Instagram project empowers dark-skinned Filipinos to push back against discrimination and change old perceptions

“It’s been 120 years since our colonisers left the country, and we’re still holding on to their beauty standards,” says Juro Ongkiko, the Filipino freelance photographer behind Moreno Morena, an Instagram project created to encourage appreciation of dark skin.

Ongkiko is referring to the persistence of colourism (discrimination due to skin tone) in the Philippines that took root during the period of Spanish colonisation from the 16th to the 19th century. For Ongkiko, colourism began with power issues between ethnicities, where lighter-skinned Spaniards were in positions of power over darker-skinned Filipinos.

Skin colour would later on become a signifier of socioeconomic status even among native and mixed-raced Filipinos. To have dark skin, or to be moreno, suggested the person was a manual labourer, while those with lighter skin, or mestizos, were seen as privileged enough to avoid working in the sun as well as having Spanish lineage.

Remnants of this archaic system remain in modern Filipino society, where fair-skinned celebrities (often half-Caucasian) are hallmarks of aspirational beauty and whitening products are staples on grocery store shelves. Glutathione pills – supplements that claim to reduce melanin -are particularly popular, with their billboards peppering Metro Manila’s busiest roads.

The supremacy of fair skin is so ubiquitous that when Ongkiko posted samples of his photography highlighting moreno and morena skin on Twitter in 2016, it went viral. “A lot of people resonated with it,” says Ongkiko. “People got the message right away. They saw a need for a project like that.”