By: Heinrich Domingo

A prepubescent girl enters the ‘women’ club as she joins the annual Santacruzan (May Festival). Her mother introduces her into a Filipino long-standing tradition that weirdly dresses girls as Virgin Mary and parades them on the streets like beauty contestants. She then learns that the world measures women based on the color of their skin and the size of their breasts. And although she resists at first and affirms her own understanding of beauty, she realizes that femininity is power. It is a gift and she is precious for being a recipient of it.

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