Why are Filipinas beautiful but Filipinos ugly?

Dear Filipino,

I've been wondering: Why are Filipinas beautiful but Filipinos ugly?

Smitten

Dear Smitten:

Thank you for at least praising 50% of us.  You could have done worse.

I don’t know what your standard of beauty is, but Filipinos (which term is used to refer to both Filipinos and Filipinas) are like mutts because we are the result of much inter-breeding over the course of centuries, unlike, say, the Japanese or Koreans, who are more homogeneous.  Yes, the truth is, the modern-day Filipino people is a product of mass migrations of, and inter-marriages among, all types of people or races which started thousands of years ago and which have not let up even today.

Hence, on one end of the facial, cranial and skin color spectrum, you will meet Filipinos who look like Africans, because they’re descended from the Negritos who settled the islands some 30,000 years ago and who share much physical commonalities with African pygmies and the Australo-Melanesians; real Africans from Africa; or even African-American GIs who fell in love with the local women or may have unintentionally impregnated their entertainers when the US bases were still operational in the Philippines (so I guess partly you can “blame it on the Marines”).

On the other end of the spectrum are the light-skinned European-looking Filipinos, who, because of present-day Western-skewed standards, are commonly viewed, deservedly or otherwise, as the “more beautiful” of the lot.  These Filipinos descended mainly from the Spaniards, who colonized the islands for over 300 years, and their progenies and extended clans in South America, because of what used to be a very active Manila-Acapulco galleon trade; hence, you can bump into Filipino mestizos and mullatoes of French, Portuguese and Mayan descent.  As also implied in the previous paragraph, American GIs, this time of the white variety, and white American missionaries (no pun intended) are also partly to blame because the Philippines was once an American Commonwealth.

In between are the rest of the Filipinos: the “Asian-looking” ones.  But even the term “Asian-looking” is too broad because you can have the South Asian look (dark) and the North Asian look (light or “yellowish”), owing to many entrepreneurial Indians and Chinese who have traded with the locals over the centuries and have decided to call the islands home, as well as the Japanese who also colonized the Philippines and the Koreans who recently have been finding our beaches and golf courses irresistible.  Then, of course, you have the Indo-Malay-Polynesian look (brown), which is what the majority of Filipinos now sport because people of this stock were the ones who colonized the majority of the Southeast Asian archipelagic countries of Malaysia, Indonesia and, of course, the Philippines, during the region’s maritime era. 

So you see, when you mix all sorts of colors from the blackest to the whitest, you’ll end up with all shades of brown, including the much sought-after "healthy tan" look.  That’s why the Filipinos have a story, understandably popular among us browns, that when God was “baking” humans, his first batch was overcooked and from this batch came the dark-skinned races.  So he tried to bake another batch, but not wanting to overdo it again, he pulled his second batch prematurely, thus resulting in the light-skinned races.  Not happy with his results so far and not wanting to strike out, he tried again, this time guarding his oven more closely.  Of course, more experienced this time, God had his Goldilocks moment because his third batch was “just right” – and from this batch descended the brown Filipinos.  Not a bad legend to feel good and beautiful about one's self, isn't it?

Smitten, I’m sure the above doesn’t really fully answer your question, and I doubt you will really find an answer satisfactory to you.  But I think if you’re smitten by beautiful Filipinas while at the same time finding their male counterparts ugly, you are probably just understandably jealous of the latter, who roam around these beauties more freely than you do.  And because of that, man, I feel sorry for you! 

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