The lines on her face

Last Saturday, July 2, most newspapers in the country, including all three local papers in Cebu, carried on their front pages a closeup photo of President Arroyo caught in a facial expression that can draw as many interpretations as there are viewers of the picture.

But while the interpretations of her expression may widely vary, all who saw the closeup picture of the president were bound to come to the same conclusion, that their once baby-faced leader has suddenly sprung very noticeable lines on her face.

As editor-in-chief of this paper, I get to pick what photos to place on page one. When I saw that closeup photo of Mrs. Arroyo in the late afternoon dispatch of Agence France Presse, I knew right then and there that I had my front page picture.

And it was the lines on her face, rather than the facial expression, that attracted me to it. They were simply very vivid in the color computer monitor to be ignored. And I was pretty certain our printing processes would be faithful enough to retain such vividness.

For it was those lines that, as editor, I wanted to convey to our readers. There was no malicious intent that went into that decision, only the need to make a factual declaration that the president has sprung lines on her face that were now very palpable.

To be sure, I realized that the photo will provoke the varied interpretations that I already said at the outset. And that, too, was part of the decision. In a democracy, one of the roles of media is to provoke public discussion on issues of the day.

Oh yeah, the lines on a face would hardly make for an issue of the day. But aging, which is responsible for the formation of facial lines, is not solely a biological thing. It has been determined that emotional stress and physical fatigue can hasten the aging process.

In another time, perhaps the lines on the face of a president would hardly merit notice or comment. But these are interesting times for this interesting country of ours. Our president is walking the tightrope of her life. How she deals with the stress should merit our interest.

If anybody told me the president now drinks 20 glasses of water everyday on account of her stress, I not only will carry the story, I would give it prominence. I would do the same if I knew she now gets out of bed three times at dawn to go to the bathroom.

As I said, these are interesting times, and I am pretty certain that how I arrived at my decision in relation to the choice of that July 2 page one photo in The FREEMAN of the president was the same way that the editors of all the other papers that carried it arrived at theirs.

Of course, the expression on her face helped to form the message that these interesting times needed that photo to convey to the public. But then, only the facial expression, at its face value and not what lay behind it, had any relevance to the message.

To be honest about it, that photo of the president was taken at an event that had absolutely nothing to do with all her troubles. In fact, it was an event that should make her happy since it advanced a technology that could soon prove beneficial to Filipinos.

Why that expression during such a happy occasion? Well, I guess only the president can answer that herself. Anybody else who tries will only be pushing an interpretation. But the expression was made. And it was caught on camera.

And it was an expression that, to the best of interpretations, perfectly fit public perceptions of the moment. That, plus of course those facial lines, those wrinkles that make the president just as human as we are.

Looking at those lines, one remembers the classic 1899 poem "The Man With The Hoe" by Edwin Markham. To paraphrase, "Bowed by the weight of her woes she leans; Upon herself alone and no one else; The lapses of judgment aging her face; And on her back the burden of consequence."