“Don’t go out in the sun too much, you’ll get dark!” is a phrase I often heard while growing up. The women of my family would lighten their skin through using this soap that Filipinos are most familiar with, Likas. I too had also used a whitening product at one point in my life, I understood that having a whiter complexion made me beautiful.

I made this soap to appear undesirable and in some way, untouchable. I confront this prevalent practice Filipinos still do as a means to show how after hundreds of years, the colonial mindset dominates the minds of many Filipinos today.