Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The Product of Racism By: Anton Graindel D. Saab

The Whitening products are one of the tools to prevail the beauty standards of Filipinos either female or male that you can see it on the t.v screen, bill boards, tarpaulins, shops, magazines and you can even hear it from the mouth of your friends. People consume it as one of their primary needs that must be taken every day. Some people don’t seem to mind if their authentic identity will transform to something new and more pleasing to see. But as a concern citizen I believe that patronizing these whitening products is somewhat a racist act that needs to be dispelled for better good of our authentic Filipino identity that we must be proud as brown skinned Filipinos.
Media is the number one source of today’s beauty standards that it exposes beautiful celebrities on the t.v screen and presents products that can make normal people to be as beautiful as the celebrities. The media set the mind of the people in a pleasurable way that makes them remain oblivious about the dirty side of it. It gives information that lure the mind of both young and adult citizens and to convince their subconscious mind of believing that the programmed standard of beauty is the key to have beautiful life and a confident self.
T.V entertainments have always beautiful and handsome role players that all of them are white skinned. White skinned beauty has gone integral in Filipino culture for this is due to the western colonization which emphasizes a traditional belief that the darker the skin the lower the status of a person. We were suffering slavery and racism from the westerners which must not live from the present times, yet these beauty standards help it to uncover racism that will spoil our authentic identity as Filipinos.
Moreover, I’ve never seen a dark skinned celebrity on the T.V screen unless if he or she plays a poor role such as a house keeper, baby sitter, or burglar. Dark skinned on the media are wall flowers that they portrayed to be the lower class who live in the slums and who are suffering poverty in life. The movie “Merabella” is a nice teledrama but the movie portrayed a racism story. It represents Merabella as brown skinned who are digusted by people for some reason that her skin looks like a bark of a tree, but since she turned light skinned she became the most adored person  in town. In a simpler thought, that if a brown skinned girl lighten her skin she will experience a confident life and people will accept her as beautiful light skinned person. The teledrama “ Merabella” is a famous show that probably millions of people have been brainwashed by the stupidity of the media.
Furthermore, Most of us would like to preffer of staying indoors to avoid getting burned by the sun, for some reason that the sun’s heat can darken your skin and dark skin will never perceive as beautiful that it’s a skin which most people are ashamed of. In fact that the media had also promulgated information that whitening skin products are healthy that will protect you from the heat of the sun and will keep your skin young. Who would believe such falsity! It can even describe by science that if your skin has lack of pigmentation or melanin the skin will become sensitive from the sun and is crucially prone to skin cancer.
Nevertheless, if this epidemia will endure through generations probably all of us would become superficial and social climbers that everyone of us would wear fake skin just to prevail the conformity of the society. Racism will devour our nation that discrimination of dark skinned people will be common and will be considered as a norm in our society. If you want to dispel the monotonous cycle of media, we can do it by trusting our own selves and also with God, because it’s the greatest way to love our unique self better than to get manipulated by the standard of social media.


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