THERE is an animated version of the Creation story which tells that God created man by baking humans like cookies. According to this tale, the first product was half-baked and it had a light color. Trying to correct this, God added more time in baking the next human cookie, but this time, it got overcooked and had a dark color. After two attempts, He baked the last human cookie a little more than the first, and a little less than the second. The third human cookie had the perfect cooking and had a nice light brown color.
This story seeks to explain why people have different skin complexions which are, white, black and brown. We may correlate this to the "Great Races Theory" which classifies nationalities into three races namely the Caucasoid or Europid to refer to white people, Negroid to refer to black people, and Mongoloid or the Yellow Race to describe people of Asian origin.
Filipinos mainly possess a fair complexion, or what we call "kayumangging kaligatan" as one theory suggests that we are Malayan descendants. But if we are also taking into account the various foreign occupancies in our country before, such as Spanish, Japanese, and American, we will see why some Filipinos have lighter complexions. During the Spanish period, the term "mestizo" referred to "Filipinos of mixed native (Austronesian/Malay) and any non-native ancestry/ethnicity," and these people enjoyed more privileges and rights compared to the "indios" or the natives.
This is probably the best explanation why Filipinos are trying so hard to achieve a lighter complexion. For women, a guy who is "mestiso" is definitely good-looking, and same is true with guys who mostly prefer women who are "mestisa." Commercialism took advantage of this trend, giving birth to various skin whitening products and procedures. I was in my teenage years when Rosanna Roces advertised Likas Papaya soap, and this product instantly became famous skin whitening product. Its popularity also led to other companies making imitation and copycat products. Other skin whitening soaps which also became popular include carrot soap, kojic acid, and calamansi soap.
Beauty companies have also produced exfoliation products such as Extraderm, which is now known as Maxi-Peel. Exfoliation, which is the process of removing dead skin cells, is one of the effective ways to have a whiter and blemish-free skin. Its tagline "Kutis Artista" has been very effective and it has maintained its position in the market as the product that "can" make ordinary women look and feel like the celebrity endorsers without having to spend too much on dermatological procedures.
A few years back, another skin whitening agent called "glutathione." It is made from 3 non-essential amino acid (cysteine, glycine, and glutamic acid). This amino acid is found in the cell of nearly all living organism on earth, and its primary job is waste disposal. Glutathione is also a potent anti-oxidant which binds to toxin in the liver, the body's primary cleansing organ, and allow them to be flushed efficiently. Nowadays, it comes in tablets and pills, or injectables which are given in derm and cosmetic clinics.
Other professional treatments include laser treatment, microdermabrasion or bleaching treatments. The laser treatment includes the cleaning stage, the actual stage where a gel is placed on the skin and the laser light is applied on the skin. This treatment usually involves more than one session. Obviously, these treatments are quite costly.
So whether we admit it or not, we all want to have a whiter skin just like foreign nationalities. However, little do we know that these white people actually envy our skin color. This is why we see foreigners basking under the heat of the sun to have a perfectly tanned skin. So there goes the irony.
It's about time that we start loving our own color, our own nationality, our own race. Beauty queens Pia Wurtzbach and Venus Raj stood among the rest of the Miss Universe contestants as they epitomized the true Filipina beauty.