“Unlearning Beauty, The Way We Know It: Deconstructing Beauty Standards in the Philippines”

“You would be prettier if your skin were lighter.”
I heard this so often growing up that I started to believe it. I learned to dislike my own reflection. My skin never felt like home—too brown for one place, too exotic for another.

In one country, they admired my tan like a trend. In the other, they saw it as a flaw. “Sayang ang ganda,” they’d say with a smile, as if it were a joke. But those words stayed with me.

It took years to unlearn the belief that lighter meant better. To understand that these beauty standards didn’t come from within me but were planted, passed down, and reinforced through centuries of colonization, colorism, and media.

My art became a way to reclaim my image. To see the brown body as powerful, complex, and worthy. Because beauty is not defined by how light your skin is, but by the history, strength, and story it carries.