I pay an annual visit to the Philippines without fail (except for the two years we could not travel into the country on account of the Covid-19 lockdowns that is). Each visit I open up one of the boxes containing my writings (journalistic and creative) dating back to the fun years I spent working in Manila, as well as to my superficially normal childhood. This year, the box I chose yielded a clutch of magazines from the Summit group, which published the Philippine edition of Cosmopolitan. I wrote for Cosmo in the late 1990s, and now that nearly 30 years (gasp! I was a veritable kid!) have elapsed, it's time to share digital copies with the world.
How will they be read by young women who have been formed, over the last 15 years, by the very visual platforms of Instagram and Tiktok, for whom Facebook probably resembles a retirement community?
Cosmopolitan-Philippines is/was primarily a magazine that offered advice on the best way to achieve a particular lifestyle, one that in retrospect seems fake: Sex and the City plunked down in the middle of Ortigas Center and the grimy Epifanio de los Santos Avenue at its side. I wrote this article on an inelegant but all too real subject -- how women must suffer the company of boyfriends who are emasculated by their inability to top them in terms of earnings (and behave accordingly). Note the determinedly buoyant words of advice at the end.
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When he makes less than you
Lakambini A. Sitoy
Cosmopolitan-Philippines, March 1998
I once had a relationship with a guy who didn’t have any money. I was young, and the figure he cut--shabbily-clothed, hunched over, tattered copy of The Communist Manifesto in one hand--seemed wildly romantic. This was during my brief flirtation with activism, and somehow the notion that he was working on behalf of the masa excused him from footing the bill whenever we went out.
Where are we headed tonight? I’d ask him. Italian? he’d reply, and, as soon as we’d reduced the obligatory pizza to a smear of orange grease, he’d start fidgeting, a sheepish smile on his face.
Uhhhhh, he’d begin, slapping his pockets, furrowing his brow, but I’d already have pulled out a couple of bills and slipped them to the poker-faced waiter.
I’ll pay you back next week, he’d say. I’d wave my hand in dismissal, ignoring the tension building about us.
At the time, I was fresh out of college. Living with my parents in our province, I relied on a sizeable allowance from a writing grant and a plethora of little jobs that generated income without requiring much effort. I painted t-shirts, typed my dad’s manuscripts, gave art and composition lessons to grade-school kids.
My boyfriend could do none of these things. He couldn’t even pass CMT, let alone graduate and find a job. Worse, he was constantly at odds with his parents, always getting his allowance cut off. In a strange and twisted way, I became the banker, picking up the tab whenever we’d go out, lending him money in emergencies.
At first I didn’t think there was anything wrong with this set-up. The guy was poor; it was incumbent upon the more fortunate to spread the wealth around. Despite my friends’ advise, I didn’t want to dump him. After all it was his company I cherished, not his money, and I certainly didn’t need him to pay my bills.
Besides, I was determined to change the world by setting an example. No more would I be trapped in sexist patterns of behavior; I was a 90s woman, I had a right to earn what I could and love whom I pleased. And I absolutely refused to go hunting around for a wealthy male. The thought of becoming a mistress-type, a “kept woman,” was more abhorrent than the accusations that I was “supporting” him.
Did I feel good about it? Did it make me more confident? No. Because the more generous I became, the more his self-disgust increased. Like most red-blooded Filipino males he simply couldn’t stomach the notion of being “mendicant” (his word), and because he was powerless to change his situation, he learned to rewrite his view of our relationship. Eventually my dwindling stash of money became my sin; and our family and the academic set took their place among the hacenderos and “comprador bourgeoisie” that, in his own private revolution, would be the first to hang from the treetops. Needless to say, he’s not my boyfriend anymore.
I wish women and men alike could get rid of the notion that a guy must earn more, at least the same, as his girlfriend. If his salary is less it seems to reflect negatively on the woman, as though she had neither the beauty nor the breeding to find herself a better man. It leaches away a guy’s confidence, constraining him to act macho in other ways (getting gloriously drunk every night, for instance) or turning him into a hen-pecked wimp. A woman, too, learns to compensate, turning down major responsibilities at work that could lead to a promotion, or serving her partner hand and foot at home.
What’s more, people seem to forget that there are some jobs that don’t bring in the lucre, yet make an important contribution to the world as a whole. Literature professors, marine researchers and Meralco linemen are all underpaid, but only the most mata pobre among us would think of them as inferior beings. Avoid the holier-than-thou types, though, the ones who won’t compromise their “principles” and get a decent job; or the deluded artistes forever scratching away at blank canvases. Ditto for the professional spongers, those smooth, good-looking guys perpetually on the lookout for naive and generous women.
Despite that awful experience with my boyfriend, I believe relationships where the guy makes less money can work. Just remember to be sensitive to his feelings and talk things out. Avoid flaunting your wealth or putting him down in subtle ways, and remember, if after a year or two he still hasn’t caught up with you, don’t dump him. He may already be trying his best. If you really love him you’d respect his efforts. END
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