For When Nothing Fits

By Bea Mendoza

I’m falling pretty hard for an All-American White boy, and I’m afraid that he’ll never understand me.

Growing up as a Filipina in South Africa, the post-Apartheid world forced me to confront race. At the most basic degree, I knew that it was this thing that was assigned somehow, and that it made things unfair. I had some grasp on how I was different from my peers, who didn’t know all that much about the Philippines, and I tried my best to embrace my culture, and to educate them on it. In the two schools I attended during my years in South Africa, I personally knew five other Asian students. (The only other Filipino was my brother.) This is why when my mom bought me a traditional baro’t saya, I was pleased to wear it at any opportunity. Baro’t saya translates into “blouse and skirt.” The blouse is thin, near transparent, and made of woven pineapple fibers (pinya). Can you imagine how something so tough can become something so flowy, so… breathable, wearable? My top had flowers embroidered onto it, to which my mom sewed beads for some sheen. 

On special cultural days at school, you could bet that I was proudly wearing my wrap-around plaid skirt and pretty pink top, telling everyone I could that I was Filipina.

I participated in these cultural days until I physically couldn’t fit my baro at saya anymore, and instead accepted wearing a T-shirt that said “The Philippines” and then when I ran out of those, I just wore the colours, and in my red, white, and blue, and the ever ignored yellow, alongside my passing American accent, people would assume I was just another American kid and ask me about Texas (where I am also not from). Soon, being a flat-out denim-clad, bandana-wearing American overrode being Filipina, and I didn’t even notice.

I couldn’t tell that a large part of my cultural identity was slowly but surely dissipating. Once I stopped fitting my baro’t saya, I lost one of my last feeble connections to the Philippines. My parents didn’t teach me tagalog, we rarely ate Filipino food, and there was a long period of time when we didn’t visit our home country, and even when we did I felt like such an alien. Eventually stopped claiming my heritage besides mentioning that my parents were from the Philippines, and I was also born there. 

It wasn’t until I entered university and made more Filipino friends that I realized what I’d been missing. I loved having friends from the same culture who understood the politics of a Filipino family party, who had “mano po”/”bless-po” ingrained into their etiquette, and who had a go-to Jollibee order. I also didn’t realize how far removed I’d become from actually being Filipina. Somewhere along the way, I’d allowed myself to just be “Asian,” to get generalized alongside an entire continent, just for ease of other people’s understanding. At some point, I stopped claiming my pinoy pride, and I’ll never get those years of vague Asian-ness back. I may forever feel so disconnected, but I’m making strides as best as I can to not only embrace my culture like I used to, but to understand it like I never did before. 

Now, what does all of this mean for this American White boy? It means that I’m nervous. It means that I didn’t really see why I should be worried about an interracial or intercultural relationship until a friend of mine, who is also Filipina, said she’d never date a White man. I do not have to explain how in the United States, your skin colour is social capital. (I don’t want to, nor should I have to, convince anyone of the existence of White privilege.) It is unlikely that this White boy has ever felt as much pain in the dissonance between his birth certificate and his home address. His All-American jeans and T-shirt are so commonplace that they need no explanation. It’s unlikely that he’s ever really had to accept his background. Not even that, but to defend it. To fight for it. To be so distinctly othered. To not know anyone else who even looked a little like him.

But now I’m just being presumptuous about this boy, and this is bigger than him, anyway. This is about how I perceive interracial relationships to have a third party: racial differences, and the cultural differences atop that. In an increasingly globalized world, and in a country that is finally normalizing talking about race and the politics around it, I am grateful but ultimately uncertain about how bridging different racial and cultural identities will sustain a long-term partnership. There will be concessions made by both parties, which ultimately will not be determined by anyone but those in the relationship, for it has to be what’s best for that couple. This requires open communication, and a great willingness to understand one another, to avoid either person feeling a loss of themselves. After so much growth in understanding myself and my relationship to my birth country, am I ready to potentially lose that, again? 

And of course, this isn’t about the boy, not really. He would listen if I brought up my concerns, it’d be a completely different story if he were someone who wouldn’t even acknowledge our differences, because that’s flawed on all fronts. What this is about, is my insecure identity. I will never feel Filipina enough. I want so badly to pair my baro with Levi’s. If I fall in love with someone who is not a person of colour, in this country, there will be fundamental differences for us to broach. I know many successful interracial/intercultural relationships even within my family, where both people’s backgrounds are celebrated and become beautifully entwined. In these relationships, it’s not about the loss of the self, but the expansion (of worldview, of mindset, of self) through the other person, and through the union itself. That’s what I want. I know that it’s possible. How can I become comfortable enough in myself to have more meaningful, lasting relationships that foster the best of myself, and my partner? I don’t have answers. 

One day, I’ll get myself another baro’t saya. Or maybe I’ll upgrade to a mestiza dress, and I’ll feel as Filipina as I did when I was young. I want to believe that day is not so far away, but it is.