By Candice Montenegro, Contributor
INQUIRER.net
ONE boredom buster I’ve shared with all my friends is Googling. It’s basically just typing in random words or names on Google and looking at the websites that the search returns. It’s actually a fun way to learn new things everyday. When you type the word “falafel,” for example, you can read the origin of the famous Middle Eastern food as well as yummy recipes that teach you how to make some.
Anyway, if you’re up for it, try typing in the word “Filipina.” Here are some of the results you’ll get — Filipina Penpals, Filipina Dating, Filipina Singles, Sexy Filipina, Pinay and Exotic Models. Yes, that’s apparently the stereotypical Filipina that is shown online.
Good thing the top-ranked site now is a blog called The Filipina Images.
The Filipina Images is an advocacy blog and news site that aims to, as its header proudly says, “Reshape the Filipina Image Online.” The Filipina is more than just mail order brides or models — she is a mother, a sister, a professional, a beautiful person inside and out — and the blog aims to show the world exactly who she is.
Created in August 2007 by Lorna Lardizabal-Dietz, Dine Racoma and Noemi Lardizabal-Dado, the site aims to “balance” the Filipina image available online by gathering blog entries, stories and news items that highlight accomplishments of Pinays here and abroad.
The blog contains stories ranging from Pinay talents winning competitions abroad to Pinays who made a difference in other people’s lives. It also provides links to other blogs that contain entries that help promote their advocacy of showing a more diverse and more complex Filipina.
It doesn’t try to cover up the truth that there really are Filipina mail order brides. What it tries to promote is the fact that all Filipinas, no matter what their careers are, have dignity and deserve the right to empower themselves.
The Filipina Images offers three easy ways for ordinary bloggers like you and me to help change the Filipina image online.
First, they encourage bloggers (men and women alike) to post entries and discuss anything about the Filipina. The use of the word in discussing things apart from penpals or online dates will help in slowly changing the sites in the search engine results page (SERP).
Second, they encourage a Google bombing campaign — an attempt to influence the ranking of a given page by linking certain words to a particular site. A Filipino-American production group called Touchblue once suggested a similar campaign to Google bomb the word Filipina and to link it to websites such as the Gabriela Network and Babae San Francisco. However, this Google bombing campaign encourages people to link to just one site — the Filipina Women’s Network (FWN) site — which makes it more effective and more likely to affect the SERP.
Lastly, the site provides a cute little badge that says “Yan ang Pinay,” which bloggers can use to link to the FWN site or to the Filipina Images site.
The blog is a solid effort to consolidate stories that empower the image not only of Filipino women but Filipinos in general. It breaks the stereotypes and shows the world what we have and what we truly are. But more importantly, it reminds fellow Filipinos that there’s so much we have to offer. More than just changing the image of Filipinas online, The Filipina Image changes the way we look at ourselves. It makes us proud of our fellow Filipinas, and there’s no need for Googling to know that at the end of the day, that’s what matters most.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:57 am
totally it should be the case or the concept must be and should be but anyway, persons in this earth has a a unique abilities and somehow some other filipinas has this kind of attitude which we can’t tell or dictate them. I am saying this cause me as far as the stereotypes filipinas is concerned it is also the way that most foriegn countries do put in thier minds. I mean yeah we cant deny the fact that filipinas are very much rare enough or generally speaking THE FILIPINOS are are international standard which wherever you go in this part of the world you can find anywhere but what make this somehow quite discouraging especially to women(mga pinay) they tend to look as a hore especially here in abroad. I am working in Qatar and some of my friends of other nationalites wanted filipinas for a short time cause they have this kind of thinking that filipinas are after of money so bottom line of what i am saying is that very degrading when it comes to money matters but no often to you girls….thats what they think of you not all but most of the many.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
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