Thoughts on the Philippines’ pageant craze

Our longing for authority and identity reinforces our obsession with beauty queens and strong leaders.

Kween.

The Philippines is a group of islands that has never had a unifying royalty, may it be a king or a queen, throughout its very long history.

As such, we crave for such an entity that will stand both as our unifier and stabilizer, just as how the Thai and Japanese royalties act as unifying and stabilizing forces in their countries.

Perhaps, such longing reinforces our obsession with beauty queens and strong leaders.

We need someone to save us from ourselves.

We need a hierarchy to manage the complexities of our existence.

And we see these people as an extension of our identity as Filipinos — their failures are ours, their successes are ours. Their triumphs are not just national triumphs, they are extremely personal.