy’s dance was part of that.

worse, I can hear Willie invoking some “us versus them” rhetoric for greater effect: ‘yang mga ‘yan, hindi kase ‘yan mahirap, kaya hinuhusgahan nila ang mahirap, kaya hinuhusgahan nila ang show na para sa mahirap.

then for good measure he will respond to anti-Willie and Willing Willie sentiments: inaapi ninyo ang show na tunay na nagpapasaya sa bawat Pilipino. on cue his eyes will tear up.

I know this because I’ve watched Willie, both in Wowowee (ABS-CBN2) and Willing Willie (TV5), though the latter has been because of Shalani Soledad, which is of course beside the point. my point being: bakit ngayon lang tayo na-offend?

and when I say ngayon lang, I mean this concerted effort to stand up for little boy Jan-Jan and the perceived abuse he suffered on the show. when I point out this fact of public outcry happening only now, I mean what of those countless — countless! — times that these Willie Revillame shows have offended, are offensive, which is really pretty much most of the time.

bakit ngayon lang tayo na-offend? is a question that is not about forgiving Revillame or his show. it’s a question that’s about figuring out how these current conditions with regards Jan-Jan are different from the five years of Wowowee and the less than a year’s existence of Willing Willie. or maybe it isn’t different at all, we just got this one on a youtube video. in which case what does this really say about us?

well, for one thing, it’s obvious that many of those who speak of the Jan-Jan issue now haven’t really been watching Willie or his shows, maybe not a lot of local TV at all. because if you did watch these shows, you’d know that Willie’s responses, the ones I mentioned and the ones I cannot even imagine, have been used before. you’d know that this is rhetoric that’s borne of two things: (1) those of us from the educated and/or middle and/or upper classes calling him crass and bastos and offensive, and (2) Willie turning things around and making it seem like he’s the one being abused here, that we are the ones pointing a finger because we are discriminating against him and his show, and those who watch it.

if you were watching local TV at all before all this, you’d know that this kind of reaction only fuels rhetoric that also always means more money in Willie’s pocket, and about as much for whatever network he works for. it’s rhetoric that has always worked to his advantage, and has just meant making that divide bigger between us who sit and tweet and write FB notes and statuses, and the masses who go and line up for Willie’s shows.

this is class divide at its most stark and painful. yet, only Willie will invoke it to be true, and in the process he’ll run all the way to the bank with it.

as would any company (network or otherwise) he’s worked for. and here it needs to be said that if we’d actually and truly like to pinpoint the culprit in this cultural degradation that has brought about this little boy dancing ala macho dancer on TV, that would be ABSCBN’s Wowowee and the kind of imagination it justified as entertainment. if we were to go to the root of this problem, it would be that contemporary television culture isn’t so much about money for the capitalists, as it actually is about an audience that is willing to die (and already have) for some TV time that’s equal to earning some money.

if we were going to the root of why Willie and his shows even exist, we would need to deal with the fact that there’s a need for it. there’s a need that’s being met by the one show that gives out money like it’s a can of Birch Tree circa Kuya Germs in GMA Supershow.

and no, to say that Willing Willie appeals to the lowest common denominator doesn’t help either. in fact it makes things worse, proving Willie’s accusation correct that we are all just (mis)judging him and his show on the level of class. speaking of these shows’ values (entertainment and otherwise) would also fail at seeing the conditions that allow for it to exist, with or without Willie there. it’s also to discriminate against this audience who are there because life is that hard, and because in truth these people see it as a way to some money, a way that they work hard for, falling in line as they do for hours or days, traveling as they might from across the country. it’s no joke to be part of a Willie show audience. even less of a joke when someone leaves the show with P10,000 pesos.

which is what Jan-Jan did. after he danced the first time, with tears in his eyes, Willie gave him P10,000 pesos. then Jan-Jan’s tears disappeared. then every time that song played he just began dancing, like a wind-up doll. then Willie makes like he discovered a talent in Jan-Jan and made him dance some more. surely to give the little boy even more money after.

and this is what we took offense at, yes? but which part of it exactly? the fact that this little boy was like a wind-up doll? the fact that he was dancing like a macho dancer? the fact that he was crying as he danced? the fact that he was given money?

these are important questions because as I watched that video, while I knew what was offensive about it, I also knew that this is standard fare for a Willie show. this is not to say it happens often that a little boy will do some macho dancing. but it does happen that a contestant will be brought to tears because they forgot their cheer, or weren’t sure what to say, or were just too darn overwhelmed to be in front of the audience and cameras. it happens that little girls — oh a great number of them! — dance sexily skimpily clad in clothes ala sexbomb girls. and you know that ispageti dance is no wholesome dance move right?

and so I do wonder why there hasn’t been public outcry about these instances. I do wonder what kind of double standard we are practicing here as we scream: child abuse! in light of Willing Willie, and every other show like it. I wonder how much of this is us reacting to things we don’t know. or is this all a matter of (our) taste?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrkO70vQQdY

this is Bugoy Drilon Carino (salamat yol jamendang sa correction) reality show contestant and guest who danced for Willie on Wowowee. we didn’t care that he danced hiphop did we? had he cried while doing so would we have cared?

the fact is we don’t quite know why Jan-Jan was crying. what is obvious though is that he wasn’t crying when he was called onstage, nor was he crying when Willie was interviewing him. the camera was on his aunt (who had brought him to the show) for a bit as she cried because she finally got to hug Willie. the camera was back on Jan-Jan to give a message to his aunt and father (who was there, too), and that’s when it seemed like he was close to tears. Willie tells him it’s ok, bakit ka naiiyak? he asks kindly, even giving the kid a hug. those tears would fall as Jan-Jan was dancing an obviously rehearsed performance.

after, he is given P10,000 pesos by Willie, Jan-Jan pockets the money excitedly and stays onstage to play the game. the music plays again, and he promptly dances on cue. he loses the game and is close to tears again. the game unfolds with the other contestant, and after a commercial break, Jan-Jan is back on stage again doing the same dance, this time with no tears.

it’s clear here why this is offensive, even clearer once you see the video, but what it reminds me is how late the hero we all are in taking offense only now. i do wonder if this is just because we’ve got Jan-Jan on video? or if this this is us acting on our hatred of Willie to begin with, being reminded of the fact that he is too crass, too bastos, for our TV viewing pleasures? maybe this is us barking up the wrong tree really, thinking Jan-Jan as a cause to rally around, Willie as the person to rally against, forgetting that in fact there is this:

the conditions of nation are such that parents of impoverished families will knowingly teach their own kids what they imagine is unique and different, at least enough to warrant extra cash from gameshows like Willie’s (and here Jan-Jan’s parents were successful weren’t they). the conditions are such that when this little kid danced, his father and aunt cheered him on; and when Willie poked fun at the whole act, the little boy had stopped crying because he already had 10k tucked in his pocket. the conditions are such that an absurd situation like this one can exist on local primetime TV. these conditions are exactly what must change, this bigger context is what we must be putting our energies into changing, really.

because these conditions are what allow for the crassness of Willie, the production’s lack of sense, TV5’s MVP raking it in the way a capitalist should. at the same time, to that little boy that is Jan-Jan, and to every other little girl that’s been on a game show gyrating in an outfit she shouldn’t be in to begin with, it’s about the money that’s possible to win in these spaces, it’s about the transaction that might unfold given their talent, the more unique and different the better.

it’s a transaction that we are not privy to, we cannot even imagine as relevant or necessary in our lives, not one we would think to join ever. yet it’s one that has fed mouths forgotten by government, has fueled movement from across the nation to Manila, unlike any trip we imagine taking. it’s a transaction that parents who are responsible for their children consciously and willfully enter. a transaction we might not agree with, but really, why do we even think we are the point?

we are farthest from the point. our anger towards Willie and Willing Willie will barely scratch the surface of possibility of both being cancelled out of local TV. in fact at this point it’s almost something they can shrug off, and something to use against us. because here we are shooting from the hip, angry and disgusted, in the process revealing our social class. we forget that Willie will know to see this for what it is: the class divide at work, one that we refuse to deal with, one we will deny, and ultimately one we will not put out P10,000 pesos for. even if we could.

komentaryo

Revisiting EDSA ’86, failing the revolution

The failure happens first on the level of being disallowed to take photos in the Ayala Museum, something that’s even stranger when the exhibit is purportedly about people power, and yet the people aren’t allowed to take photos anywhere in that museum, a reminder really of why I’ve stopped going there.

It took an exhibit like Revolution Revisited (Ayala Museum, Makati City now up at on a mall and campus tour) by photographer Kim Komenich to make me step foot in this museum again; it is also an exhibit that I can barely be happy about. Komenich’s curatorial note attached to the exhibit is a failure in itself, a re-writing of history from an obviously removed perspective, one that has stuck to a narrative of EDSA 1986 that has since become highly questionable, if not proven false.

Two of the more glaring things: many factors informed the people’s march to the streets on February 22 to 25 1986. There was the cheating in the snap elections, the only one that Komenich acknowledges, but also: the civil disobedience campaign that had Cory and the people going up against the oligarchies and capitalists, the military defection of Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos even when that was filled with too many silences still, and the truth that since Ninoy’s funeral march the people had gained an amount of courage that just kept on growing, through the Cory campaign, then the snap elections and poll watching, fearlessly ignoring the possibility of being picked up by the ever-watchful Marcos military.

Another glaring historical mistake was the assertion that February 25 1986 was the birth of what Komenich calls “the people power phenomenon.” What of tanks being stopped on February 23? What of people welcoming defiant soldiers who refused to disperse the crowds on February 24? What of artists and celebrities coming out to the streets and providing entertainment through the wee hours of February 23 to February 25?

I cringe at the idea that the 25th was the one day that gave birth to people power. I dare argue that its birth happened when people showed literally the kind of power they hold collectively, not when the dictator and his family began packing their things to leave Malacañang. I daresay that people power was born when people joined Cory’s civil disobedience campaign and literally refused to buy San Miguel and Nestle products, emptied Rustan’s of its shoppers, closed down banks, deemed the economy unstable. These were the same people who thought to, who knew to, stop tanks at EDSA. They proved people power then.

Komenich’s reading of EDSA ‘86 to be about cheating in the snap elections and the Marcos dictatorship ultimately just allowed it to revolve around the Cory-Marcos dichotomy, which wasn’t all that those four days was about. This reading of EDSA ’86 actually set this exhibit up for failure.

Which is not to say that it didn’t try to speak of the people, too; except that the way it did only begged the question: but in what light? The exhibit begins with photos of the every man pre-EDSA ‘86: a farmer with a carabao in the fields, a woman carrying a new born baby surrounded by even more of her children, a malnourished boy looking out onto the world. Then Revolution Revisited goes back and forth, from a photo of Cory Aquino’s proclamation rally and the aforementioned every Pinoy in 1986, to 1983 onwards with photos of Lean Alejandro, Evelio Javier, Ninoy Aquino and the snap elections. What was more surprising to me than the fact that our local photographers have their own versions of these photos, is the fact that of the four days of EDSA, what this exhibit had was only three days — three days! There were no photos of Day 3, February 24 1986, unless my turning around and going back to look for even just one photo was a failure in curation.

Day Three of course was a crucial time of defections and false alarms, people jumping and celebrating, government stations being taken over, as well as the threat of Marines in Camp Aguinaldo poised to shoot at Crame. Its absence in a revisiting of EDSA ’86 just seemed like a huge dark gaping hole.

Meanwhile, the stretch of colored photos at the end of this black and white exhibit  highlighted even more the distance of the power players from the people who made EDSA happen. That these personalities were allowed to speak about EDSA seems like the most redundant of things: we know what presidential daughter, now sister, Pinky Aquino-Abelleda, as well as Fidel Ramos, Juan Ponce Enrile and the rich of this country, would say about EDSA ‘86: they’ve been saying it the past 25 years.

And then there is this: these personalities are already the ones who contribute to a mainstream narrative that speaks of EDSA ’86 on the superficial level of unity and the general notion of change. They are also part of the oligarchies and powers that Cory had set out to fight through the civil disobedience campaign. Pray tell why would I want a businessman and capitalist to talk to me about EDSA ’86?

Ah, but Revolution Revisited also lets the faces of the every Pinoy in the beginning of the exhibit to speak at this point. Their photos are taken within the same contexts as before, reminding us that the farmer is still a farmer, the impoverished mother is still such, except that it’s been 25 years. Yes, nothing has changed for them, and this they also say in so many words. The malnourished boy has since died, and his family is still as poor as they were in ’86.

Thus this exhibit ends with the heaviest of feelings about EDSA ’86, highlighting the idea that it has led to nothing, that it was to a certain extent pointless. To have ended with the impoverished and the constancy of their conditions is to forget that EDSA ‘86 was a promise of possibility. That the poor are still such, that the conditions have stayed the same, is the fault of those big personalities who were in power yet have failed to truly affect change. It is not the failure of EDSA ‘86, or of people power at all.

Revolution Revisited in this form is thus just a reminder of the fact that Komenich’s  perspective is that of someone who might have lived with us in those four days of EDSA, and who might think himself one with us. But ultimately this exhibit is reminder that he is just a foreigner who fails tremendously to see and celebrate EDSA ’86 for what it was then, and what it should be about now: a time when the greatness of a people was proven by their collective ability to be fearless and courageous in the face of possible death.

This exhibit’s revisiting of EDSA 1986 fails the people power revolution; as such it also ultimately fails all of us.

Revolution Revisited ran until March 5 2011 at the Ayala Museum, Makati Avenue corner Dela Rosa St., Makati City, and is now on a mall and campus tour.

 

EDSA 1986 historical facts from reading Chronology of a Revolution by Angela Stuart-Santiago. All of it is up at EDSARevolution.com.

komentaryo

no, being hospitable ain’t cutting it anymore

when you’re told point blank by a foreigner, and with all honesty instead of malice, that they don’t know anything about Manila, that when he told his friends he wanted to go there they asked “Why?”, that in fact Manila is at the bottom of his list of cities to see, how do you even respond? it gets worse, too. you’re asked do you enjoy Manila? is it a safe city? the answer to the first question is easy of course.

sometimes my honesty does get the better of me. especially since i know they’d see i’m lying through my teeth otherwise.

Tatsu Nishi (Japan) covers up the iconic Merlion, making it into a hotel room.

the happy giddy context of wine in our bodies and the Merlion all covered up by a red box shall save the day: we talk about art in Manila given the art that’s here, Louie Cordero’s paean to the urban legend of videoke singing of My Way, Mark Salvatus’ interest in empty walls and capturing what’s untraceable in people. we talk about the absurdity of what they’ve seen in Manila: a Virgin Mary portrait that is actually made up of words of the Old Testament that you can only read through a magnifying glass (i want to know where that exactly is), the Socialist Bar in Manila where a naive foreigner could only walk into (no it’s not really socialist eh?).

we talk about their horror stories: of walking through the city itself of Manila, across the stretch of CCP and realizing that lamp posts slowly but surely ceased to be lit. of being told by their family and friends to keep safe by hiding their cellphones and ipods, by not wearing any jewelry at all. both of them were men who’ve gone to Manila on almost adventures. and despite the horrible hotel service at Clark Pampanga both (because now they know me, we say) are thinking of going back there and doing things differently, give it another chance.

and then faced with a man who knows nothing about the Philippines, he says. and who, in the middle of talking about Jollibee and Manny Pacquiao, Apl D Ap and carjacking (yes you fall back on all that), says excitedly: oh the au pairs! that is your contribution to the world. he then goes on to talk about his au pair who played favorites, of friends who had au pair trouble. and i could only but mention nurses and teachers, and thank the heavens for the New Yorker from Japan who had a grade three Filipino homeroom teacher, Ms. Caoili (god bless her), who was just wonderful she says.

but there is no escaping Manila and its stereotypes, especially because i could not for the life of me say they weren’t true. i couldn’t lie and say that walking through the streets of and around CCP was safe, given that still stark media memory of the bus hostage taking. i couldn’t say that if they looked at a map, they could go through the galleries and museums across Makati City, and they’d be fine: the lack of a map is contingent on the lack of order that would otherwise protect pedestrians, local and foreign after all. i couldn’t say just come — COME to Manila! it’s totally different from what you imagine.

Louie Cordero's "My We" at the Singapore Biennale 2011

because what if it’s exactly the same as, or worse than, what they imagine.

that they imagine the worst of Manila is just sad, but also it is not unexplainable. you only walk the streets of one of the safest cities like Singapore and you know that there must be something we can do about our own city. you think of Bangkok or Hanoi or Phnom Penh or New Delhi, and while it might be easy to imagine the dangers of these spaces as well, it still seems a lot safer.

or maybe its vibrant cultural images are just more concrete, more real. it seems that the dangers of a third world city (country) are balance out by a sense of its cultural vibrancy, its ability to speak of itself strongly and concretely to be about something, that something making it worthy of a visit, that something as its best cultural product and production, its best tourist attraction.

you want Manila (and the Philippines) to be a tourist destination? let’s begin by agreeing on how we’re selling it and what we’re going to say about its cultural productions. stop making it seem like the cheapest country in the world: because we know how cheap means two things.

and realize that really, being hospitable doesn’t cut it anymore. nor do our notion(s) of diversity and being free-for-all.

komentaryo

dear Jim Paredes,

it is with deadlines looming and the need to earn my keep that I write this. which is to say I have more important things to do with my time, including of course your notion(s) of action, as they do include what you wouldn’t be caught dead doing for nation.

but your tirade against the armchair … este … the revolutionary armchair … no wait, the armchair revolutionary! cannot be left unquestioned, lest the world thinks we all agree with you, and that would ultimately be a misrepresentation of this country’s ability at coming together and kicking presidents out: nakaupo man tayo sa armchair o lupa ng EDSA, nakataas man ang ating kamao sa Mendiola o nagki-click ng mouse maghapon.

this is not to say at all that I’m a revolutionary — my knowledge of who exactly are the revolutionaries of our time keeps me from imagining myself as that. you meanwhile seem to have no issue with calling yourself such, seeing as you critique its armchair version because as far as you’re concerned real revolutionaries translate it into action: I imagine you mean that workshop you had with your Pinoy Power NGO?

don’t worry, I shall get to that in a bit.

right now I find the need to write you as a matter of defending my chair, which is not an armchair, as it is an ergonomic chair — the better for one’s lower back. this is to defend this chair, many versions of which exist across this country, and in every space in the world where there’s a Filipino. this is to defend this chair, because on it sits the Pinoy who clicks on the Like and Dislike button on FB, and (re-)Tweets what he or she thinks.

we are the ones you critique yes? you admonish us: do more! do more for country! act on your tweets, act on your FB statuses!

I’d tell you with as much excitement that we’ve been doing this all this time, but I don’t want to rain on your parade of imagined self-importance. instead let me point out two things:

(1) all the activists on my FB friend list and the ones I follow on Twitter are activists period. do you follow them too, Jim? these are intelligent people who continue to teach this side of the world about nation, extending the teaching process to Twitter and FB, and yes, blogging (which I presume is an evil too as far as you’re concerned — oh the time we waste just sitting to blog!)

I don’t know where you’ve been Jim, but we established a long time ago, and I think it’s now common sense, that these social networking sites reproduce who we are as people to begin with. tool po ang tawag sa FB at Twitter, Tumblr at Posterous na ginagamit natin para sa ating mga pagkilos sa labas ng virtual nating mundo. who exactly said and believed that this was an end in itself?

I do wonder now: when you admonish them people who Tweet and put up FB statuses, and question what it is they’re doing, who are you talking to? obviously not the activists who have continued to exist, over and above your leaving and living again in this country Jim. or is this really just your recent realization about yourself?

(2) or maybe you mean me? with no time really other than the few precious minutes I spend finishing a cup of coffee, which I use to do any or all of the following: look at my Twitter feed and retweet the tweets I agree with, look at my FB News Feed and Like the statuses that are funny or relevant or both, Share notes that I feel are important to read for whoever will catch it up on their News Feeds. if there’s time, I might tag the people who I feel must read these posts, be it on Twitter or FB.

but you know, time away from writing means no money to pay the bills, Jim. and things aren’t difficult for me, as it actually is for a bigger working class in this country: the ones who are underpaid and mistreated, underemployed and overworked, be it in BPOs across the country, or just in horrid creative jobs that really only look good on paper, all of the educated class who would know to use FB and twitter as tools, if not as possible escape.

and so you see Jim, I’m actually happy enough when there’s any sense of nation in the FB statuses or tweets of my students — now all mostly working in crappy jobs that don’t do justice to their skills or intelligence. I celebrate when they Like an FB post of mine that’s about the fight for passing the RH Bill, or about a current event or other that they might not even know of otherwise. I take the chance to respond to their questions on my blog, or in private messages, because you know it means they took time, that there was time spent at thinking about nation, at removing one’s head from the daily grind and clicking on what Miss Ina said today about nation.

that Like, that (re-)tweet, that Shared FB note, means more to me because I know of the lives they live, and the way in which time is equal to money where they work. and yes, those Likes or Shared posts from public school teachers where I used to work, the ones who keep my feet on the ground, the ones who have taught me more than they can imagine because of the lives they live: those are enough too, Jim.

because the question really is: who can afford to get out of his armchair and scream at people to do the same? no really, Jim. isn’t this just all about you?

yet you speak as if it’s about us, as if you know all of us; you speak as if we are all in the same boat. and you question us, Jim, you question us who are here, have stayed, and have no where to go really, though we might leave and work odd jobs elsewhere — not at all the case for you, right? you speak of us who can’t just go around building NGOs, holding photography workshops, being paid for being us, Jim.

you are not the same as the rest of us, and I said it long ago, and I’ll say it now: you and Carlos Celdran are in the same boat, from which you have the option to watch us all sink, from which you both speak of changing nation, and yet will keep the status quo. unlike you though, Carlos has been touring us through Manila, and fighting for the RH Bill, to his own detriment. what have you done that even equals that, Jim?

not much, really. and yet you will brag about making your house a relief and donation center in light of the 2009 floods in Luzon, to which I respond with two questions: (1) what have you done since then? (2011 na diba?), and (2) why do you speak like you have a monopoly on this act of opening up one’s house and home?

countless Filipinos did this in Manila and beyond post-Ondoy, Jim, and they might have been tweeting and putting up FB statuses while they were doing it, too. you don’t know my sister-in-law, but she lives in The Netherlands, has three young kids and a house to keep, and she kept an operation going in the aftermath of Ondoy. like many Filipinos here and across the world, she didn’t even think of bragging about it. for most Filipinos the relief operations were not a claim to fame, or a claim to moral high ground. in fact it was nothing but a national spirit that cut across the world, in every tiny space there was a Filipino. yes, chairs included.

you have single handedly made it seem like we weren’t doing much during Ondoy, Jim, and I don’t know how that helps nation — how that helps any of us — in any way.

nor is it clear how a weekend workshop of 99 people who ate like the poor in one exercise — only sardines and instant mami you say — helps nation. no really: how does a workshop where you ask the question “are we a people wired to fail?” help nation? where does a workshop even stand, that whole weekend spent talking to each other about being Pinoy, in the context of the urgencies that we live with in this nation every day, both personal and national.

sa totoo lang Jim, many of us don’t need to do an exercise where we can feel like the rich or poor: we know exactly what that disparity is like. many of us don’t have time to talk about being Filipino and Filipino identity Jim, instead we live it and its contingent oppressions every day.

and this is not a question of you having the privilege of time and money Jim. it’s a question of what it is you’re doing with it. because there is no reason to blame us for the time that you have on your hands; no reason to look at our tweets and FB statuses and think: what are they doing with their time? and finding only the answers that are about highlighting what you’ve done.

in truth: you’re writing on air, Jim, in a country where writers write with their own blood, and die poor and hungry.

really now Jim, you must know this is a lot of crap. and you must know it because you’re talking to yourself, sitting in every kind of chair you’ve got in your house. and no, there’s nothing revolutionary about that.

komentaryo

plump and pretty and political correctness

on an otherwise quiet Saturday, driving home from a jog in the Fort, I could only be jarred into the realization that the cities we live in survive on activities within and in and by itself. and no this doesn’t mean fiestas anymore, not in this day and age.

it seems that the city’s local beauty pageant had just been held, a tarp with the Mayor’s face actually announces the event. the Miss Mandaluyong candidates had one tarpaulin each, hung on a post each, around the City Hall Rotonda.

tarps are the new “in” thing, a way of saying: “Sikat ako, ikaw?”

on posts, alongside advertisements
ms.mandaluyong 2011!

yes, those tangled wires represent the state of electrical maintenance in this city that has a beauty pageant. but i digress.

as i turn right into Boni, it takes me a while to realize that the set of tarps that line this narrower minor street actually has a different set of women. it was also about a different pageant altogether, one that obviously wasn’t just about beauty.

 you are reading that right: Bilbiling Mandaluyong 2011. and i cannot tell you how stunned i was at the idea of a whole city having excess fat, though i imagine that is beyond what the city hall thought when they put together this pageant.

this pageant that we’ve actually seen done on TV and the movies, yes? but also in the current scheme of health consciousness and early mortality rates is just startling. the gut reaction is to think: how politically incorrect is this? the other reaction is: but who’s to say, really?

in these times when being healthy is everything and commercialized, when it necessarily sinks into a consumerist culture that’s about the brands that matter, the places to run in, the workouts to do. in these times when impossible thinness has come to be seen as normal; when all thinness requires is a lot of money to go to some slimming clinic of other of which there are plenty.

in these times when we should know better. we should know that half the time it isn’t about misrepresentation as it is about class, the other half maybe those who worry about the world less actually get it right. in these times when we should know that all the time we are all victims of the culture of beauty of any given time, and yes this includes the men, too. in these times when whitening the skin and straightening the hair, whittling the waist and trimming the thighs, and for men being buff and sleek and metrosexual, is what’s seen as normal.

maybe the ones who don’t want to take some diet pills have got it right, are actually better off, are actually on a healthier track spirit-wise.

in context, on the street.
tabi-tabi portion eh?

i’m far from calling this revolutionary of course, but i will say this: maybe it makes for the most uncanny of steps in the right — because different — direction. hopefully these ladies refused to be made into the laughingstock of the pageant, ideally they are given the same kind of courtesy and respect accorded Ms. Mandaluyong. because there is more to Bilbiling Mandaluyong than the additional weight. especially if these Bilbiling candidates prove that their intelligence is just as big, their brilliance equally overwhelming.

now, maybe i hope for too much.