I am so happy to know that more and more Plump Pinays are raising awareness about body-acceptance and body-appreciation. I came across this video from a friend's page and was so elated to see this group of girls focus on big, beautiful women to feature on their final project.
Here's the inside scoop behind this mini documentary, as I got to interview the beautiful Sharina Salam, who is one of the project heads for this video.
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Give us a little background on what the video is about. Why did you choose to talk about big women?
For our final exams, before graduation, we were required by our professor to work on a 10 to 15-minute documentary. Initially, my groupmate came up with the idea of doing a documentary about mothers who are models with the title 'Bigger Better'. Professor Sockie Fernandez, our teacher in Broadcast Documentary reminded us of the importance of having passion in our choice of topics and not to treat our documentary simply as a requirement but as something we can be proud of, even in the long run.With this in view and being plus size myself, we came to a decision to focus on plus size women who are successful in life. The title 'curves' was chosen to emphasize the fact that plus size women too have curves. During the editing process, we thought of segments using the terms 'big', 'bigger' and 'biggest' so that it matches the concept of plus size, looking at the lives, love lives and the messages that can be shared by our interviewees to other plus size women.
How did you choose the women to interview for this project? (they're all excellent in what they do, and they all have a mark in the industry they're in)
Our main prospect in the choice of interviewees was to find women who are successful in their chosen fields, despite being plus size and are comfortable to talk about their sizes. With the assistance of our professor, we were able to locate Miss Mae Paner, who is not only an established woman in the advertising industry but also for being the well-known Mae Paner. Our professor also suggested her personal friend, Miss Sheila Francisco who not only pursued her passion in cooking, but also made a name for herself as a performer both locally and abroad. Miss Geneive Mercado was chosen because she was a casting director who could share her insights about the ideals of commercial models but to our surprise, she happened to be a plus size model herself and had her own share of experiences as a plus size woman which made us change our story angle during the interview. Miss Raisa De Guzman was someone we met during a bazaar for our previous project. She inspired us by being one of the plus size women who was trying to ease our share of pain in finding fashionable clothes which was obviously not very easy in this country. It was during the interview did we come to know that they have gone beyond online selling and have now progressed in supplying their label to malls or stores which is of course part of the successes of Erzullie. The documentary would depict their experiences and successes, their take about love and most of all the priceless messages they have in the hopes of inspiring other plus size women.
What did you aspire to accomplish when you released this video? Is there a stereotype you want to break? A new idea you want to present? Were you able to accomplish that?
I happen to study the field of media and the moment beauty is spoken about, it is always about having that 26" waistline or less just so a person can be sexy or even beautiful. Growing up, I felt as though media was never nice to me. I would always come across images on television or even magazines of what is sexy and often times, I would even feel guilty for having such a big body, wondering what else I should do to achieve what are the said ideals. I maintained a healthy diet, was very active in school and even made a name for myself in the field of sports. Considering my condition and accepting that being big was probably part of my genes, I began to accept my body and loving it the way it is. This was of course beyond the stereotyping of concepts such as beauty and sexy: We don't need to be thin just so we can be sexy or beautiful! I am plus sized but I feel sexy in my own ways and indeed feel very beautiful.
That is the primary message we intended to convey in our documentary. We were highly inspired by our interviewees while conducting the interviews and putting them together made us proud of what we have accomplished since we can now share it to other women, aside from submitting it as our final requirement in class. To inspire another person, aside from ourselves, is a bonus. We continue to get positive feedbacks from other plus size women and it touches me personally whenever I am told that that they are inspired by our documentary. With this in consideration, we are very successful indeed in our objectives but we do not intend to end it here. Instead, we intend to continue spreading the message so that more plus size women are inspired.
I hope this video gets to reach out more Plump Pinays! To see strong, confident and excellent plus-size women who don't let their shape define them is always so moving. :)
To Sharina: Kudos to you and your groupmates for exposing these amazing Plump Pinays! Thank you so much for taking the time for this interview. I am so proud of women like you, who value their bodies and know that it is not meant to conform to a standard size. You are so beautiful and smart! :) It's such a privilege.
Plump love,
Danah