Sexy Filipinas - Including Sexy Filipina Moms - Stand Up and Be Counted

A zealot attacked my friend, Sexy Mom, via an anonymous comment saying her moniker is a disgrace to all Filipinas. The same person sent practically the same message to the blogs of Sexy Mom's sons. He or she used different pseudonyms, among them, "decent mother." No blog or website was linked to any of the comments, just different email addresses that are so easy to set up and discard.

Here's the comment sent to Sexy Mom:

"You are a disgrace to the Filipino women. We have been trying to change the image of the Filipino women in the internet. Foreigners type “filipina” to search for women to have sex. The same kind of people (pedophiles and perverts) type “sexy mom” and it points to You . You are an embarassment to our country. Stop using SEXY MOM. Filipino mothers are loving caring mothers. Leave the SEX part in your bedroom . Mommy bloggers laugh behind your back because of your pseudonym. Filipino women are too polite to tell you to say that using sexy mom is killing the filipino women."

Sexy Mom's son, BA, replied in a post in his blog, also quoted in his mother's post. He narrated how he and his siblings themselves started the whole naming game by telling her she was "the sexiest mommy of all" whenever she would ask them if she was fat.

This story goes straight to every mother's heart. I'm sure you've heard the same from your kids. I do, almost everyday, and especially when they know my spirits are flagging or I feel blah! It doesn't matter what shape or size you really are. It just shows how much your children love you, and reflects how lovingly they have been raised, too. As I said in my comment to BA's post, how much more wholesome can you get?

The comment backfired. Dine - aka Sexy Mom - did not even have to say anything in self-defense. Blog readers of both BA's blog and her blog tore the comment's accusations to pieces. Of course, since there is nothing there that makes sense.

1. If perverts search "sexy mom" and find Dine's blog, The D Spot, then the blog itself will prove to them that a Sexy Filipina Mom is not necessarily a sordid purveyor of commercial sex. This particular one - Dine Racoma - is an intelligent articulate blogger who has raised seven equally intelligent and articulate children, and now has much to say about parenting, womanhood, blogging, and many other respectable subjects of interest. Therefore, Sexy Mom's having those keywords and hitting top places in those searches actually does the Filipina's image a lot of good!

2. "Filipino mothers are loving caring mothers." So true. But that does not mean they cannot be sexy loving, caring mothers. Those concepts are not mutually exclusive. "Sexy" is not necessarily a dirty word. Why can't a mother be a sensual person, too? Sex is also not a dirty word or a dirty deed. Everything is contextual. How sad for those people who still cling to old paradigms fearing and demonizing everything related to sex and the body.

3. "Mommy bloggers laugh behind your back because of your pseudonym." I'm a Mommy blogger and I laud Sexy Mom for being a woman fulfilled who continues to learn and grow with the world. I applaud her for being a woman confident enough to call herself sexy - as indeed she is, because a woman's intelligence, accomplishments, kindness, sincerity and warmth ARE sexy! Also a woman's being comfortable with all aspects of herself - intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically.

Bloggers ARE, indeed, laughing now. They are laughing at this person hiding behind the pseudonym "decent mother." There was nothing decent in what she had to say.

This incident led another Filipina Blogger Mom, Angelic Mom - or Noemi Dado - of Touched By An Angel, to call fellow bloggers' attention to reshaping the Filipina woman's image online.

She points us to the various efforts toward this goal, among them:

- Marc Macalua’s Filipina and Philippines SEO campaign where he suggests pasting the following links to your blogs:

Philippines
Filipina

so that a search for "Philippines" will show the Department of Tourism website while a search for "Filipina" will show the Gabriela website (Gabriela is a Philippine women's rights organization);

- "the US-based Filipina Women’s Network that seeks to find better ways to elevate the Filipina woman’s image and help them go the next level of leadership in their chosen field of endeavor..."; and

- the Fabulous Filipina Presence which "aims to interlink with as many other Filipina sites and also to use the devices of the Internet such as search engines to achieve online a higher quality and more complete picture of who Filipinas are."

Marc Macalua's efforts, begun in 2004, seems to have gained some momentum already. A search for "Philippines" now shows the Philippine Department of Tourism on top of the page and other respectable links on the rest of the first page. A search for "Filipina," however, still shows mostly matchmaking sites.

Fabulous Filipina Presence has the following proposal: Place the words "="filipina, filipinas, philippine women, philipina, pilipina, pinay, babae, filipino women, filipino woman" in the meta tags of your site homepage, blog, company/org site or personal pages, and in the many webpages that you manage.

I like this last suggestion. Not that I have anything against Gabriela. I respect and support the organization, and have myself been an activist in college. We wouldn't want Gabriela to stand alone in the search results surrounded by matchmaking sites, though. It would look like Filipinas are only either looking to get married to a foreigner, or are activists. And we know how some people have a kneejerk response against any form of activism.

Having a multitude of sites and blogs by Filipinas and on Filipinas - showing the variety of talented, intelligent, genuinely decent, progressive-minded women we have - would present a more realistic view of Filipina womanhood.

So let's all put in those keywords in our blogs: filipina, filipinas, philippine women, philipina, pilipina, pinay, babae, filipino women, filipino woman.

Hey, why not even add Sexy Filipina and, if it applies, Sexy Filipina Mom or Sexy Filipina Aunt or Sexy Filipina Grandma, and hopefully join the original Filipina Sexy Mom. Let the world know that Filipinas are, indeed, sexy and that being sexy does not necessarily have anything to do with sordid commercial sex.

Filipinas are sexy because we are strong, intelligent, capable, forward-thinking, courageous, confident, dignified, sincere, caring and loving. We know ourselves and are comfortable with ourselves.

So all you sexy Filipinas - sexy Filipina Moms included - please stand up and be counted!

Fellow bloggers who have posted on this, too:

Yes, Filipinas Are Sexy
A Closure, A New Beginning–Reshaping the Online and Sexy Filipina ...
Posting a comment is not enough…Blog about it!
Let's bring sexy and Filipina back
Filipina2007
The attack on Sexy Mom: False feminism, if there is such a thing (as feminism)
What Filipina Should Mean Online
My Sexy Mom
Who's Afraid of the Sexy Filipina?
Campaign Redefines the Sexy Filipina
I Am A Sexy Filipina Mom
Looking For Sexy Filipinas?
The Filipina Bride Overseas - Not Necessarily A Mail Order Bride