A study on the views on aging of Filipina migrants to New Zealand found that some older women have more relaxed beauty standards and still consider themselves successful in their lives.
The research 鈥淓rasing/Embracing the marks of aging: Alternative discourses around beauty among Filipina migrants鈥 by Michelle G. Ong and Virginia Braun revealed that there are counter-discourses on aging that allow women space for nonconformity with what society dictates in maintaining a 鈥減articular ideal of beauty.鈥
Popular views hold aging as 鈥渁 loss of beauty or attractiveness.鈥澛 Ong and Braun鈥檚 research noted that 鈥渂eauty is an important vehicle for women鈥檚 power in an ageist and sexist society.鈥
Weight gain.聽 While there were research participants whose responses reinforced ageist views of the body 鈥渋n its celebration of the youth,鈥 there were those 鈥渨hose success in migration is constructed to be evident on the body鈥 even if their bodies have changed and are no longer youthful-looking or the typical youthful and slender.鈥
鈥淪everal participants stated that they gained some weight over the years of living in New Zealand, or the others (friends from the Philippines) had said so,鈥 the authors said.
Participants belonging to this category remark about how food in New Zealand was 鈥渂etter,鈥 鈥渇resh,鈥 鈥減ure,鈥 鈥渕ore healthy鈥 and more affordable and accessible to all.
According to the authors, the research has shown that 鈥渁ging migrant Filipinas鈥 embodiment of success is circumscribed by gendered expectations and consumerist ideas around body presentation,鈥 and the participants鈥 physical appearance is relevant to the conditions of their lives in New Zealand.
In the participants鈥 accounts, fatness, like youthfulness, is a natural result of living in New Zealand, 鈥淭hus, fatness is not (just) a product of individual lack of control or concern for the body, which is a more typically modern, western and gendered meaning.鈥
However, there were others who viewed their lives as one of hardship and loneliness and see themselves as older than their actual age.
Fixing your face.聽 鈥淭he expectation that success in migration may be demonstrated on the body regulated women鈥檚 desires and practices surrounding their bodies,鈥 the study showed.
Other research participants said that it takes work and money to look youthful.聽 This belies the claims of a naturally improved or 鈥渨ell-maintained body.鈥澛 These participants said cosmetics and health supplements are the elements of the 鈥渨ork and effort women expend to fix their faces.鈥
Still, there were a number of participants who have accepted their 鈥渘atural look鈥 in old age: wrinkles, grey hair and changes in body shape and size.聽 The meanings attached to aging reflect Filipino constructions of the older person, 鈥渨hich highlights the body鈥檚 significance in bearing the marks of a lifetime鈥檚 worth of experiences, memories and lessons gained.鈥
Ong and Braun said this conception of the older person鈥檚 body, 鈥減articularly the aging woman鈥檚 body, is in opposition to that peddled and created by new anti-aging technologies such as Botox, which idealizes an unmarked, uncluttered face鈥 and is consistent of a natural beauty 鈥渇ree from human intervention.鈥
Double standard in aging.聽 The study stated there exists a double standard in aging where women are more harshly judged than men based on their looks, and makes the bodily changes in aging a more negative experience for women.聽 According to the research, 鈥淎s a result, older women report enduring pain, as they expend considerable time, money and energy in order to be beautiful.聽 Some scholars warn that the pressure to remain youthful and attractive may be contributing to the development of eating disorders and the increase in popularity of cosmetic surgery among older women.鈥
Arguments against conformity.聽 Still, there were others who justified their minimal interest in elaborate beauty routines 鈥渂y invoking personal (dis)comfort, pleasure and sustainability.鈥
The authors note these participants use their bodies鈥 individuality, preferences and particularities to resist the 鈥渙ne-size-fits-all鈥 treatments. 鈥淏y dismissing some beauty practices as not part of one鈥檚 habit, routine, or even personality, these participants suggest that such practices are incompatible with their life and sense of self.鈥
For them, the availability of alternative views on aging women鈥檚 bodies as against one which values youth and beauty above all, offers 鈥渁n important position from which women can resist the pressure to maintain their youth and beauty.鈥
鈥淎lternative meanings regarding the body 鈥 allow some women to reject pressures to submit to a particular ideal of beauty鈥 These alternative meanings offer diverse avenues for arguing against investing heavily in beauty work, allowing individual women to reject conventional views regarding beauty and the responsibility for the maintenance of beauty.聽 And while they are not able to directly confront the question of why women鈥檚 looks take such prime importance, they are potentially the beginnings of a counter-culture where women, and perhaps also men, can be 鈥榗omfortable with and in our changing faces and bodies,鈥欌欌 Ong and Braun wrote.
The study aims to contribute to the 鈥済rowing interest between aging and migration,鈥 and to 鈥渁dd to existing set of views on beauty that are significant to aging Filipinas.鈥
Ong is Assistant Professor at the聽 Department of Psychology of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy in UP Diliman with expertise in Qualitative Research. Braun is Professor of Psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand with expertise in Qualitative Social Research, Health Psychology and Social Psychology.
Ong and Braun used data from research on older Filipina migrants in New Zealand and the 鈥渦tility of a poststructuralist approach to language in a study on aging that is built on feminist psychology and Sikolohiyang Pilipino (SP) as its methodological framework,鈥 and 鈥減akikipagkwentuhan鈥 as the method of data-gathering.聽 A total of 53 sessions were conducted.
The authors said the use of SP and feminist psychology is necessary 鈥渋n order to address gender and cultural issues that underlie the topic.聽 鈥淚t addresses a weakness in SP 鈥 a typical lack of critiquing patriarchy in Philippine society.聽 It also responds to the critiques leveled against mainstream feminism (at least in the western, industrialized countries), which claim that it has not adequately addressed matters of ethnicity, culture and colonialism.鈥
Feminist psychology is employed because it has 鈥減roductively used poststructuralist-informed approaches to examine and unpack women鈥檚 lives.聽 A poststructuralist orientation, with its strength in providing a critique of existing social structures and inequalities and investigating how power relations are negotiated and perpetuated at the level of the individual, has long been known to feminists.鈥
Meanwhile, pakiki-pagkwentuhan is an indigenous Filipino method for data-gathering through verbal interaction with participants and is akin to a face-to-face semi-structured interview and other narrative methods 鈥渢hat are well-utilized in qualitative studies on subjective accounts and meaning rather than verifiable facts.聽 It involves individuals in conversation with each other, with participants free and able to tell the stories they want.鈥澛 This method was developed by Filipino psychologists to provide a method that is participatory, sensitive to Filipino culture, and conscious of reducing the power difference between researcher and participant.鈥
鈥淪ocial Science Diliman鈥 editor and History professor Dr. Ma. Mercedes G. Planta said the authors were able to show in their research that these women, while subscribing to the social pressures in the pursuit of beauty, 鈥渉ave done so on their own terms.聽 As such, they are portrayed to be self-sufficient, to have strong ideas of what their lives should be, and to be true to the values they hold dear, regardless if these do not necessarily conform to the expectations and dictates of their society.鈥
Photo courtesy of Ong and from https://www.bps.org.uk/
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