Absolutely, it’s wild how wat we call “heritage” often ends up being the stuff that looks good on Instagram—or fits neatly into a government press release. Meanwhile, the day-to-day struggles, protest art, bawdy jokes, or even those street food customs that aren’t pretty enough for glossy posters get swept under the banig. It’s like our culture is on a constant audition for tourists and balikbayans, while the gritty, living realities are left backstage.
There’s nothing wrong with celebrating, say, the Ati-Atihan or weaving traditions, but when was the last time a state-sponsored project focused on informal street rituals or highlighted the messy histories—the ones that don’t flatter anybody? Maybe if we stopped airbrushing our past, we’d realize that “real” Filipino culture isn’t frozen in some idealized version but is as contradictory and complicated as we are.