“MISS INSECURE!!!!!!!!!!” the subject line read. I had just graduated from university when a bunch of made-up email addresses started flaming me in my inbox on and off for six months. “Hi girl na ’di kaputian, insecure pa rin ba hanggang ngayon? Maitim. Ulikba. Hindi tinatablan ng whitening lotion!” were just some of my favorites from those messages. 

First, they were anonymously sent using fake names. Eventually, they graduated to using familiar college friends’ names. I obviously knew this person, and they relished insulting me for my skin color, among other things. I figured this because the emails weren’t exactly about me being morena, but my complexion always came up in all of them.

I was already 21 and, perhaps mistakenly, thought that Filipinos had come a long way regarding these age-old beauty standards. Of course, the emails made me wonder: are we still insulting women for the brown of their skin?

Growing up brown

Truthfully speaking, I’ve never been ashamed to be on the darker spectrum of whitening product commercials. I knew I didn’t fit Filipinos’ typical standards of beauty, but my insecurities weren’t rooted in my complexion. Despite being a tiny, brown-skinned girl who shied away from attention, I’m actually one of the lucky ones who’ve never been spoken to by family members or relatives that being morena wasn’t beautiful. The emails, though, were proof that some of my peers had a lot to say.

Merphi Panaguiton, a creative director and co-founder of self-shoot photo studio ATOMM Studios, had similar encounters with strangers and acquaintances. “To be honest, it was just a few years ago when I realized that skin color actually mattered in society,” she shares. “When I lived in Spain, I remember dating European men, and a fellow Filipina told me, ‘Ahh, kaya ka type n’yan kasi morena ka.” (“He likes you, because you’re morena.”)

It was the same for Ella Fortun-Zulueta, an international luxury brand manager and mother to a newborn daughter, whose experiences with colorism weren’t with family. “I was a serious ballet dancer growing up. Whenever we’d have dance recitals in the summer, I’d always be the tannest one because I’d also be enrolled in swimming classes,” she recalls. “I remember my ballet teacher commenting on how dark I was and people laughing about it, so that definitely embarrassed me.”

For Katrina Tomo, it was the opposite. She recalls her mother taking measures to lighten her complexion to avoid judgment from others. She exfoliated her skin, and eventually damaged it, in the hopes that all the scrubbing would lead to a fairer color. “The bane of my mother’s existence is dark spots—on the knees, elbows, nape, singit—and she equates it to one’s cleanliness until now,” she adds.

After graduating with her Master’s in developmental psychology from the Ateneo de Manila University, training in special education, getting her license to teach elementary school, and becoming a mother herself, Katrina feels strongly about consciously breaking the beliefs our generation was raised with.

Reclaiming self-worth

Our immediate circles may have shaped our personal beauty standards differently, but it’s the extended communities we grew up in and the popular Filipino culture consumed in media and social media that ultimately shape the beauty standards we have to live with.

“Growing up, the makeup I was taught to wear was always light—pale foundation, pink cheeks, and red lips. Makeup wasn’t as diverse, so everyone was taught that the colors are universal and ‘should look the same’ on everyone,” Fortun-Zulueta recalls.

Tomo had a more unfortunate encounter when one of her undergraduate professors declared that the morenas in their class should consider lightening their skin because “students respond better to fairer teachers” and they “needed to stand out from their ‘yayas from the province’ and ‘people on the streets’ who aren’t always seen as authority figures.” 

“These [perceptions] go beyond familial boundaries. This is cultural,” Tomo states.

When you’re made to think and feel like this, that your darker skin puts you on a certain rung in a ladder—worse, that you don’t merit the same respect as others who are of fairer complexions—this perpetuates a vicious cycle long-passed on from generations before us. Whether consciously or subconsciously, there always seems to be the need to prove your worth more than others if you’re not of a lighter color.

For Fortun-Zulueta, Tomo, and Panaguiton, their exposure to other cultures played a considerable role in their journey to fully embrace being morena. “When I lived abroad, I realized that people around me appreciated different skin colors,” Panaguiton shares. “It was when I lived in Paris in my early 20s that I got the most compliments on my color,” Fortun-Zulueta adds.

Ironically, working in media and publishing empowered me to take pride in being morena. As a consumer, I was often exposed to the mestiza and chinita models popular in magazines and TV commercials. Similar to living and traveling abroad, meeting so many beautiful people while at work—even just locally—made me realize how I just needed to widen my lenses to see every kind of beauty.

Leaving a legacy for morenas

As we raise the next generation of morenas, for us four, there’s a conscious effort to reinforce that brown is beautiful—just as any other skin color.

Coming from her experience with friends abroad, Fortun-Zulueta recognizes the power of words, saying, “When people use ‘dark’ or ‘fair’ as an insult, children learn to associate those words with negativity. So using these words in positive speech will help shape a child’s confidence in their morena beauty.” 

Tomo cites a 2018 study about colorism where it was reported that prejudice and discrimination based on skin color have become a global health concern, jeopardizing the physical health and mental well-being of adolescents. “They’re more susceptible to insecurities related to appearance and self-worth, because adolescence is a vulnerable stage in human development,” she says.

Panaguiton—as a young woman with a budding platform herself—then emphasizes positive affirmation to inspire confidence in morenas who are insecure about their complexion. “I believe in subconscious programming and re-programming, so language definitely plays a big role in instilling confidence in children.” 

It’s refreshing to know that all four of us share a certain pride in being morena, and how we contribute to one conversation differently. It gives me joy that even though we’ve all been made to feel less on one occasion or another just because we weren’t fair-skinned, we’ve come to accept that we’re not just our complexion—and this is the sentiment we wish to contribute to the next generation of beautiful, brown-skinned Filipino girls.

Even if we were all raised in a time when morenas were once shamed and bullied, I’d like to think we’re moving in the right direction toward acceptance—not just tolerance. “We’re so fortunate that the beauty standards today are changing,” Fortun-Zulueta says. “We see more women of all ethnicities, races, skin colors, and skin types,” and it’s another step to healing the negative effects of colorism.

As an educator and a mother, Tomo doesn’t plan on focusing on her son’s skin color to boost his confidence. “Rather, I want to shape his confidence based on his character,” she says. “The parents’ role in forming a healthy self-concept is undoubtedly important. Self-awareness as parents is crucial in cutting off negative beliefs.”

She also emphasizes exposing children to diversity early on so that they imbibe a broader perspective on beauty. “[Children] need to see variations of beauty standards. They also need to understand that those who come before them come from a time when colonial mentality affected standards, and they must be approached with understanding and compassion, but within a safe boundary of self.”

Setting these boundaries with family, friends, and community is crucial. Since children cannot defend themselves, parents need to draw those lines while they’re young. “When negative comments are made on [my son’s] color, my husband and I always respond with ‘What a weird thing to say out loud to a baby,’” Tomo says.

She adds that role-playing between parent and child can help children respond to situations that need boundaries. Prompts such as “What do you do when you’re criticized for being morena?”, “How do you respond?”, or “What do you think when you see someone darker than you?” aren’t meant to have fixed answers—but serve as conversation starters for parents to guide their children toward self-awareness, empathy, and setting healthy boundaries in real-life scenarios.

Finally, Tomo urges parents to become more involved in what children consume in the media. “Provide your children with resources that reflect morena representation,” she stresses. For younger children, she suggests movies with leads like Moana, Pocahontas, and Aladdin’s Princess Jasmine—characters with brown skin who are strong and empowered.

Locally, she recommends My Name is Morena, a children’s book by Ayn Bernos that affirms brown-skinned beauty, and Ben & Ben’s song Kayumanggi, which celebrates Filipino identity and skin tone. These tools, she says, can help children see themselves positively reflected in the media they consume. “Also, be conscious of how you express your thoughts, especially since we were raised and parented [in environments] where colorism was more prevalent,” Tomo adds.

Looking to the future, Fortun-Zulueta shares, “Honestly, I think my daughter will have it easier growing up morena than my generation did. I would never shame her or make her feel like her natural skin color is unacceptable. I will teach her how to take care of it every day, but not how to make her look different from what she looks like.”

I hope the youth of today realize this and learn to bask in the beauty of their skin color—morena or not. There’s so much beauty in diversity, and I’d love to raise a child in a world where I wouldn’t need to worry about them being called names or feeling pressured to change because of others’ opinions. We should all be so lucky to feel beautiful and empowered our way. I sure wouldn’t want my future child to feel “less than” just because she has more melanin than others.

There’s still a long way to go, but mainstream consciousness seems to be shifting, at the very least. Tomo ends with an “unpopular” opinion that I wholeheartedly agree with, saying, “I just wish we could stop emphasizing [that being proud to be morena] is counterculture—because it shouldn’t feel like resistance,” Tomo says. “When our beauty is no longer the exception but simply the norm, that’s when I’ll know we’ve truly made it.”

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