From the roots: Beauty advice with a precolonial Filipina
Before colonial powers set foot on the soil of what would be known as the Philippines, a type of beauty had already taken root at the very heart of the archipelago’s land and sea. Spanning Batanes to as far as Tawi-Tawi, the vibrancy of culture, art, and trade has been flourishing for decades, even before the West’s consciousness of its enchantment.
From being matriarchs of the gold-filled mountains to the oceans of pearl, the ancestral women of the Philippines guide the future generations back to our roots—back to what makes our ethnic selves beautiful. It is for this that the familiar practices of skincare, makeup, jewelry, and teeth filing are best narrated by the women of the ancient grounds of this age-old civilization.
The strands of time: History and hairdressing
Like inked waves of an evening seashore, the naturally dark strands of a Filipina’s hair held utmost importance, symbolizing a connection to the divine, to social status, and to femininity.
The process first starts by dipping it into the cool springs of the high mountains or even the riverside. The bark of the gugo vine, native to the Philippines, is often soaked and rubbed to create an effective clarifying shampoo to promote circulation and longer, thicker hair.
Then, a concoction of coconut oil, sesame oil, and floral resins like ambergris and bulat were used as they combed through their strands. Woven into their hair were flowers such as the tagonbaisat, fragrantly sweet and rooted in Visayan culture. This vision of grace and beauty—bequeathed by the elegant practices of our ancestors—only heightened the ethereal air surrounding the Filipina of the past.
The terms panta or talabhok in Visayan or banglò (generally translated to “added length”) in Bicolano were spread all across the Southeast Asian territory. Known today as hair extensions, native Tagalog women would identify this as bohocbohocan, or bungkalo to the Kapampangans. Regardless, the lengthening of hair meant more than a status of allure; it was an articulation of power, effort, and social connection.
Just like how the waves of the ocean and the stars in the evening sky become a compass in narrating the world, the precolonial Filipina narrates the story of the times through the length of her hair.
In her youth, vanity and beauty become a priority—washing and lengthening the short spurs of life still unlived. However, once mourning, punishment, or even rebellion breaks her innocently naive spirit (as any adulthood seems to always do), she is required to start anew, cutting the hard-earned waist-length hair as a symbol of the separation of what life was and what it is meant to be.
The original glam: Makeup techniques and tattoo storytelling
Within the ancient world of cosmetology in the Philippine Islands, men and women alike showed great appreciation for hair removal not only to keep themselves groomed but to mirror the patterns of nature. For example, native Filipina women from all regions usually wore crescent-shaped brows—an earthly echo of the moon, honoring the goddesses of growth, intuition, and guidance.
Practiced mostly by the Tagalogs, it was noted that most of our modern understanding of makeup and cosmetology resembled previous practices of eyebrow painting and skin lotioning. In the north, eyebrow paint called tana was first intricately traced on already groomed brows. Then, pupol—also known as facial powder, created from crushed pearls or dried rice—would be applied for the purpose of acquiring a more “flawless” and matte complexion.
This, along with a Barak root lotion, became the preferred makeup style for the Tagalog women.
In the Visayas, the approach to cosmetics was entirely different. Instead of the reapplication of crushed pearl powder and darkened brows, the women of these islands found beauty in ink—displaying a preference for artistic tattoos that embellished the skin from head to toe.
Seen in the illustrations found in the Boxer Codex, the Visayans’ nickname of pintados (“the painted”) was true to their own standard of beauty—one which the women of Visayas happily integrated into their routines of status and storytelling.
Gilded with gold: Dentistry, dressmaking, and jewelry design
Like most of their Southeast Asian counterparts, teeth became not only a symbol of pride and beauty, but also a measure of one’s social status.
In the Philippine ancestral realm, pearly white teeth were an abomination, with Scott mentioning, “only wild animals had white teeth.” The Visayans, in hopes of finding a way around the “boarish” look, adopted tooth staining and filing techniques. Sangka, or tooth filing and leveling, was done by a “tooth filing expert”—equipped with a thin but sturdy stone file.
After this procedure, the teeth were colored in various ways. The most widespread form of tooth blackening or coloring was to chew an anipay root, or even apply a tar-based coating called tapul to achieve an almost ebony-colored stain on teeth.
Others would prefer a more reddish effect, which was done through red lakha ant eggs combined with kaso flower coloring. Almost as if it were a requirement, these teeth coloring processes became a representation of wealth and status, ousting white teeth for their low-class and dirty perception in precolonial Philippines.
That said, gold was placed on everything and anything, from teeth to dresses to jewelry to bones. It remained a symbol of prestige—even if everyone and their mothers had some semblance of it in their familial line.
In precolonial Philippine history, gold on teeth was the truest form of ornamentation recorded. Known as pusad, goldwork in teeth was discovered in the tooth crowns, inlays, and plating, and was always done by a mananusad, an expert in dentistry. As for clothing, gold remained in the thread, hooks, and sashes of the ruling classes. According to the gold exhibition denoted by Capistrano-Baker et al. (2011), the reflective crevices of each golden ornament and piece of clothing were illustrative of how the native Filipinas captured the sun and enmeshed it in their person.
With each detailed workmanship in the creation of the ganising—also known as the frontal cords and buttons—to the threads combining traded silk from the neighborhood Chinese lands, gold was just as treasured for what it represents more than any simple aesthetic value.
Gold was protection against evil as it represented the sun’s rays of the heavens. Gold was a symbol for wealth and status, not for the simple sake of having it, but for the workmanship that adorned and weaved each golden thread into silk and linen. Gold was a gift of beauty from the heavens and from abundant soil, one that takes skillful hands to possess its fullest value, not just the mere control of it.
The natives of the Philippines did not hold back with their love of jewelry as a sign of beauty and elegance. Earrings, earplugs, chains, rings, as well as brooches, clasps, sequins, and face or nose masks were regularly made from pearl and gold. It did not matter if there was an ongoing war or a household task—to be embedded from head to toe in jewelry was a particular standard of beauty that remained attached to Philippine culture and heritage through the years of ancestral history.
Leave the future behind and embrace the past
The pursuit of reviving old traditions has always been a difficult one. In our world of Eurocentric beauty standards and consumerism, finding beauty in what is true to the faces of Filipinas across the country has, without a doubt, been a struggle.
It all boils down to one question: Why must we revive the Filipino definition of beauty?
It is clear that our ancestors, untouched by the very colonial powers creating our current modern struggle between Eurocentrism and cultural authenticity, had been enmeshing beauty in the Filipina identity. From every practice ranging from hair fragrancing to teeth goldplating, bleak and surface-level aesthetics were never the main goal.
Instead, beauty was coupled with identity. Tooth filing for endurance and strength, skin tattooing that sung of the battles and stories of a woman’s life, and even gold threading into silk to replicate the spirituality of the heavens.
Beauty, spoken through the practices of ancient Filipinas, was never meant to be a purely visual pursuit, but one that brought forth the allure that radiated from within. It is for these reasons that we must revive the practices of our ancestors—not to compartmentalize who we are as women based on what lies on the surface, just as modernity dictates, but to represent all parts of identity that lie within the soul.
