The media bombards us with constant ads that tell us we need to change the way we are. I swear there was this one time I heard this ad on the radio for a whitening product and it said something along the lines of "pag mas maputi, mas maganda." What I saw from BAYO's "What's Your Mix?" campaign just highlights our sense of inferiority and insecurity with being just Filipino because apparently that isn't enough. There's this Executive Optical billboard we pass by going home from school with the tag line "Don't be a loser" that shows a fair skinned lady going for the guy with dark skin and nerdy glasses while a guy with fair skin stands to one side. I'm surprised it hasn't been taken down yet. And as much as these companies try to deny that there is nothing racist about their ads, the element of racism is still there. It scares me because it feels as if it's already part of our system. As a result, we slowly slip into the sort of mindset that it's not okay to be the way you are.
And because of this, we pretty much lose our own identity.
Why don't we just start accepting ourselves for who we are because no matter how much Belo you put on your skin and how much you force yourself to speak as "slang" as humanly possible, you are Filipino and nothing's ever going to change that. It doesn't matter what color your skin is or how you speak or how you dress. You are Filipino because you are and you don't need to let society and media dictate what that is.
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