Imelda

It would seem that Mrs. Imelda Marcos spent her lifetime successfully beautifying herself. She deemed herself a goddess that people looked up to and emulated. Beauty was everything to her; she equated it to love and life.

I find her self-obsession a bit adorable, but learned to slightly despise it at the juncture of the Filipinos suffering while she drowns in her shoe and gown collection. While it is true that a female non-celebrity owning four hundred shoes is not reprimanded for being so as much as a celebrity like Imelda is, I think the fact that the mass censured this situation should be attributed to her being the president’s wife. The mass readily assumed that part of what she had used to hoard footwear came from the Filipinos’ money. Nevertheless they loved her, practically worshipped her, and the female population blindly idolized her.

I believe that what she and Ferdinand shared was as real and genuinely magical as she describes it to be. Apparently there were people who saw their public relationship a kind of theatre show with all the manifestations of affection they exhibited in front of the whole nation. There might have been some truth in that but even in Imelda’s methods of professing love for her husband, beauty conspicuously flourished.

I like Imelda most for being romantic and poetic, for caring so much about aesthetics. Since I am not sure of what Imelda really meant by her famous quote, “It is easier to be beautiful because it is natural”, I will not decide on whether I agree with it or not. It sounds quite appealing but misleading. I am also not fully knowledgeable, or maybe I am informed of the well-spread, but not firmly accepting of Imelda’s motive in participating in the mass’s normal activities like planting rice in the ricefield.

Apple Czarline C. Cruel

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