Modification of dress through Colonization (national costume) Blog 1

Blogging for a class, now thats different! I have to admit that I've never blogged once, and if I did, then I didn't know. I have a youtube channel, but I still don't think of that as blogging when all that it consists of are videos of me and my friends acting stupid or just plain weird. But back to the issue, blogging about fashion. I didn't think that finding a topic would be very hard but it seems I've been proven wrong. haha I've spent 2 hours online finding fashion trends, statements, anything, but all along I could have been talking about something I was more familiar with. The Filipino/Filipina traditional costumes are throughly inspired by the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. I don't think of it as a bad thing, my country's traditional garb fashioned from the colonizer of our country... I mean come on, we ONLY had to change everything about ourselves including they way we dressed, and even our beliefs. ( can you hear my sarcasm oozing? )We had to de-asianify (if that's even a word) ourselves in order be accepted yet still not be accepted by the western world. My ancestors were considered savages by colonizers because of what they wore. I mean, if the girl/guy has something to show off, might as well do it rather than covering yourself and pretending that you have something to hide.

VS.

"Through Orientalism , differences in appearance and clothing were often read by colonizers as indexes of deeper differences, even as the colonizers discursive categories created by the reality they supposedly described." (9)

Niessen, Sandra, Ann Marie Leshkowich, and Carla Jones, eds. Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress. NY: Berg, 2003. Print

http://insearchofbaguio.blogsome.com/images/IgorotSteps.jpg (image 1)

http://www.sinfonia.or.jp/~infortec/hotspots/boracay/clips/igorot1.jpg (image 2)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ly_XqGar02A/SplPPAH3bfI/AAAAAAAAAek/ZmMtKTlaZYc

/s400/Fame+Flores+(Maria+Clara)+and+Jao+Mapa+(Elias).jpg (image 3)

http://www.asianart.org/images/LIKHA_MariaClara_web.jpg (image 4)