You're That Bitch: & Other Cute Lessons About Being Unapologetically Yourself

by Bretman Rock

Sometimes I’m lazy, I get bored, I get scared, I feel ignored, I feel happy, I get silly, I choke on my own words.

The subtle iconic Ordinary Girl by Hannah Montana lyrics 😭😂

I’m actually glad I experienced being ugly, because now I know how not to look like that ever again. Being gorgeous has always been my destiny—it just took a minute.

“You eat until you’re full,” period. As soon as you’re full, you stahp.

Don’t ask me why we say everything twice. Twice is nice, bitch.

Darna, the Philippines’ most famous comic superheroine.

Girl, let me tell you, you don’t know hot and humid until you experience the Philippines from August to October.

After January, we get started on Chinese New Year’s. My family isn’t ethnically Chinese, but we’re out here celebrating Chinese New Year’s.

Filipinos are very passionate people. Some might say we go a little too far.

We usually strove to be joyful and happy as much as possible, except for one special day a year: Day of the Dead, on November 1. We get really serious with that shit. Especially in the provinces, like, bitch, it’s a shutdown—nobody’s allowed out, and you’re not allowed to make any noise.

Then you just sit in your house quietly, which was almost impossible for me as a kid. But somehow I managed, because I respect the dead, bitch. And I respect our traditions.

America has a spectrum of racism, but the Philippines primarily has a specific version of it, what we call “colorism”; an internalized bias that favors lighter skin, which has been a thing pretty much ever since the Spanish explorer Magellan colonized our country in the 1500s.

It’s very common for stars and regular people alike to bleach their skin. Fuck common, it’s more like an epidemic. My country has one of the highest rates of use of skin lighteners in Asia.

When you watch Filipino films, the workers are darker, and the rich ones are lighter.

The Filipino version of racism is really not that much different than anywhere else in the world. The only difference is, in the States, we are more woke about our racism—we mostly know it’s a problem.

but I think it’ll shock a lot of people when I say that even in Filipino showbiz, Filipino media, I don’t see myself on TV back home. Back home whiteness is glamorized—being light means power. If you’re wealthier, it means you can stay out of the sun. You’re not working in the fields.

There are ten million Filipinos all over the world, and one of our traditional ways of staying connected while being thousands of miles away is to send special packages home filled with treats, sweets, tinned goods, toys, and other tchotchkes. I read somewhere that we send seven million OFW boxes every year back to the Philippines. It’s our way of showing love even when we’re apart.

Even more than white people, I was super excited to try McDonald’s, which was considered fine dining back in the Philippines.

Which is why I don’t know what came over me when I threw the potato-chip bag out the window. My uncle was livid. “We don’t do that in America!” he scolded. “That’s littering! Don’t throw trash out the window. This is not the Philippines. Do you see trash in the road?”

Again, when I learned how to read, there was no stopping me. I inhaled Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Junie B. Jones, and Goosebumps.