When I look at the mirror these days, I try to really look at myself. In the quiet of my room, I just notice and say what I see. No default smiling, no scrubbing, no picking skin apart. Hands through my hair, my cheeks, my neck, my shoulders—and I cross my arms to reach the back and bring myself into a tight embrace. I close my eyes, and I apologize for all the moments I have hurt my own body. 

I only started doing this at 25 years old, one year into regular therapy. Before that, I only ever listened to a monologue of private disgust, an ironic ritual I had learned from watching my mother get dressed in the morning. She rarely put on makeup and loved doing her hair, but I remember how harshly Mama critiqued her wrinkles, hair, belly, and teeth. She enjoyed putting outfits together but always had a negative thing to say about her body: heavy, flabby, unflattering, despite her best efforts to keep healthy and fit. 

As a child, I only saw the best in my Mama. To me, she was the epitome of strength and grace—qualities she embodied as a pious widow of four kids. Mama had a soul made of light, and I always said that I wanted to grow up just like her. 

I lost her when I was only 17, just when I was beginning to understand what it means to be a woman. Among her old office files, I discovered the draft of a 2014 letter she had never actually sent to me. 

“I feel overwhelmed every time you say you want to be like me. To me, such admiration is undeserved because you are much better than me in many ways. As a teenager, I wasn’t like you at all. I was terribly insecure. I hated my body, my skin tone, my hair. But you, anak, are different. I still can’t believe I produced a daughter like you.”

It was difficult to read that, because Mama didn’t know how insecure I was, too. I was sad that she didn’t notice it. I only wanted a mother who loved herself as much as she loved me. 

Only when Mama died did I fully understand it was not her fault. This insecurity was inherited, and it was apparent from the Spanish colonial era until the world wars. In their Pangasinan hometown, my grandmother—though talented and well-loved—struggled with the shame associated with bigger weight, curlier hair, and darker morena skin. 

No one wants the brown girl

In raising me, I realized Mama had attempted to break this cycle, but she couldn’t help but comment on my looks even when I was a child. I was either too payatot (thin) or tabachoy (chubby), and I don’t recall anyone stopping my relatives from making snide remarks about how I ate. In retrospect, it hurts that I cannot remember anyone telling little Cristina that she was beautiful. She was praised for being smart and funny, but not quite pretty.

I know Mama loved me deeply, but I could not quite escape the gaze of those who did not see me in the way she did: judgmental titas, telenovela dialogues, TV commercials, billboards, men.

My Catholic school taught us to embrace being kayumanggi, recalling the legend that says we are the race whom Bathala loved and baked “just right.” But our violent neo-colonial culture preferred the opposite. 

At around eight years old, I only colored my human drawings like white people, because Crayola labeled that crayon “flesh.” I avoided brown shades whenever I customized my game avatars for Gaia Online and Facebook. I preferred not being likened to Alex from Totally Spies or Dora the Explorer because they were “negritas”—and that didn’t attract boyfriends. 

It was aggravated by showbiz and the beauty industry, too. As a teenager, I was convinced that products could increase my likeability: glutathione, papaya soaps, tawas rubs, and whitening toners that scarred faces to pink. At 12, I tried every Michelle Phan YouTube tutorial, lathering my face with egg whites, rice water, tomatoes, and sugar. At 13, I ran to the mirror crying after watching a skin care commercial, because I could never be kutis-mayaman (or have a “wealthy” person’s skin). At 14, I sought after the Aztec clay mask, the Korean moisturizer, the Japanese cleanser, though I couldn’t afford it.

Mama wouldn’t buy it for me, either. Us brown girls scrubbed daily in desperation and disgust. This wasn’t pain. Not punishment. These products were, as marketed, a ritual of “self-love”. It was painfully exhausting.

Love in a different light

When the film Lady Bird came out the same year I lost Mama, I felt seen. I knew the ache of being similar yet unlike the mother you sought to escape, while still yearning for her love and approval. At 18, I still wanted to be like her, but deep down I knew—it was time to change. 

As I grew through university, I was made to realize that I am not alone in this, and there is a way through—together. Time after time, more voices entered my life—kinder, gentler, more curious. I made friends with women who held up new mirrors and revealed all the different colors, patterns, and shapes a human can hold. 

Our girlhood is truly special. In the golden hour, we love to photograph one another in our rawest moments. We praise each other’s beauty without making comments on size and skin. 

And in the dark, when our sadness begins to swell, we hold space for all that we are still grieving—like the wounded inner child who was taught she must change in order to be loved.

Living the questions

In the absence of my mother, I turned to these authentic friendships that show me deeper-than-skin truths such as the adage, “To be loved is to be changed.” They reflect a love that does not tell me to change but allows me to. And this generous allowance invites an honest questioning of me: Who are you? Who do you see when you truly look at, hear, and touch yourself? What would you like to become?

At its core, encouraging a Filipina to embrace herself is not a product-driven process, but a journey of care, connection, and community. At 25, this is something I myself am still learning. 

But at this age, I confess it is no longer my desire to grow up exactly like Mama—and yet, I will always see her face whenever I look at the mirror. I see her warm brown eyes, the corner of her smile, the way her hips moved when she danced, her gentle fingers, her sweet embrace. I hear her, and all the woman who came before—for whom I feel deep compassion.

Each one, in her own way, tried to change what they could. I wish they had recognized their own beauty, but now I am choosing to see theirs in mine. After all, I am still all the women who raised me.

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