I haven’t been to MLQ3’s blog for the longest time, what with life’s little things like work and my obsession with food going into overdrive but his entry on Malu Fernandez caught my eye. Another Bong Austero wannabe? Another Harvey Keh? My, it seems that if you have infamy in mind, the best route if you’re not artista material is to write something so controversial that it spreads like a virus and makes you an instant internet star.
Slap Happy has the scanned text of the article deemed offensive by members of the Pinoy blogosphere. A lot are calling for a boycott of the Manila Standard Today, where this woman apparently has a column.
(Side note: Interestingly, I may add, the Manila Standard Today is the very same newspaper where Bong Austero has a column and where Connie Veneracion aka Sassy Lawyer also has a column. Hmmm…the paper will definitely not get a subscription from me if I were in RP.)
Some are urging bloggers to send protest emails. Still, some are calling for Malu’s head on a silver, ehem, gold, ehem, platinum or whatever it is that so-called rich people have, platter.
Which brings me to what I think about the whole matter. Honestly, I pity Malu. She was trying to be witty but what she wrote obviously lacked wit and the dry humor that she so desperately wanted to emulate. This writing style can only be achieved by people who have mastered the craft of the written word. Even the best of us so-called writers do not get to reach this level ever in our entire lives even if we write day in and day out.
Her writing is a reflection of her deepest insecurities. Notice the name dropping of her fashionista friends? The mention of the ton of make-up on her carry-on that she needs to put on a face? The references to brand names like Louis Vuitton for her eyebags and whatever brand of expensive perfume to make her smell good? The mention of her LA-based friend with whom she has to synchronize vacations with? Everything says “I peg my self-esteem on things outside myself.” And it’s just plain sad that writing about a different place actually brought this to the fore.
I think what she wrote was just plain stupid observations and I fully blame her editor for not having the balls or the intelligence to edit these stupid observations. I am an OFW and proud of it. Double whammy for this insipid brainless wannabe socialite, my sister is based in Dubai because she works there.
I understand that being in the same place with a lot of OFWs may have its trying moments but it is no reason to write about it in a self-righteous I’m-higher-than-thou-way unless maybe you have gone through the experience of being an OFW yourself. And believe me if you have, no matter how sosyal you are, and yes, there are sosyal OFWs who also leave the country to experience living and working abroad, you may get irritated or roll your eyes at some classic Pinoy habits but you will never, ever write about them in that way.
If you were stuck in a plane and needed help, believe you me, you’d be glad you were with these OFWs than with any other nationality.
Here was what she wrote. Note to the magazine people, make sure that someone copy reads your material for grammar and typos. For chrissakes, you are a monthly and not a daily.
“However I forgot that the hub was in Dubai and the majority of the OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) were stationed there. The duty-free shop was overrun with Filipino workers selling cell phones and perfume. Meanwhile, I wanted to slash my wrist at the thought of being trapped in a plane with all of them.
While I was on the plane (where the seats were so small I had bruises on my legs), my only consolation was the entertainment on the small flat screen in front of me. But it was busted, so I heaved a sigh, popped my sleeping pills and dozed off to the sounds of gum chewing and endless yelling of “HOY! Kumusta ka na? At taga sann ka? Domestic helper ka rin ba?” Translation: “Hey there? Where are you from? Are you a domestic helper as well?” I though I had died and God had sent me to my very own private hell.
On my way back, I had to bravely take the economy flight once more. This time I had already resigned myself to being trapped like a sardine in a sardine can with all these OFWs smelling of AXE and Charlie cologne while Jo Malone evaporated into thin air.
All in all, it’s been a pretty good summer. Jetting from the Aegean Sea to the Pacific may sound a bit pretentious until you wake up in economy class smelling like air freshener”
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August 21, 2007 at 5:41 pm
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August 23, 2007 at 10:21 pm
coffeewithamee
I’ve had numerous comments for the Malu Fernandez controversy but I choose to exercise my right to moderate these comments by not posting them. They basically took issue with her size and weight. I ask that future comments be focused on the issue and not focus on physical insults.
August 24, 2007 at 12:24 am
Karl Villareal
Malu’s style of writing screams, “Look at me I’m rich. Here’s proof oh!”
She squeezed in too much of her pa-sosyal quirks in her article that would make a reader think, “Do the ilustrados really say these things or even write them on paper?” The elite ought to learn a lesson here: teach yourselves tact or maybe a least false humility. We are already struggling to lead a decent life, spare us your insults!
She reminds me of the show “Abangan ang mga Susunod na Kabanata” where it features the poor, the elite and the social climber, who makes every effort to be recognized as part of the elite group.
It is an insult to be slighted by a foreigner, but it hurts much deeper when done by a kababayan.
August 24, 2007 at 12:52 am
Magbanua, C.
Para kay Malu Fernandez, sana po ay tinimbang nyo pong mabuti ang mga salitang inyong binitawan sa inyong column dahil sa ito’y talagang nakasakit ng damdamin. lalong-lalo na po sa ating mga kababayan na OFW. parang gusto nyo pong iparating sa inyong mambabasa na ang mga mahihirap po ay walang sinabi sa buhay na inyong ginagalawan at kami ay hindi pwedeng makihalubilo sa inyo. Sana nyo inisip nyo rin na hindi sa lahat ng pagkakataon sa buhay ay nasa itaas kayo, sana po nilagay nyo po ang inyong sarili sa kanilang katayuan, na kung kayo din po kaya gumawa ng pagkabigat-bigat na trabaho at kunti lang ang sweldo na inyong matatanggap? maranasan nyo rin po kaya ang mga naranasan nila abroad para malam nyo po kung paano magtipid para may maipadalang pera sa iyong pamilya na naiwan sa Pilipinas. sana po ay maging sensitibo po tayo sa maging damdamin ng iba at hindi lang sa gusto natin itong isulat ay basta na lang isusulat. God Bless po. At sana po wala na pong tumulad sa inyo.
August 24, 2007 at 4:10 am
LAdy Luxie
Yes I totally agree. She is one confused, self centered character who fell off her birches confusing freedom of expression and the responsibility that comes with it. I hope she has realized her ( truly realized) her absolute folly and move on.
Very insightful…thoughtful read.
I enjoyed my time here.
August 24, 2007 at 8:46 am
coffeewithamee
Hi Karl, Magbanua C. and LAdy Luxie. Welcome and thanks for dropping by.
I appreciate the comments on the issue.
Karl, re the so-called illustrados, it’s only those who are mal-edukado who think this way and write this way. I grew up in a society where the landlord tenant relationship was the norm. I know people who are part of this class. Some of them think like Malu and it is a pity that they do. But the progressive types are different, they not only have money but have breeding as well, something that Malu clearly lacks.
Magbanua, C., yes, she should have thought about what she wrote. But then again, is Malu the type of person who even thinks critically?
LAdy Luxie, thanks for the compliment and looking forward to hearing more from you.
August 24, 2007 at 12:47 pm
julia
why is everybody crucifying madame malu fernandez? why not ask her editor’s resignation and boycott the paper she wrote it for because honestly, everybody is responsible. how much more division of classes will the philippines experience? when will it stop? why are there no laws regarding this kind of irresponsible journalism? can the OFW’s sue her? its already sad that a lot of our kababayans have to sacrifice so much to be able to raise one’s family but to be taken for granted by someone who can only afford to fly economy says so much about the pretentiousness of socio-cultural life in the philippines where up to now, one has to make everything possible to outclass the rest. no, the fate of the philippines is not so much because of politicians, but because of a culture so ingrained with pretentiousness and division of classes. everybody wants to be better than everybody else whereas wouldn’t the philippines be such a perfect place if everybody is accorded the same rights and privileges without peeping into one’s bank account or circle of friends? hay pilipinas, duyan ka ng mga bayani, noon at ngayon at magpakailanman.
August 24, 2007 at 11:07 pm
fugazzi
i myself also work in dubai. what is written in malu’s article is such an offense for us OFW and i felt bad the way she deliver on her column. what is done is done she already resigned from Manila Standard. Even we put her down, what was written in that paper will be forever stuck to us OFW. its just not right…
August 25, 2007 at 2:50 am
JOE Q.
kung socialite ka Malu Fernandez, bakit ka nakitabi sa mga economy tickets na pasaheros at pinintasan mo pa ang pabango ng OFWs na kung tutuusin ay higit na malinis ang OFWs kesa sa inyo. bakit? dahil kayo kinakalkal nyo ang baho ng ibang tao sa pamamagitan ng inyong pagsulat pero kaming mga OFWs ay pinagpawisan namin ang pinambili ng mumurahing pabango.Mabango ka nga eh napakabaho nyo naman palang magsulat simbaho ng iniipit nyo.sana magkita ang ating landas dahil napakaliit lang ng bilog na mundo.mula ngayon, pinadalhan kona ang aking mga pamilya sa pilipinas na huwag nang bumili nga Diyaryo mo.
August 25, 2007 at 7:49 am
Loreal
The article was forwarded to me by my cousin from the Philippines.
I have read it and it’s insulting indeed for an OFW like me here in Europe. I’m not fond of picking holes in somebody’s ideas… but this one just hit me, big time! I cannot help but criticize the insensitivities behind the article.
I am an OFW, is there anything wrong with being one? Filipinos overseas are often commended for our good command of written and spoken English, coupled by our ability to quickly adapt to an accent. That’s one thing to brag about being a Filipino, overseas. I raise my head high, I’m proud to be a Filipino. I will always be, wherever I will go.
And what’s with the smell of Axe and Charlie colognes? Aren’t they more pleasant than smelling nothing at all? Didn’t we all start with baby colognes?
It’s disgusting how publications choose articles nowadays to merely draw attention. The article does not have a sense of style, does not even live up with its title.
What makes this arrogant lady think that we would be enticed with her so-called ’sophistication’ and ‘good taste’? Certainly a waste of space and a cheap form of endorsement!
Her fabulous account of her elite statusque does not make her more brilliant. It simply shows what’s inside the writer’s mind…
To deduce? There’s no sign of intelligence, not even an inch of eloquence nor a dash of wits. How pathetic!
Too bad, she has her own private hell.. she will never get any chance to be near me.
August 25, 2007 at 8:13 am
Stariray
Poor Malu! She actually is the true epitome of an OFW:
Ovebearing Fucking Witch
Overbearing Fashionista Wannabe
Ostentatious Fat Whale
Overweight Foolhardy Woman
August 26, 2007 at 4:14 am
KuhPalMo
Kayong lahat tigilan nyo na si malu!!!!! Kapag hindi nyo siya tinigilan, kakatayin ko na si malu para lang tumigil na kayo…. ok ba malu? Basta kakampi mo ako, in short KupPalMo Ko!!!!!!
August 30, 2007 at 9:03 am
Jerick T Aguilar
“Responses to an OFW-Basher”
By Jerick T Aguilar
After shamelessly writing about her summer trip to Boracay and Greece in the June 2007 issue of People Asia magazine, this columnist was found guilty of character assassination of our overseas Filipino domestic helpers regardless of the fact that they have never wronged her, except – in her opinion – for being on the same economy flight that everyone is entitled to. As a writer and traveler myself, please find below my notes on some of the things she wrote. I may also be guilty of character assassination but at least mine is not baseless and I think of this more as defending our fellow “kababayans” working abroad.
“But I was too ashamed to ditch my friends and forego the huge amount I already paid for my share of the villa.” – Outright pretentious! People rent and share villas in Boracay to save on expensive hotel charges per night so writing that she paid a “huge amount” is plainly preposterous!
“Meanwhile, when all of this was going on, I was on the cell phone …” – Proper English writing uses the conjunction “while” when it is followed by the progressive (this case in the past) and interrupted by the simple tense – so “while all of this was going on, I was …” – I thought a columnist for a magazine (and newspaper) would have a knowledge of English much better than a domestic helper’s!
“Ron is my travel buddy … so between his schedule and mine, the logistics are a nightmare.” – “Logistics” is a non-countable noun and, hence, is always followed by a singular verb – so “… logistics is a nightmare.” Ditto!
“Emirates had won best economy class and some award.” – “Award”, on the other hand, is a countable noun (i.e. it has singular and plural forms) and the modifier “some” means more than one – so “… some awards.” – My, oh my! Our housemaid even knows better English than her!
“I forgot that the hub was in Dubai and the majority of OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) were stationed there.” – Duh?!? Majority of OFWs are in Saudi Arabia, unless she doesn’t know what the word “majority” means. And another duh! To be “stationed” means to stay in one place – it’s obvious that our OFWs don’t just stay there, she was with them while traveling back to the Philippines.
“Meanwhile, I wanted to slash my wrist at the thought of being trapped in a plane with all of them.” – Okay, a plane is a form of public transportation so the preposition “on” instead of “in” is used (e.g. on a bus, on a train, etc.) so “… trapped on a plane …” Yeah, she should’ve slashed her wrist in order to prevent writing more grammatical mistakes! (I hope her readers do not know that she is Filipino! Nakakahiya kung ganoon! – Sorry but the English translation does not suffice!)
“… I would never risk losing if my luggage ended up in the middle of the Sahara desert.” – Her plane took off from Dubai then landed in Athens where the flight plan is northeast of the Sahara desert, unless there was a stopover in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Now is she really a traveler or was it just her first time to travel?…
“… the seats were so small I had bruises …” – Okay, didn’t she mention that Emirates had won best economy class? So I wonder if the seats were so small or she was simply so big?
“Domestic helper ka rin ba?” – She wrote this question as if she overheard it while dozing off. I bet she was actually asked this question. I mean, I would whether or not I were a domestic helper given her fashion sense in the pictures (not at all to demean the clothing style of our domestic helpers but one cannot really differentiate hers from theirs).
“… the weather report on CNN … was wrong because it was still winter.” – Hold on, summer in the Philippines from April to June is already spring in Europe. And even if the European winter in March extended till April, Greece is in the Mediterranean so it would’ve already been warm by then. So was it really a cold winter while she was there or she just wanted to impress her readers by mentioning the word “throw” as a noun and not as the usual verb (and by wearing it to look less fat in the picture)?
“I adamantly wanted to go to Santorini … but due to time constraints, we were unable to go.” – Talk about being pretentious again! She intentionally forgot to mention “money” as another constraint! Didn’t she just write that she had to fly economy?
“I guess God was watching out for us.” – And now she thinks God was after writing that God had sent her to her own private hell being on a plane with “those domestics”. One of the rules of journalism is to be consistent (aside from having perfect English, of course!) so I guess she is the exception.
“This time I had already resigned myself to being trapped like a sardine in a sardine can …” – Another cardinal rule of journalism is to avoid redundancy so a “fish” in a sardine can sounds much better. I don’t think she’s a traveler, I don’t think she’s a journalist either… What is she then? An abomination?
“… with all these OFWs smelling of AXE and Charlie cologne while my Jo Malone evaporated into thin air.” – Interesting how she made reference to Jo Malone in which a perfume wardrobe costs more than $1,000 yet she had to take the economy flight to Athens and back…
“But for a couple of weeks, I had the great escape …” – What was that again? A “couple of weeks” when she wrote beforehand of her “time constraints”? Greece is not China so a visit to Santorini from Athens can be squeezed even within a week of staying there. And before that, she wrote “Pick a country!” as if she can go anywhere she wants to. But she ended up saving on her plane ticket only to be “trapped” with OFWs and “smelling like air freshener”. She is the height of pretension indeed!
Three things to my “supposed” fellow writer and traveler – first off, if you have to write something in English, do not forget the simple rules of grammar so you do not cause intellectual harm to the people reading your article. Secondly, if you do not have money to pay for a business class fare, then don’t complain if you are surrounded by OFWs who can only afford an economy flight. As a final note, I suggest you thank these OFWs instead of demeaning them! If it weren’t for the billions of foreign currency remittances that our country regularly receives from them, the instability and depreciation of the peso-dollar exchange rate would’ve prohibited you from traveling to Greece in the first place (and buying that Jo Malone, assuming you already did)!
September 3, 2007 at 4:37 am
Sigmund
There really isn’t any need to insult Ms. Fernandez further; I think she’s quite miserable on her own. I’ve encountered her enough to know that she’s pretentious and obnoxious. I also know that although her family may have some affluence, I certainly would never include her among the truly high-end of Philippine society she aspires to associate herself with. Sure she may orbit the circle, but she lacks the financial gravitas to truly live the lifestyle at that level. But even that aside, her complete lack of finer sensibilities or circumspect in her utterances indicate a mistaken concept of how the higher strata generally operate. The upper-crust manner, in my humble opinion, is one where there is the absence of a need to prove it to anyone. The traditionally rich guard the private details of their lives, perhaps just sharing it with a few intimates. Bragging about the inconsequential accoutrements of “the fabulous life” as Ms. Fernandez does in article after article, smacks more of an arriviste rather than a person already “to the manor born.” The classic signs are all there – name-dropping, an obsession with expensive accessories (and the need to highlight the brand), the feeling of entitlement, the clear disdain and lack of empathy for those she feels are not of her strata. It must be very difficult for her to constantly try to keep up with a crowd she just can’t keep up with financially. If she could she would have easily bought a first-class ticket and we would have all been spared of her tirade.
Feeling alienated from a crowd she so desperately wants to be a part of must make her very frustrated. Many bloggers also made fun of her portliness. I would imagine that the insults concerning her weight we’re not the first time she had heard such comments. She was physically large when I met her, and she still is to this day. There must also be a great deal of frustration in not being able to lose the weight. Part of being “Fierce and Fabulous” is the glam-factor. Obesity isn’t generally considered glamorous. There is so much out of her control that I can only imagine her seething anger as she sat in economy with her fellow Filipinos from Dubai. Powerless to do anything to extricate her from that circumstance, she lashed out by berating them, by trying to convince people that although she sat in economy with them, she is not one of them. She is high class and they are not. That kind of venom, that kind of irrational anger is so deep-seated that it can only come from a life she felt she had no control of – much like her weight and her social status.
September 5, 2007 at 11:30 am
Lester Cavestany
I hope we can learn to forgive Malu Fernandez. I wrote an entry about her article and I hope you can find time to read it. It’s entitled “One Voice (An OFW’s reaction to Malu Fernandez’s “From Greece to Boracay”)” and I posted it here: http://lestercavestany.com/?p=10
September 6, 2007 at 2:07 am
robbie tan
the way the ’sassy lawyer’ and mlq3 goes on, mf should be forgiven and sent straight to heaven. incredible that the ‘apology’ is so easily accepted, after that devastating ‘defense’ she wrote about her article. a zarzuela (or a telenovela) if anything else. bad girl did very bad thing. bad girl does more bad things while defending why she did the first bad thing. then goes into a trance and HALLELUJAH !!! – she becomes queen of goodness.
c’mon, its very out of character and the ‘people’ at her newspaper supported her. they havent even the guts to fire her. so its really boycott the paper, since the owners, editors and co writers have shown that mf is really one of them
September 11, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Marcus Aurelius
Elitism talaga iyan!
I lived in the UAE for a number of years and hung out with the OFWs at the church there instead of my kababayan. Many of the OFWs are working to support children, parents, nieces, nephews, siblings etc.
I read excerpts of the column and its obvious she needs to learn the saying “but for the Grace of God, there go I”.
September 12, 2007 at 12:49 am
mariel ferrer
malu you are a disgrace. you should rot in jail with erap. i hear he’s getting 10-40 years in jail.
September 14, 2007 at 8:49 pm
alms
check this out: http://www.whymalu.com