Beauty is Only Culture Deep

So being away from home makes you realize how different people really are yet we really occupy a similar shell. Our body or shell is the subject of so many different opinions and being in one place can have totally different views. I have heard that beauty is only skin deep but really it is only culture deep.

In China back before it was outlawed small feet were deemed very beautiful and could raise your social standing. Women would have their feet bound and broken and risked being crippled or death by doing this. Yet culture deemed it beautiful and so it was done. In America thin is beautiful and fitting into a certain proportion. You can’t be too hairy if you are a man and so many want to look like a celebrity.

Out here I have received more compliments on my nose than I ever thought possible. Those giving the compliment love how it is pointy and small. In general noses here are wide and flat. My host aunt said if she were to have another child she would home the child has a nose like mine. I’m not the only PCV getting this compliment but many of us have had this opportunity.

People here also use skin whiteners. It is in soaps, lotions, make-up and so many other topical products and they even have pills. It is hard to find soap without a whitener in it. Here to have a light skin is more valuable and I have been told it can even help you secure employment by my host family. It is interesting in the U.S we are trying to be tan by using creams, tanning salons and baking in the sun and here nobody can understand why I would want to get a tan and get darker. A nickname for a light skinned Filippino is Tisoy (boy) and Tisay (girl). My host family informed me that it is one of my nicknames in the community yet nobody has said it to me directly. We have a set of twins (girl and boy) in the nursery that I’ve just fallen in love with and they are both very light skinned (but that is not what drew me to them) and this is also their nicknames.

As a westerner being called “fat” by another person is a horrible and distasteful comment or judgment. Here it is used often and people just use it to describe someone else and have no problem saying right to the person. To them we are big just because of our height, bone structure, we are just bigger and often cause they don’t know how else to describe us. In my last host family one of the little host cousins I had was a little chubby. The way I was introduced to him by my host brothers was: This is … and he is chubby (with little chuckles and laughing). It was as if I could not see this child had a few extra pounds. By the way the kid was obese but looked like he was about to grow and kids do hold on and retain a few extra pounds before growing.

I do find people here to be very focused on the “shell” of themselves and each other. On many of the t.v shows they have dancing girls in the background in scantily clad outfits that could be mistaken for a 2 piece bathing suite yet going to the beach girls will wear shorts and a t-shirt. I have to be honest this t-shirt and shorts thing is for 2 reasons: 1. to be modest and 2. because light skin is beautiful and the more you are covered the less direct rays settle on you making you tan. What a concept “beauty” is.