Mapping the Shades of Change and the Rise of Morena Power at Allure Beauty Congress

Not too long ago, beauty was defined here in the Philippines by one word: white. Ang maganda, kailangan maputi. And in a country full of brown-skinned locals, this definition pressured a huge chunk of the population to change themselves and their skin color, just to fit into the prevailing standard of beauty.

The era of white and whitening may have continued for decades, but today, a new chapter has begun. Beauty is no longer equated with white. Instead, it’s more inclusive, more encompassing, and definitely kinder—and now it embraces all sorts, from different shades of skin, to different body types and physical and mental conditions.

This is what was discussed in Shades of Change: The Rise of Morena Power, a conversation that featured actress, advocate, and beauty queen Michelle Marquez Dee and award-winning filmmaker Samantha Lee. Morena advocate Ayn Bernos moderated the talk.

A brand new chapter for beauty 

All three women on the panel are proud morenas, and all three expressed delight and excitement that times are, indeed, changing.

Bernos, an author, content creator, and host, recalled the familiar story of growing up and “being told you’re too dark, you can’t go under the sun, and you have to fix your morena skin. That’s something that I’m very excited to get into today.”

For Marquez Dee, who recounts how she was bullied growing up, the change is apparent even in the pageant circuit. “I’ve done two major pageants. And the conversations before behind the scenes, sometimes, they were like, ‘Maybe this time, we should send a morena, maybe this time, we should send a mestiza.’ And there has been a shift, because now they’re looking more inward in what the woman can present and what the woman can contribute,” she says.

Even among storytellers—whether filmmakers or content creators—there has been a shift, which Lee attributes to social media. Social media, she shares, has allowed everyone to have a platform, and has given us an inside look into people’s mindsets and viewpoints. “What I’m most interested in seeing,” she says, “is how this generation, people who are able to curate their social media feeds in as diverse a way as possible, is reframing their idea of beauty externally, and how that is reframing their idea of beauty and self-worth within themselves, because they’re seeing so much representation. It’s so exciting.”

But, as they both agree, there is still much to be done in reframing beauty standards, and the scope of work extends to inclusivity that isn’t just limited to skin color, but to every other aspect of humanity as well.

The road ahead 

Marquez Dee’s push for inclusivity also comes from having two brothers on the autism spectrum. “It always has to start from ourselves first,” she says. “We would love to live in a world where everyone is accepted, everyone is given a fair chance, but the world is not perfect. So it’s really about us just doing our part, to make sure that everybody is accepted and part of that conversation.”

Kim Santos

Lee, on the other hand, emphasizes that one of the most important things we need to do, in the fight for representation and inclusivity, is to keep questioning everything. “Like, ‘bakit ito yung standards natin for beauty? What are we celebrating when we’re supporting this product or this beauty queen or this model?’” she points out. “I think going through the world with that conscious awareness that maybe what was said when we were growing up isn’t necessarily true, is a really good first step in redefining and changing the status quo.”

Excel Panlaque

As she acknowledges how far we’ve come in changing the conversation, but how far the journey still is, Bernos shares her own story of how she created a morena empowerment-themed T-shirt line years ago, and how one of her first customers was Allure Philippines editor in chief Rissa Mananquil Trillo, who sat before her as Bernos herself took the stage. “Who would have thought,” Bernos muses, “that in 2025, we would have this conversation in front of such amazing, beautiful Filipinos who understand why [this conversation] is so important.”

“And it only takes one person to create a huge domino effect,” Marquez Dee jumps in. “Who knows,” she tells both Bernos and Lee on the stage, “the next might be bigger and bigger and bigger. That’s exactly the kind of wave of change that we want to see.”

Kim Santos

And as their words reverberated off the walls of RCBC Plaza in Makati, on a stage with an audience of beauty enthusiasts and industry leaders, you could practically hear the rest of the dominoes falling, forming those ripples of change.