Black, white, Bela, and the irony of racist ethnics
Let’s give ourselves a pat on the back for becoming exactly how our colonizers envisioned us to be. We’ve successfully lived out the shamelessly exoticized, ‘othering’ image they’ve conceived for us—the “fluttered folk and wild, sullen people, half devil and half child” Rudyard Kipling so belittlingly talked about in “The White Man’s Burden.”
We’ve grown to become averse to our own race, and our very own people. Bravo.
So when a racy men’s magazine like FHM unabashedly affirms the notion that white is in, black is out, maybe it’s time we started seriously assessing the standards of beauty our country has become accustomed to.
Ironically, this is coming from a nation so deeply entrenched in the kind of racism and binary hierarchy that the West has always imposed on us. But while we can aspire for it all we want, we can never be the center, not while first world structures of domination continue to exist.
Yet, in an ontological sleight of hand, the cover tries to do just that. Bela Padilla; white, centered. The rest of the models; black, periphery. Bela Padilla stepping out of the shadows. The double-faced discourse of this piece is clear—everyone is human, but some more human than others.
The controversial cover of the March issue of FHM saw an incredible amount of backlash from netizens decrying racism and political incorrectness when the image was released online last week. In the same vein, however, a depressing number of people actually tried to redeem said piece with the famous last words: “It’s art, stupid.”
And there’s the rub.
Although head honchos at FHM finally decided to retract the inexcusably loaded cover, the damage has been done. Because really, even more appalling than the blatant racial overtones of the magazine cover itself, is the fact that this kind of consciousness exists in the first place. And among our own kind, no less. Surely, as part of the group of humans living on the periphery of global power and cultural consciousness, surely we’re better than this.
Was it necessary to have all of the darker-skinned models blackfaced? In the 19th century, blackface was a tool used in American theater when Caucasian actors painted their faces black in order to exaggerate the characteristics of black people. It was done with intent to poke fun, a caricature; and one that obviously paved the way to racist stereotypes.
On the cover, not only are the models blackfaced, they’re referred to as shadows. As if afraid we wouldn’t get the point that Padilla screams ethereal when compared to the rest of the mold.
As recently as last year, blackface was used in GMA 7’s Nita Negrita. The women don’t even make eye contact with the camera. All their hair is messily bundled up, all of them wear the same bikini, all of them with a vulnerable, indifferent expression; idolizing the fair-skinned woman in the center. The body language, the styling, the art direction of the darker-skinned girls, all reflects captivity. Indeed, they are thoroughly captivated.
All the binaries present in the cover are clear: White skin vs. dark skin, center vs. off-center, an individual vs. mass, everything is placed in stark contrast. Intentional or not, the cover tells us that this is everything that comprises beautiful, successful, superior. And in order to make sure we get it, they’re telling us what is not.
That’s the way the colonial powers did it, that’s the way bullies do it in school. How else does someone reaffirm their superiority, if they don’t put the other down in the process?
So Padilla, the porcelain goddess in pink, steps out of the shadows. And into what? Enlightenment?
Charles Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s seminal novella Heart of Darkness does just that—surviving his experience in the heart of darkness (Africa) and returning to Europe a veritable ‘idol,’ “a Buddha preaching.” He emerges from shadow into the light, where he ostensibly comes out all the better for it; a god, even. But this story was written in 1899, the creation of a well-meaning (if not misguided), white, European male.
We are now in the year 2012.
Are we really still cleaving to that kind of narrative? Never mind that Padilla is half-white, or that the cover was meant to be ‘edgy.’ Identity, fashion, and art are as political, malleable, and socially-constructed as the next phenomena. In this day and age, it is imperative that we are aware of this; of the histories being marginalized, and, conversely, of the alternative narratives readily available to us.
It’s not so much the cover that should incite our righteous anger, really, but the fact that this mindset continues to exist today, amongst our own people, and imbedded in our very habitus as well.
Besides, how can light exist without the shadow?
