As a fellow Filipina who experienced the same things, it's nice to see Ms. Ayn talk about the colorism that has been happening in the Philippines for quite some time now. I remember being called names too, just because of my morena skin. Because of those moments, I disliked how my skin is, so much to the point that when I was in 5th grade I tried putting bleach on my hands, thinking that it would change the way my skin looked. Spoiler alert, it did not, it just caused me pain hahaha. I'm hoping that Filipinos would realize that having darker skin doesn't mean we're less, the standard should not be based on how our skin looks. I'm glad that social media has been speaking about how bad the colorism is that it made me feel like "Hey! It's okay to be morena, you're beautiful too!". Thank you for this Ms. Ayn!
What's also sad is when people are okay with darker skin tone as long as you have European features. Kapag matangkad at matangos, kahit hindi kaputian, mas pasok sa standards. This is not to say that they are immune to passive-aggresive colorism thru statements like, "Sayang ang ganda mo, maitim ka nga lang" Paano na lang 'yung mga taong hindi katangusan, hindi katangkaran, hindi size zero, at hindi kaputian?
Thank you for addressing the criminalization of morenas, morenos, and maitim, and the denial of certain economic opportunities to these groups. If you were called Aeta when growing up, this is something maitim experience rather than morenas and morenos. Morena and moreno can be a term of acceptance but it obscures the experiences of criminalization and employment disqualification specific to both maitim and to Aeta, considering that even light brown Filipinos are considerd morenas and morenos now.
how has this gotten so little attention places like the philippines or thailand are definitely one of the places with the most colourism issues sometimes, i hope this all shifts someday.
It's the same in India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, and many other countries in Asia where colourism is alive and well tolerated, and even encouraged.
