For an expat living in the Philippines, Roger & Ismi Rupuesto have an informative Youtube channel. But here, I think they are a bit off.
It's an interesting topic; one my Filipina wife and I often talk about. No doubt Roger and Ismi are correct about how Filipino men view Filipina beauty. But in my opinion, they are way off on the foreign men. Well, at least the American men. I can't really speak for the others. But for Americans, Filipina beauty is not new. For Americans, it is not a question of "newness" or "uniqueness." Rather it is a question of access and availability.
Because I can assure you, there are many beautiful women in the US. By any standard of beauty. Remember, America is a nation of immigrants. It might be worth pointing out that more Filipinos live in the US than any other country, other than the Philippines itself. In any case, in the US there is no single ethnic standard for beauty.
The American men who come to the Philippines just don't have the same access to beauty in the US that the Philippines offers. So while Filipino men may turn up their noses to the "common" beauty all around them, the American expats know better than to be so cavalier with what is right in front of them.
However, an increasing number of Filipino women have come to believe that Korean and Chinese porcelain paleness is the ultimate standard of beauty. And then they try to mimic the porcelain dolls with harmful Michael Jackson style skin bleach and worse, dodgy pills, and you may not believe this, a weekly intravenous solution of glutathione. Of course, all of this just makes them look pallid and unhealthy. In the US, when we say someone looks "pale," we mean sick.
And yet so many Filipinas are now doing this. I mean, did they behave this way a generation ago? I'm not sure. But personally, I think it is an unnatural cultural contagion. No doubt heavily fueled by a pervasive and pernicious social media. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that social media has reached dystopian levels in the Philippines. The smartphone zombies and their attached devices are everywhere. But the saddest part of the advancing Philippine zombie apocalypse is the ubiquitous pageant of porcelain dolls. It is a travesty.
But it doesn't end there. Once a Filipina achieves this porcelain doll status, because it is status and not beauty that she is seeking, she then turns around and looks down on other Filipinas with a more natural beauty. Authentic natural beauty; read brown skin. Filipinos call it morena. The doll says: Oh, she looks like a nanny. And what she means is, she looks lower class. It's similar to Chinese culture, where they look down on darker skin tone as a sign that someone works in the fields. My point is, this is not even about beauty so much as it is about class. Or at least striving to appear higher class. That's what it's about: Striving.
And these Filipinas are so very proud of their paleness. Just like an American or European might like to show off a nice tan, Filipinas like to show off their paleness. Short skirts and short shorts, with legs whiter than an Irish grandmother's. It seems really twisted. I would go so far to say that Filipinas are willing to sacrifice their beauty in order to appear higher class. To an American, the contrived paleness and associated haughtiness just seem sort of...sad and pathetic. I am embarrassed for these women.
But twisted is the correct word. I mean, here we are in the tropics, eight degrees above the equator, and these women look like they could be from Edinburgh. So today, the Philippines is a tropical paradise inhabited by raven-haired apparitions of tropical beauty. The Filipinas create this dissonance themselves and at the same time seem casually oblivious to their very real sacrifice. Dissonance squared; it is surreal.
Again, it doesn't end there. No doubt there are social and professional environments that discriminate against dark-skinned Filipinas. For instance, if you go into my bank, all the tellers are women, and they all have unnaturally light skin. So whoever makes the hiring decisions, simply does not hire morena Filipinas. I mean, they don't want tellers that look like nannies, right? So yes, it is definitely striving, but sadly, some may feel an element of necessity – At least if you want certain jobs. Or perhaps to fit into certain social settings.
And so now Filipino men and women no longer recognize their own innate beauty. Which is terribly ironic, because everyone else in the world does recognize Philippine beauty, Philippine natural beauty. Yes, I understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But still. Plus, the Philippines has an above average number of men who identify as gay or some other LGBTQ+ variant. End result: Below average western men flock to the Philippines for ready access to beauty. Of course they do.
It is said that when Cecil Rhodes first got to South Africa, he could pick up diamonds on the beach. The natives did not appreciate what they had. But that did not make the diamonds any less valuable.
And one natural Filipina is worth more than all the diamonds in the world.