1 post tagged “materialism”
"Think of all the women you know who will not allow themselves to be seen without makeup. I often wonder how they feel about themselves at night when they are climbing into bed with intimate partners. Are they overwhelmed with secret shame that someone sees them as they really are? Or do they sleep with rage that who they really are can be celebrated or cared for only in secret?"
-"Communion", bell hooks
Its scary how I can unconsciously put on makeup as I walk around getting ready, and how I always make one final check in the mirror to ensure my hair's not out of place, my eye makup isnt panda-ish, my lips are lined and my face is matte (or as matte as it can be, proactiv works people!).
When I look back at the time I was growing up with a beauty regime that consisted of Eskinol facial cleanser and lip glosses, with frizzy ponytailed hair, it makes me feel quizzical to be now addicted to straight hair and rebonding/flat irons, having current lipstick fave's such as Eva Longoria's 704 color by L'oreal and loving Clinique's dramatically different moisturizing gel and so on and so forth.
While I enjoy the luxury of some items, being brought up totally brand unconscious, sometimes that kid in me cringes when I look at my Gucci wallets or other branded things, and while Im getting used to it, and occasionally like the indulgence, a little part of me always feels...pretentious.
Part of me is torn with balancing my younger self's immaterialism (is that even a word that has the effect of what Im trying to say?) and yearn to be unmaterialistic. And yet, I like those pretty things. I feel media brainwashed at times and frustrated with myself and at other times, I question why it bothers me so much in the first place.
It could be because the cost of some of the things I buy, in total, could feed a small family in the Philippines for a week. Or that the bag I carry things in could be sold to pay for a child's tuition in other countries. That the skin care I purchase...
It comes from coming from a background that has seen relatives scrimping and saving just to be able to afford tuition for their kids, for their spending money, from a background of going with my mother to send money back to the Philippines to pay for a bill an in-law couldnt pay and asked her for help, for a sister's child's expenses, for a relative's spending money, for a niece's birthday, for her mother-in-law's operation...I've seen her calulate her BND or MYR or US dollars to PHP more times than I can count, and it always made my younger self blink as she tried to stretch her money to its every possibility and she would search for the best money exchange too to do so.
And then we'd go home and spend equal amounts on meaningless things like groceries and shoes I liked or a toy for my younger brother. Even then, it made me wonder how so many people back in the Philippines depended so desperately for an amount of money that my family would spend in a few days. Even then, it made me aware that while we sent money home, I had a very comfortable lifestyle, but my mother would never compromise that, and if I asked, she gave.
So subconsciously, I knew that if I asked for less things and bought cheaper brands, somehow I was helping too, because my mother would have more money to send home to her relatives when that time of the month came. When calls came for help with money, maybe if I didnt buy anything so expensive, she would have more to give.
Years have passed, and when I started earning my own money, thats when I allowed myself the luxury of purchasing the things I had always wanted to buy. Yet I didnt think about my mother's relatives, who, on my grandmother's deathbed, had my grandmother clinging to life tho being in desperate pain because she was worried upon her death, her other children, my mother's siblings, would be forsaken because she wasnt around to be a reminder of her more well off kids to send money home.
Its a Filipino culture. The entire Philippine economy is helped by the money sent home by the overseas contract workers, and my family was no exception.
I know its my turn now, because my mother is older now.My dad is retired now. I have a degree now, and Im expected to use it. Those relatives back home are still dependant on my mother. Even now. And its strange how I had always thought of them as my mother's relatives.
It took Good Friday,2007, for me to fully comprehend that they were my relatives too.
Happy Easter, all.
