These illustrations come from a 16th-century manuscript now known as the Boxer Codex, depicting Filipinos and their apparel. Elaborate gold jewelry was worn by both sexes. Image via abs-cbn.com
By Ramon N. Villegas /abs-cbn.com – Filipino manhood has been displayed through disparate symbols. At one point, it involved major earrings and hair-plucking with tweezers.
Each generation seeks to formulate its own concepts of gender identity and particular ways of expressing them.
Thus, young Filipinos today do not look like their fathers, like they used to generations ago. They now tend to look like their peers. Today, those who are in their 20s to 30s sport Celtic tattoos, Gothic jewelry, body-piercings, short hair or even shaved heads, leather or bead chokers, and collarless T-shirts. They look buff, ready at any time to shuck off their tees, as if they were in “Bora”—never mind if they are in the middle of Makati. To this end, they work at shaping those abs, and achieving that attitude of insouciant sensuality, like playing to a camera, looking straight at it, as if to say “O, ano ngayon?”
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