Obsession with beauty queens

Many Filipinos like Kristoffer Poblacion (“Hurrah for Rachel Peters,” Letters, 12/11/17) seem to think that beauty queens are what our benighted country needs to help us surmount our myriad problems. I’ve never read such a sappy saccharine letter like his.

It’s like Imelda Marcos all over again who believed that wallowing in glamour amid all our poverty like she did helped “put the Philippines on the map.” Such a shallow attitude in a feudal country where too many people go hungry is stupid and scandalous.

A British writer once described our impoverished country as good at producing pageantry, pugilists and prostitutes, but can claim no scientists, inventors, writers and intellectuals of note. How true.

Instead we revel in insipid pretty girls, many of who are not fully Pinoy. Half-cast mestizo types like Pia Wurtzbach and Rachel Peters, etc. are idealized Western types who do not represent real Filipino women.

Sadly the true Pinays end up as OFWs, thanks to our government’s corruption which cannot keep families together.

TESS E. MANZANO,
[email protected]