Angel Aquino is describing the difficult and emotionally draining year she’s just had for Allure Philippines. Her voice cracks and tears—although they do not fall—well up in her eyes, as she tells us about the emotional journey she has had the past year.

“There were days when I didn’t feel like getting up. Most of the time, I felt like I was at a crossroads, in a dark place. I was so conflicted,” she said, explaining what she calls a “very tumultuous relationship” with herself. It was a turbulent time, in which she wrestled with herself, her life, and her sense of purpose daily. But today, it seems like she wants to talk about it, and is exceedingly candid and open in sharing her experience with us.

As Aquino sits regally in her chair, still wearing the luminous yellow Emilia Atelier gown from the shoot, she turns pensive. “I honestly don’t know what led to me feeling that way. I don’t know if it was the lack of work,” she muses. “When work started to slow down, I felt lost. I realized my comfort zone was the discomfort of being so busy and needed and stretched. And then suddenly, no one was looking for me, or I would walk into a crowded place, and nobody would recognize me.” When you’re an actress, she explains, that means something. “It’s your validation,” she adds.

She pauses, and continues candidly with her reflections. “Maybe it was aging, or a mid-life crisis, or menopause. I could feel my body changing, and it was messing with my psyche also.”

BJ Pascual

Discovering white patches on her skin—and the underlying health condition

It’s a bit surreal to hear all this from someone who has long been considered the quintessential morena in Philippine pop culture, and one of the most beautiful women in the country. From a childhood of playing outdoors in the streets of her hometown of Marikina, with “a lot of sapateros around,” Aquino went on to become the toast of the modeling industry, receiving raves left and right about her morena skin, and eventually branching out to acting, where she would go on to win accolades for numerous performances.

One of the reasons for Aquino’s difficult year was learning that she was suffering from vitiligo. Vitiligo is an autoimmune condition where skin loses its color, resulting in discoloration and white patches throughout the body—something that clashes with brown skin like Aquino’s.

“At first,” she narrates, “it was just one uneven spot on my hand during the pandemic, and then I started seeing more of it. So I went to the dermatologist. They said it was vitiligo, and there is no cure for it.”

Aquino explains autoimmune conditions as “my healthy cells destroying other healthy cells.” She was told by her doctors that, without a cure, the condition just has to be managed—including her stress levels, which have a lot to do with the disease. For this, she does yoga, meditates, and prays a lot. “There’s really nothing I can do,” she says. “There’s no ointment.”

She’s been told light therapy may be an option, but isn’t sure how it would work, “especially when it has spread out like this,” she says, holding out her hands for us to see the patches of white dotting her legendary dusky skin.

The diagnosis has, understandably, come as a blow to Aquino, especially since her outward appearance has, for so much of her life, played such a huge role in her career, and even her identity. “Thankfully,” she says, “it hasn’t manifested on my face. Hopefully it doesn’t, but if it does, there’s really nothing I can do.” When we ask her if, as an actress and model who spends so much time in front of the camera, she’s prepared for that to happen, we see a minute flash of agony on her beautiful face.

“No, I’m not prepared,” she wails softly, before taking a deep breath. “But I think I’ve lived my life being unprepared. I just have to embrace it, be thankful I’m still alive, and just deal with it.”

Her new definition of beauty

All of this has led to a change in how Aquino defines beauty today. “For me, beauty is how you feel inside,” she says. “That will always come out. No matter how externally beautiful you are, if you haven’t been taking good care of yourself, you will feel sloppy, and people will see that.”

These are things that Aquino herself had to do—acknowledge her own inner health in the process of working on the exterior. “I ended up telling myself, ‘You can’t stay in this dark place. You are the only one who can get yourself out of this rut that you’re in.’ I started waking up early, exercising. But really, it went beyond that. It wasn’t just my face, skin, hair. It was my thoughts, my emotions—the whole package inside out.”

The work—both inner and outer—seems to have gotten her to a better place today. As she sits on her throne, in that luminous yellow gown, fresh from a photo shoot with other morena beauty icons, you can feel the hard-won peace radiating from Aquino. There is a sparkle in her eyes, and her brown skin is glowing as it always has, although this time, with white patches and all.

Makeup: Juan Sarte. Hair: Renz Pangilinan. Fashion styling: Maica Tady of Qurator, assisted by Claire Fernando, Shark Tanael, and Bea Panganiban. 

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