Beauty and the Colonial Beast
by Sarah Reid
My toddler asked me to draw pictures of our family. Easy enough, I thought, compared to her more unusual requests. I noticed that I drew myself with European features. I am mixed race with a Filipino mother and an Anglo-Scot father but in the drawing my almond eyes are wider, the bulbous tip of my nose is pointy, the sides narrowed and shape lengthened.
As an art psychotherapist I know that drawings can be projections of our desires. The drawing for my toddler occurred at the culmination of a period of time where I’ve been examining my relationship with both ‘halves’ of my heritage. Looking European or passing as white has been something I’ve unconsciously desired most of my life. This article attempts to understand why, and the impact it has had.
Growing up in Hong Kong, it was common to see Filipina titas (aunties) spending Saturday mornings whitening their skin to look magunda (beautiful). They thought their natural features were pangit (ugly).
At family gatherings while I handed out crispy lumpia spring rolls, I noticed that Titas in Chanel suits often came with upgraded noses: sliced, lifted and straightened, a particular trait amongst Filipina family friends who had married white husbands, perhaps to cleave their own ancestors from their bones.
To look ‘mestiza’ (a Filipina with Spanish ancestry and features) was the ideal – after of course, being white. The Philippines was colonised by Spain (1565-1895), followed by the United States of America (1898-1946). Academics note the impact of colonisation and Catholicism in perpetuating racial hierarchies in the Philippines, leading to a form of Filipino self-hatred that has continued into the post-colonial era. Western features such as light skin, narrow noses and being tall are highly valued due to the historic privileges that still advantage their descendants today.
What I learnt from a young age was that looking European did not just make you more attractive - in the eyes of the colonised, it made you superior: intelligent, wealthy, powerful and visible. Looking Filipino was associated with being poor, low status and inferior. Reading about what ethnic studies scholars refer to as ‘colonial mentality’ helped me to better understand this. Colonial mentality refers to a form of internalised oppression among Filipinos in America as a result of colonisation. Some of the symptoms include low self-esteem, holding European races above one’s own and accepting or minimising experiences of racism.
When I moved to England aged 10, after the Handover in 1997, I became more self-conscious of my features. Many strangers would tell me I looked ‘exotic.’ My skin tans a nut-brown in the sun but looks sallow in the winter. My hair is jet-black and thick like a rope. It was obvious that my Asiatic features coupled with my height from my father’s Viking lineage confused many onlookers.
I thought exotic was another word for beautiful. I even told my English teacher that, when she asked for synonyms of beautiful. She drily replied, ‘tropical insects are exotic but that doesn’t mean they are beautiful’.
I went to look it up in the dictionary. Exotic meant foreign. Obviously foreign. Related terms included ‘exotic dancers’, which originated from dances other than European ones being performed in America by colonised people and which were thought to be primitive and wild.
Above pictured: Sarah Reid as a teenager.
Starting at an all-girls boarding school in Berkshire brought into sharp relief what it would mean to be exotic in a predominantly white, upper middle-class British institution.
Of course, it brought out wild tendencies in me as it does for most confined adolescents. Some of us stopped observing basic rules of personal hygiene such as washing regularly, while others forgot to feed themselves regularly in the absence of maids and mothers. I once fainted due to under-nourishment whilst trying to find a partner for a canoeing session and had to convalesce for a month at home.
The experience of being a mixed-race girl in an English boarding school also brought unique challenges. The main one being how to make friends. While there were a few other Asian students in my year, I was aware of the low status ascribed to them by white peers. They were seen as dull, ugly, sexless and robotic. They could perform remarkable solo violin concertos at school concerts but a specific comment from a white girl in the audience stands out in my memory: ‘Asian girls play technically well but without any soul’. That comment stuck with me over the years because while it was delivered casually and no doubt thoughtlessly, it had a much darker subtext; colonialists and missionaries would often justify their barbaric behaviour towards the ‘natives’ by claiming that only white people had souls.
My first best friend was Indian but when an English girl asked if she was really my best friend, I realised she wasn’t seen as cool. I ditched her and sought the friendships of white girls who spent their summers at pony club in Gloucestershire, rather than Jaipur.
At boarding school, girls were considered foreign if they weren’t from the Home Counties. The most popular girls had skin so white it looked blue. Many were actually blue-blooded with lineage that could be traced back centuries. They were the girls who boys would ask to the dance, who would become Head Girl, who everyone wanted to be best friends with.
E.J.R. David’s book ‘Internalized Oppression: The psychology of marginalised groups’ (2014) discusses how victims of oppression internalise the oppressor or identify with the aggressor. It only took me a few weeks of being in a predominantly white upper middle-class environment for me to cut myself off from my Indian friend and seek the company of whites. I did maintain a few friendships with select Asian friends, but only those girls who were able to ‘pass’ as white, i.e. having good banter, being semi-cool and super-rich. Ideally, a Thai Princess. I began to remove any identifiers to Hong Kong: namely my international American accent, and began to adopt a British RP one.
I also began to adapt to my new environment by trying to look fashionable in order to attract the ‘right’ friends. I slowly became popular but the methods I went about doing so were unorthodox. I knew that in order to be accepted by the white girls, I would have to play a deferential role while making them feel comfortable. During my GCSE year, I offered my services to girls in my year as a masseuse. I charged fifty pence for an hour’s massage, and was particularly proficient in lower glute muscle work. A new nickname for me began to emerge – ‘Filipino maid’. I did little to discourage it. My friends used this term on my public Facebook profile page. My cousin in Manila saw one such comment and wrote a furious reply berating my friend. In a textbook display of colonial mentality, I deleted his comment and apologised to the girl.
My suspicions that I was brutally ugly were confirmed whenever I met boys. At dances boys would hover around the girls with the most Nordic features. My friends consoled me by saying I was attractive but in a sophisticated manner that was too subtle for boys of our age.
What helped me to stop hating the way I looked was reflecting on difference whilst studying art psychotherapy and exploring my identity through therapy. Reading about the experiences of the Filipino diaspora also helped me to identify my experiences as a part of a wider collective.
Teenage Filipinos in the US have the highest rates of suicide ideation and attempts in the country, and depression rates are significantly higher than those of the US general population. One major cause stems from feelings of racial inferiority in relation to their white peers.
Becoming a mother has forced me to examine pernicious beliefs around beauty and race. Watching my children grow has been an act of transformation within me, seeing my own features in a new light and learning to love them. Having children made me realise how beauty is intertwined with power. As a mother, I have the power to make my children feel beautiful and to value their looks as well as all aspects of their heritage. The next time my toddler asks me to draw a picture of our family, I hope my efforts will be a more honest representation of who we really are.
Sarah was born in Singapore to a Filipino mother and an Anglo-Scot father. She spent her childhood in Hong Kong, leaving after the Handover in 1997 to attend an all-girls boarding school in Berkshire. Sarah is an art psychotherapist and also works for a charity that supports migrants. She lives in London with her family.
www.sarah-reid.com
Twitter: @SarahReidGB