Carmen Guerrero Nakpil is one of the country’s prominent feminist writers. One of her essays The Filipino Woman: Cory and Leonor, Gabriela and Imelda Nakpil beautifully curated the archetypes of a Filipino woman during her time. I must agree that her usage of Cory Aquino, Leonor Rivera, Gabriela Silang and Imelda Marcos truly depicted the epitomes of a Filipina.
Since then, Filipinas are known not just for beauty, but also in their character: bold, cunning, witty and coquettish. From then on, Filipinas evolved, transcended, through generations. But we cannot deny that, as Nakpil reiterated, the above given personalities reflected the ancestors of Filipinas.
As we can observe, the essay of Nakpil provides a feministic landscape of her time. For Nakpil, Each one of them is a true and complete reflection of the Filipino woman. More than a decade, or even a century, ago there is a significant metamorphosis to the Filipino woman. From Cory, Leonor, Gabriela and Imelda, today’s society produced another archetype for Filipina of today. In the 21st century society, Filipinas thrived to be on the top lists just what the aforementioned did before. Today’s society had the late Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who seems to be the combination of the four aforementioned epitomes of a Filipina.
Sen. Santiago serves to be a wake-up call for all Filipinas to stand for their rights, use their voices and be someone who can significantly contribute to their society. However, the major hindrance for the Filipinas to take a permanent role in the society are the misogynistic mindset enabled by a patriarchal society. Just like in the current Philippines.
The current administration seems to enjoy enabling misogynists through normalizing dirty remarks and insults to the women. For instance, the famous statement that women cannot lead a country is one of the issues faced by Filipinas today. Comparing to the feministic landscape depicted by Nakpil on her essay, the current landscape of the Filipinas are a bit darker. Before, Filipinas can still fight like Cory and Gabriela; Filipinas can still be cunning like Leonor and Imelda. However, today, Filipinas are being subtly oppressed due to machismo.
As the National Women’s Month comes to an end, perhaps we can still call out these female oppressing people to stop. Empowering the Filipinas of today must not only happen during March, the celebration of National Women’s Month, but must occur daily.
We are not living in the time when Nakpil written her essay, so we must upgrade our approaches and ways to empower our Filipinas. Stop looking up to the late Sen. Santiago, instead be better than her. Just like what she told before: Don’t be like me, be better than me.
Perhaps, Nakpil’s essay is not exclusively a depiction of feministic landscape but also a quick tour down to memory lane aiming to reminisce who are the Filipino woman of the past. So that, in the modern times, we can go beyond them. However, as we transform the feministic landscape, we must still adhere to the essence of Filipino woman Nakpil shared. According to her, the Filipino woman have risen to the challenge of poverty and economic need and responded in ways that are clearly beyond the call of any duty.
Thus, we must merge the past and present landscapes to reimagine a Filipino woman. By doing that, a Filipino woman now has unquenchable optimism (Nakpil) and academic, professional and moral excellence (Santiago). Once successfully merged, we can put finality to the happy days of misogynistic worldview to attain a more sustainable and more compassionate society.
Tags: Reimagining a Filipina, Filipina representation, literature, media, culture, diversity, identity, feminism, gender equality, lifethinkler
Author: Christian Loid Valenzuela
