More than 20 years ago, I hosted at my home in Malate a visiting Filipino-American scholar who was buying up different brands of skin whiteners. They were actually filling up her luggage. I never thought she was the type who would use them; she was actually already fair-skinned to begin with. When I finally verbalized my curiosity, she said she was going to use them in a class she was teaching in California to talk about “colorism.” 

This is different of course from racism, which is discrimination or prejudice against an entire race or ethnic group; colorism is discrimination within the same racial or ethnic group based on skin tone, as in shaming Filipinos with darker skin while associating beauty with fair skin.

We in the Philippines, of course, know all about this; it’s so ingrained in our culture that we rarely think it’s an issue. A fair complexion is not simply something you’re born with, but an attainable goal, hence the large market for skin whiteners and the admonition from elders to stay out of the sun or to use an umbrella if we must be exposed. “Colorism” is not even a familiar term.

But in the US university where my scholar-friend taught, skin whiteners were problematized in the context of Philippine colonial history – a symptom of the much-lamented “colonial mentality” where everything native is deemed inferior while anything Western is preferred, including white skin.

I grew up with typical Pinoy notions of skin color. As a local boy with normal hormones, I joined in the teen chatter about particular “tisays” in our sister schools. Never mind the irony that most of us in my circle of chatterers were indisputable indios. I myself would get so dark from outdoor athletics that I can still hear my titas say, “Ang itim-itim mo!”

But that was the point of the colonial mentality – we were made to desire what we were clearly not. And if we couldn’t have fair skin, the next best thing was to look keenly at it and imagine having tisay and tisoy progeny. In the 1970s when I was a teen-ager, nearly everyone on TV and in the movies was fair-skinned; even our leading basketball heroes were tisoys with names like Arnaiz and Jaworski. The biggest male movie star then was a guy named Poe who had American ancestry. Some of my bruhs were swooning over the kutis-porselana Revilla sisters.

Then there was Nora Aunor, the short, unapologetic un-tisay who was the biggest movie star of the time and of the previous decade as well. Since she died last April 16, 2025, we’ve been refreshed about the basic facts of her biography: her origins as a poor girl in Bicol, a peanut and water vendor at bus and train stations who had a golden voice and won a national singing contest that became her big break. She later proved to be a talented actress.

She did have extraordinary talent. But that’s not what made her socially significant. She was a star no doubt, but so were others, and we don’t want to get into any arguments with Vilmanians about who was bigger.

Simply put, Nora Aunor broke the color barrier in show business. All this time, one had to be light-skinned, and usually statuesque with Eurasian features, to become a leading lady.

Nora was the opposite, a dusky charmer with Malay features who got her start not through the established route of pageants or modeling, but through the highly competitive realm of singing contests. She overcame early defeat through persistence and self-improvement. She showed that merit and diligence mattered in this world, and could propel you to the top even if you didn’t fit the showbiz stereotype.

As an actress, she resembled in complexion and height tens of millions of Filipinos who could readily relate to her characters. As an Ifugao maiden in the movie “Banaue” when I was in high school, she looked authentic and convincingly introduced this exotic mountain world to lowland audiences. My friends and I were not big Noranian fans, but we noted as gradually awakening young adults the political messaging in some of her movies in the 1970s after she emerged from her love-team roles with “Pip”, aka Tirso Cruz III.

One of her greatest films was “Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo,” the 1976 classic that was critical of the US military presence in the Philippines, a daring stance during the height of martial law. Beyond being popular, Nora found ways to be relevant.

She actually just needed to be herself, projecting a comfort in her own skin that made legions of young Filipinos, including myself, more relaxed about how we looked.

After all that, skin whiteners still occupy numerous store shelves, and are still used by Filipinos obsessed with looking like their mestizo idols.

But there could be just as many young Pinoys today who are proud of their natural skin tone, and will gently but firmly correct a tita who just called them something politically incorrect, “Kayumanggi ang tawag diyan, Tita, kayumanggi.” Colorism still exists, but the culture is changing.

That could be part of Nora Aunor’s legacy as much as anything else.