The Double-Commodification of the Filipina: Neocolonial Exploitation in the Entertainment Era

Abstract

Even in the absence of explicit colonizer presence, the Filipino government has profited off the sexualization of Filipinas under the white male gaze, enabling a thriving sex tourism industry and mail-order bride market which pumps foreign currency into the national economy (Cunneen & Stubbs, 2000). Thus, Filipinas use the awareness of their exoticism as a ‘survival’ mechanism to circumvent increasingly restrictive immigration policies and a dwindling local economy – at the risk of their own lives (Cunneen & Stubbs, 2000). Filipinas being marketed as marriage and sexual commodities to white men have been studied extensively – a new phenomenon has arisen in response to these relationships. The following paper will be concerned with outlining this ‘double-layered commodification’ phenomenon whereby Filipinas are first commodified through the origins and continued existence of the mail-order bride and sex tourism market, and then the new commodification of these relationships as entertainment products. As audiences consume the new entertainment product, underpinning systems of inequality, already obscured by the mail order bride and sex tourism market, are further obscured. Moreover, increased engagement with the product only promotes the propagation of the commodity, further reinforcing and feeding into underlying systemic inequality. This paper will outline this process through (1) a literature review detailing preconditions of Filipina commodification and the mail order bride/sex tourism market and (2) an analysis of YouTube comments under clips from Rose and Ed’s segment on TLC’s 90 Day Fianc´e, a TV show that follows the love stories of international couples. Ultimately, this paper will bridge the literature and empirical data together to outline and propose this ‘double layer commodification’ process.