To Feel Ugly, Or Not
Hey fam, I am back! Happy Wednesday! Just like my Instagram and Tiktok, I want to blog and be 100% authentically and unapologetically myself. My body has been through so many ups and downs but lately, people seem to feel that they would love to tell me how:
“Oh you gained so much weight, what happened”
“You were prettier when you were skinnier”
“How are you still pretty even though you are chubby”
I’ve been told a lot this year about my body and how much it has changed. I don’t think people realize weight is a sensitive topic. Wether it is about gaining or loosing weight, it’s NOT ANYONE’S BUSINESS! Let’s be real, you don’t know his/her story and if he/she tells you their story… they tell you in confidence that you as the lister will be there for them and not be judgemental. So why am I sharing my story? I want others who have been through this to know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE,
When I was singing in the Philippines from 2009-2014, this is how I looked like. I remember when I posted this on Facebook, all my friends back home in LA thought I was on drugs. While people here told me how pretty I am. Companies and management kept telling me I need to loose more and I was so “green” wanting to be on TV so bad I kept dieting and taking dieting pills because I felt that if I was more slender to where it would please them, all my dreams would come true…
How did I become this slender? Well.. in the Philippines, the beauty standards are different. I don’t hate my culture or the Filipino entertainment industry for what I went through because their beauty standards are different but it affected me tremondelsy mentally and it made me question: I’m not getting these projects because I am not slender or my skin is not light?
In Filipino soap operas, in movies, in billboards, in advertisements, on product packaging, all of the artistas look like this.
In order to be beautiful you need to be white... or at least that's what Filipinos have been told their whole lives.
Above are popular Filipina celebrities in the Philippines. I wanted to fit in so badly that I did everything I could to look like them. Wether it was being super slender like them, but it was never enough. I even remember times I was offered and told to use glutathione to whiten my skin and each person I turned down. In my head I asked myself , what is wrong with my skin color? Geez the original people of the Philippines are the Negritos and they had skin like mine or darker. There is nothing wrong with darker skin, SO PHILIPPINES, PLEASE BE BETTER and stop trying to make people who look different body wise or skin wise feel ugly.
2021, THIS IS ME
Yes when I sit down, I have pudgy belly
When I walk or dance in my room my thighs jiggle
Wearing pants/leggings you can see my muffin top
In clothes, my size varies from L-XL
You don’t know how it feels when people who know you and don’t know you tell you you’re better slender than now. No matter how may followers I may have or what career I had in the past, no person has the right to tell someone how they look.
WHOEVER READS THIS YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND LET’S F***IN BAN THE WORD UGLY.
The one thing I want you to take away reading this is if you’re happy live life the way you want to because you’r only given one.
I want to end this blog with one of my favorite quotes:
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” - Eleanor Roosevelt