An Apron To Reckon

For The Maid of Honor

Should I be given a choice on the matter, I would pretty much prefer to wear our national costume as an everyday attire. No kidding! Why should I when there is such a vast variety of elegant styles to choose from, each embroidered with the most intricate of lace and fashioned from the most exotic pina textile.

If I could, I would - shred away my Guess jeans and shirts, and wear with pride the kind of clothes that define who I really am. I am a true Filipina. And I am upset.

- At the ignorance, callousness, crassness and downright barbaric cultural insensitivity of a BBC comedy show that portrayed a Filipina maid in such an offending manner. The rotten core of that racial slur slighted me as well.

I am not a maid. I do not and will not, ever, sweep, launder, fold clothes or cook for anyone else. But so many other Filipina women do. They are mothers and sisters and aunts; different professions, different persuasions.

These magnanimous women have given up the closeness of family ties, the comfort of hometown familiarity, the cheer of friends, barrio fiestas and languid afternoon siestas. Not a few have sold land, borrowed money, and swallowed personal honor and pride in order to don the distinctive "apron" of a maid - a ruffled attire made downright humiliating because of discrimination.

Honestly, who would want to leave one's own children to take care of somebody else's if it were not for the direst need of money? Master - Servant. This is the first of Third World reality.

Sometimes happy endings occur: Romance, love, weddings, permanent visas, assimilation, new family,nice home.

Happy eh?

More often, they come home, insane.
Beaten, broke and insane.

They also make it back in crates of nailed wooden boxes labeled, "dead." Smashed faces, broken bones, swollen bruised, badgered, raped, tortured, scalded alive - the works! Mostly, from the Middle East.

Today's typical Filipina is thought of as little brown sex starved submissive dudettes who will gyrate, contort, back flip, handstand, oh, do just about anything for a dollar, yen, real, euro, or pound.

Yes, there are Filipina prostitutes, that is a dirty fact. Tons. I will not judge. By choice or not, they each have their own story.

BUUUT, they do NOT....absolutey NOT represent the reality of the whole! Heck, no.

They do not represent the millions of hardworking mothers and sisters and aunts who lovingly take care of other people's homes and children in foreign countries. It bore straight to the heart seeing how that disgusting British show portrayed it so:

"You, (pointing to the Filipina), hump him ( referring to impotent clown)."

Which is why, if I only have the power, if I could only bring magic in one wink, I'd like to see the women of my country fashioned in the dignity and hope of this bygone era, once over again:



Vintage footage of Manila