Beyond the Stage

beyond the stage beyond the stage

A deeper look at pageants and their intersection of Filipino culture and feminism

Beauty pageants have a rich culture in the Philippines. Dubbed the “pageant capital” of the world, the Philippines is home to a countless number of pageants and international pageant winners.

Pageants are valued so highly in Filipino culture that they are held in every local city, for different kinds of people and for various occasions. Every Barrio Fiesta, in which Phillipine neighborhoods celebrate their patron saints, has one of these competitions. Young girls are often encouraged to participate by parents and older relatives.

Pageants, especially international ones, garner significant amounts of attention from the Filipino community. When women representing the Philippines win these pageants, the country — composed of countless islands and home to various languages and cultures — is united under a strong sense of national pride.

Natashya Gutierrez, a journalist for the Philippine news network Rappler, traces the Filipino devotion to beauty pageants back to the legacy of Spanish colonialism in an article titled “The Philippines’ Beauty Pageant Obsession: Who Benefits?” Filipino fixation with beauty pageants continued to grow with the country’s first major win in 1969, when Gloria Diaz won Miss Universe. Since then, pageants have become a great source of pride in the 22 | fall 2019

country.

Today, many feminists oppose beauty pageants, claiming that they have no place in the 21st century because they objectify women and promote harmful and unrealistic beauty standards.

Even in the Philippines, pageants have their controversies. For one, it is rare for a full Filipino to make it far in pageants in the Philippines. Pageant frontrunners are typically tall, skinny and lighter-skinned. They also often have mixed ethnic and national heritages. In the past, winners have had American, European or Australian ancestry. For example, the two most recent Miss Universe winners representing the Philippines, Pia Wurtzbach and Catriona Gray, are half German and half Australian, respectively.

Silvia Celeste Cortesi, crowned Miss Philippines Earth 2018, faced heavy criticism for not being “Filipino enough.” Cortesi is half Italian, born and raised in Italy, and does not speak Tagalog or any other tongue native to the Philippines.

The lack of significance placed on cultural heritage coupled with the immense focus placed upon physical appearance in Filipino pageants makes critics question how authentic Filipino representation is in these pageants.

Pageants: Are they good or bad?

Now a second-year student at UF, Kristina Biglete never imagined she would don a pageant crown. Growing up, when her friends and family would encourage her to participate in pageants, she would always shy away from the idea because she didn’t think that they were for her.

Although Biglete was peer pressured into her first pageant, she chose to participate in her second one, the Miss Fil-Am pageant, because of its partnership with Gawad Kalinga, a Phillippine movement that aims to end poverty by 2024.

Biglete’s experience with Miss Fil-Am was a rewarding one. At the pageant, she shared the stage with the women who won before her. They were the same women who competed in the pageants Biglete watched while growing up. They inspired her. Biglete’s Miss Fil-Am crowning moment means the world to her because she has seen what previous winners were able to do with their title.

Although the Fil-Am pageant was still a competition, Biglete befriended other contestants and found the experience empowering, as much of it revolved around showcasing the talents of others.

But as pure as Biglete’s narrative was, controversy still surrounds pageants. While the contests do certainly open up opportunities, they often only do so for the few who meet current beauty standards or other exclusive criteria.

herself and other contestants. When Howard started pageants, she worked tirelessly to be the “right” size, but people would still say she could stand to lose a couple more pounds.

“I would not be allowed to have more than a tablespoon of oil a day, and I couldn’t have more than a certain amount of fat,” said Howard. “It was very unhealthy, and I was definitely starving myself for the sake of this pageant. Yet, people would still say things like, ‘She has a bulge.’”

Pageants garner a lot of publicity. As a result, many Filipino parents, especially in the Philippines, encourage their kids to participate in pageants as a way of gaining exposure.

When a contestant participates in Fiesta mo sa, she represents her city. However, this representation would not always translate. Often, when Howard wore her sash, people would mistake her for Miss Jacksonville, not realizing that the sash was for Fiesta mo sa.

When Howard had her sash on, people would act differently around her — they would wish her luck in representing their city, and many of them would ask for photos. For Howard, it felt weird to be put on a pedestal, and would even make her uncomfortable at times.

But Kristina viewed this phenomenon differently. She used her sash as a way to talk to people and make new connections. When people would ask what her sash was for or what she was representing, Kristina would use it as an opportunity to talk with people and tell them more about herself.

Pageants: Not all bad, and getting better

Faith Maniti, a second year student at UF, was one of the directors for the Mx. AASU 2019 pageant at the university. She chose to be a director because she believes pageants give people the opportunity to make their voices and platforms known, and she wanted to help others be able to do so.

Maniti’s mother pushed her to do pageants because she never wanted Maniti to be shy in front of a crowd. Now, Faith proudly claims public speaking to be one of her fortes.

All three women — Biglete, Howard and Maniti — are grateful for their pageant experiences and look back on their contests fondly. They claim that they were able to grow and get to know themselves better. Pageants allowed them to develop self-confidence and a better appreciation of their cultural heritage. “[Fiesta mo sa] was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life, but at the end, it made me learn a lot,” Howard said. “I learned a lot about myself and about confidence because I wasn’t as confident then as I am now.”

Additionally, pageant culture is also improving. In 2018, the Miss Universe pageant had both a selection committee and a panel of judges made up completely of women. Many people have also begun to simply call these contests “pageants,” as opposed to “beauty pageants,” in an attempt to remove the focus on physical beauty.

Vanity may have been the root of the objectification associated with beauty pageants, but as pageants continue to evolve, contestants are focusing more on celebrating their stories, rather than how they look in a swimsuit or cocktail dress.

Understanding the drive to fight for free speech A ‘Slanted’ Perspective

Aboy sits on the couch. The movie playing on the TV is Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill.” As the boy watches, a scene starts up. It’s the moment when O-Ren Ishii, leader of a Tokyo crime organization, enters a restaurant. She’s dressed in all white contrasting the black ensembles that her clan wears as they follow behind her. All of the actors are Asian or Asian American. It is the first time the boy has ever seen Asians portrayed as cool, sexy and confident.

That boy was Simon Tam, founder of The Slants, an all Asian American dance-rock band, and the winning party in Matal v. Tam, a First Amendment Supreme Court case that resulted in a provision of the Lanham Act being ruled unconstitutional. This provision prevented the registration of any trademarks that were seen as disparaging toward an individual or group. In this particular case, it had been used to prevent The Slants from registering a trademark for their name due to the racist connotation with the word “slants.”

Tam’s band chose the name The Slants as a way to reclaim the term — to take the word back from those that used it in a derogatory manner. He was not the only one with that idea though. The Asian community had already been reclaiming the word “slants” on its own for decades, Tam said.

He was honoring the work of the activists that came before him.

For example, Melissa Hung, the founding editor of Hyphen, an Asian American culture magazine, established the Slant Film Festival in 2001 to showcase the world of emerging Asian American artists. There are also the directors and production teams behind “The Slanted Screen,” Slant TV and Slant Magazine.

Every racial slur against Asian Americans was already a registered trademark, according to Tam. But whenever Asian Americans would apply for these trademarks themselves, they were denied.

whereas people who weren’t Asian were given the benefit of the doubt.” Tam said. “For me, it was about the principle of those kinds of things.”

The law was removing the victims from the process, Tam said.

“It allowed the government to be the arbiter of speech,” Tam said. “For me that is the ultimate problem.”

If our desire is to reduce the use of hate speech or racial slurs in our culture, trademark registrations are not the way to do it, Tam said.

The idea for The Slants blossomed from the extreme lack of Asian representation in mainstream entertainment. No movie Tam had watched ever displayed genuine representation with depth. There was even less representation in the music industry, the art he lived and breathed since he was a child.

“There’s this Chinese proverb that the nail that sticks out gets hammered in,” Tam said.

Tam was not raised in an environment where he was encouraged to speak out. He grew up with, what he called, “typical Asian parents” and was taught it was better to not cause trouble. He was told to accept things as they were.

There’s this Chinese proverb that the nail that sticks out gets hammered in — Simon Tam

He was taught that it was better to silently protest things that he disagreed with.

“You don’t want to get into more trouble and create more trouble for yourself,” Tam said.

But Tam was a punk rock lover, and he believed in rebelling against the system. “To be clear, I wasn’t rebelling against my parents,” Tam said.

He wasn’t the type to sneak out of the house to hang out with friends or do drugs. He was the kid that helped his parents with computers and went to church with them on the weekends.

“I rebelled against systems, like things that I thought were unjust. That’s what I thought was worth speaking up against,” Tam said. “Witnessing unjust things occur is probably the most disturbing thing.”

He would ask himself questions like, “What can I do to change that? What can I do to address these things that are evil and don’t belong in this world? How can I lessen the suffering of other people?”

“I’m driven by this idea of compassion,” Tam said. “Activism is certainly a natural vehicle for that, and in a lot of ways, I think art and music are also right in line with that.”

Tam engaged in forms of activism prior to the Matal v. Tam case, but he never considered himself to be an activist. To him, all the things he did were simple acts of compassion.

The activist label came later as he found himself increasingly involved with the Asian American community.

“Instead of just thinking, ‘Hey, here’s someone who’s hungry’ and giving them food, it was more like asking, ‘What causes hunger? What causes racism?’” Tam said.

He wanted to get to the root of these issues and find solutions for the community. Even though Tam disagreed with the law that was preventing him from registering The Slants as a trademark, he doesn’t think of laws in black and white. He actually warns against doing so.

“Rather than thinking if a law is good or bad, think about it in terms of justice. Justice is more than just punishing people who abuse our laws or use hurtful language because the reality is that they will get away with it anyway,” Tam said. “A more just version of things is to think about who are the people with the least options or the least resources in our society. How can we empower them, so that they have more options? So they’re on a level playing field?”

We don’t actually need the government to protect us against people who do hateful things, we need the government to actually have equality, Tam argued. Everyone having the same starting point is much closer to the idea of justice than simply trying to remove discomfort or trying to block other people.

Tam says that people who only mute, block or unfriend people on social media do not actually change the hearts and minds of those who are being racist.

“If we want to change the systems and the root causes of issues like racism, we actually have to engage with people,” Tam said.

In order to overcome the prejudice people have and shift people’s thinking, we need an open dialogue, Tam said. Matal v. Tam was a great win for freedom of speech, but it represents only one of many of the necessary steps needed for a more equal and just society.