The Filipino Stereotypes
Love Karaoke
83 % of the Filipino women and 72 % of the Filipino men dream about becoming a famous singer… well, i just made these statistics up, but the actual numbers are probably not so far away from those fake statistics. Filipinos just love singing, not only in the shower, but also on the streets (I’ve seen it happen countless times), in the living room, alone or with friends or of course in the extended and so frequently happening Karaoke sessions.
Charice Pempengco, a Filipina singer who rose to popularity through YouTube
Photo from Flickr.
User: α is for äpΩL †
Original: http://flic.kr/p/6AnvcW
Can get friendly with each other so quickly
So noisy when in a group
Filipino Accent
Love life, like to go out
The Filipino Names
Most of the family names in Philippines come from Spanish origins since Spain colonized Philippines for almost 500 years; yet, that is not the interesting part. The interesting part is having names such as Girly, Honey, Boy, Uno, Junior, Blue, Princess, Queeny, Sweet, Lovely, Sweet-Rose, Virgie, Baby… Basically, if you wanna understand what kind of names some Filipinos have, you just need to imagine some lazy parents who call their child the first thing that comes to their mind.
Just right after a born is baby, I would imagine the parents having a conversation as such:
Mother: so what should we call our daughter?
Father: I donno… anything, like I can care less..
Mother: you know she looks so girly..
Father: ok, what the hell, let us call her girly.
or like that…
Doctor, looks at the mother: What would you like to call your son?
Mother: Where is my ****ing husband? I bet he is screwing my slutty neighbor again.
Doctor: I have other patients waiting for me, What do you wanna call your son?
Mother, rolls her eyes, looks out the window, sees a blue sky: Just call him Blue.
The he/she his/her equivalence
Many Filipino’s make so many mistakes with he/she… and a common conversation with my Filipino friends would go like that.
Friend: I was talking to Anna today and she said that his husband is cheating on her.
Me: What? really? How did she find out?
Friend: He came back early to find his husband in bed with another girl.
:), it could get more confusing than this and it is usually random and somehow funny. If the story is longer than the story above, it can get more difficult to get the story straight with all the he/she him/her mistakes. According to my friends, the root cause of the he/she mistakes is the lack of distinction between male/female in the Tagalog language.
The Offensive Stereotype (avoid if you are a sensitive reader)
Do Filipinos eat dogs? The answer is that 99% of the Filipinos do not, but what about the other 1 % or even less. Many Filipino find this stereotype very offensive (sorry) and would probably deny this. However, after discussing this “Stereotype” with my one of my close Filipino friends, i got to know the truth. This stereotype has originated from the fact that many homeless and drunk individuals in extremely poor areas do hunt and eat dogs as means of survival. No one would deny that this is a brutal and sickening act, but isn’t killing chicken fish and cows as brutal too? Well… as human beings, we justify all our cruelty by calling it “survival”… and hey, guess what, familiar cruelty sounds more acceptable than the shocking unfamiliar cruelty which is unknown to us… wow.. this has just turned too serious… back to our topic… Filipinos 🙂
Filipino men stereotypes
- Filipino men are usually very unfaithful; many might argue that all men from all nationalities do cheat, but the rate at which I encounter stories about broken Filipino families stories is just ridiculous.
- A great number of Filipino men suffer from gambling and drinking problems.
- An alarmingly huge number of Filipino men are simply unfit to be good fathers or good husbands. A typically Filipino house is financed by the women… women are the bread earners whereas men are usually immersed in their destructive hobbies of drugs, alcoholism, gambling and adultery.
Filipina women stereotypes
Looks and Outer Appearance
Typical Sweet and Cute looking Filipinas
Image on Flickr.
User: karlhans.
link: http://flic.kr/p/eTi5kB
- Short, the average height of a Filipina girl is 1.517 m (4 ft 11.5 in) according to Wikipedia
- Most Filipina girls have beautiful Long black shiny hair… the healthy kind of hair every girl wishes for.
- Flat and tiny nose which almost every Filipina girl i met is insecure about.
- Tiny ass, which is usually another source of insecurity to many girls.
- You will catch most Filipina girls so often wearing short shorts, flipflops and a tee shirt, which to be honest looks cute and a little bit sexy ;).
- Another common not so feminine form is having a narrow waist and broader shoulder.
Character and Personality
- Caring and loving, Filipina girls are very dedicated, loving and selfless in relationships. A Filipina gf or wife would usually do whatever it takes to make her husband / BF happy. In short, Filipinas are usually fit wives, GFs or mothers.
- On the flip side of the coin, you will always meet “the gold digger” Filipina GF. The GF who wants an iPhone or the GF who likes to go out to all the expensive stores and restaurant and doesn’t even once try to reach for her wallet. You will also meet the GF who has financial problems and is asking for your help. (Living in Dubai, a city with multinational culture, all expatriates including Filipinos, travel and work here to support their family in their home country. Yet, some “gold digger GFs” do go the extra mile by sending 90% of their salary to their family while living off almost free with the foreign “none Filipino BF”).
- Filipina girls are easy.
- There is a surprisingly huge number of single Filipina Moms. The Filipino culture seems to be very accepting and forgiving so you often find a Mom having 2 or 3 children, each from a different father and none of the fathers is or has been her husband.
Love Rice
Friendly and sweet
It is just true, they are so happy and friendly and sweet and they honestly remind me of the hobbits in the Lord of the Rings :D.
Short and tiny and Ironically, they do love basketball
That is all for now; Living in a multicultural environment for the last 6 years, meeting and observing hundreds of Filipinos, I think the above description is pretty accurate. However, please let me know if you believe some of the points I mentioned are inaccurate or if you think that I missed any of the famous Filipino Stereotypes.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article, Please leave a comment 🙂
I would want you to do a stereotype of Nigerians from first hand experience not general hearsay. thanks for your work.
WOW! I have never seen this before and a lot of these things actually apply to me even though they are stereotypes. I am a Filipino. This is very interesting. It is so cool to see what other people see in us. WOW is all I can say to this.
Very interesting article, I am a Filipino myself as well. Oddly, when I travel, people never get my nationality right and say ‘you don’t look Filipino at all!’ I don’t know if they really meant it as an insult or compliment! haha I agree on most points, and it is hilarious to see these points discussed from other’s perspectives!
Just an additional comment to names: a lot of Filipinos like to give themed names to children. I have a friend who’s family members’ names all start with P, or all their names are named after cars, and I even have a friend whose dad, brother, and himself is named ‘Ed’! You can imagine how awkward was it to call him on the landline number and they try to figure out which ‘Ed’ I was looking for. So yes, Filipinos are either ‘too creative’ or ‘not creative at all’ with names.
Kamusta Kyo. i am 65 years old and my Filipina wife is the same age. She is actually my high school sweet heart, her dad was in the US Navy and brought the family over when she was 10. We have traveled the world over the years and met some amazing people, however it is my firm belief that there is no culture as kind, sweet, eager to please, as hard working (the ladies) when it comes to house work and as loving. Those who go to church and truly believe in God have the added benefit of being more sincere and morally clean. i love the Philippines and the culture so much that I would like to retire there. Did I mention that I love my wife? I do. Our two sons and myself are skilled in the Filipino martial arts, which is cool. See the links at the bottom of my webpage to see my two sons…they are guapo mastezo. Take a look, baikit hindi. Segi na. We are feeding hungry kids;
MABUHAY KUYA & ATE!
OMG. I am a filipina and all those points are accurate hahaha. I can relate to this: “An alarmingly huge number of Filipino men are simply unfit to be good fathers or good husbands. A typically Filipino house is financed by the women.” It’s sad but true.
I think Filipinas are the most beautiful women on earth, but they also CAN be the most mysterious, mischievious, and misunderstood also. In the Western world, women here feel threatened by pinays, as more and more men here are seeking TRUE love – with a foreign partner. I have been criticized for some of my opinions towards pinays/foreigners, but I simply want people to understand this civilization and it’s deep roots. God bless you all. 🙂 – coach Blaise
Thank you for your article it helped me understand my Filipino girlfriend a lot better in
Love this, lmao when watching the video! Im filipino born and raised in the US but know all these stereotypes being around other filipinos 😉 so accurate! Sharing this now, haha
Many filipino men truly hate their Malaysian and Indonesian ancestry due to Western and Eastern Asian (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) beauty trends. It has made them hostile, jealous, dillusional, and sociopathic with homosexual tendencies towards other filipino men
What nonsense. I have been allover Philippines. And have many longtime Pinoy friends.Pinoys are not very good in hiding something about themselves. If Pinoys try to hide something about their ancestry its mostly the Chinese or Japanese part, that is denied. And homosexual tentendies? Compared to many other countries, there are very few homosexuals in the Philippines (Only lately noticeable is a growing fashion for lesbian experiments) The only population group, where I found significant percentage of homosexuality was the muslim population in the South-western islands)
Why would some Filipinos with Chinese or Japanese heritage hide it when those two nationalities have so much more culture and more advanced?
In Australia(and possibly other places, another filo stereotype that I’ve noticed is that we always have a guitar somewhere in our household, whether or not we can play it.
Great reply, po. God bless! 🙂 – Blaise
How I wish I’m a typical Filipina but probably I’m one of the few belonging to the micro percentage of uncommon one here because #1: I’m not a fan of karaokes and neither is my family (dancing is the norm whenever we have gatherings), #2: I envy those with Asian hair (shiny, black hair), mine is brown but unhealthy despite the many treatments, #3: I’m an introvert and uncomfortable with socializing, #4: I’m the complete opposite of accepting and forgiving type, #5: I don’t have the stereotypical Mongoloid or Malay look
Very observant article. I would add a few things. Physically, many Filipinas have a full round butt, inherited from Spanish genes after centuries of interbreeding. I would have estimated average female height at greater than 5 ft in cities, after decades of better diet in some parts. However, across rural areas it is probably more like 4ft 10in.
To say Filipinas are easy suggests they all jump into bed without so much as a ‘wait’, driven by slutishness. In fact most are very romantic and foolishly believe that a guy who charms her will stay with her and the inevitable baby, in a society still dominated by the Romance Catholic Church and huge ignorance about conception. Most believe that you won’t get pregnant after just a few fucks.
This is tragic because they are naturally the most caring and loving women I have ever met and deserve better.
Finally you did not mention ‘tampo’, the uniquely Fili method of disciplining a guy for bad behaviour. It makes the silent treatment feel like a walk in the park!
Hello! This is a great article! I’m Blaise, a Canadian Artist, Author, and Blogger. I’m half-Filipino (by marriage!), and have always been fascinated with the Philippines. Particularly, the people. I am writing a Relationship guide book, so Pinays can find a good Foreigner, and vice-versa. So many people are becoming victimized nowadays, and there are so many false opinions floating around about Filipinas and Foreigners alike. My hope is to educated the public in an entertaining way, and the prove that the Philippines truly is the greatest place on earth. I hope to one day soon call it home. Salamat and God bless you all. Blaise, FB Turnbull (facebook), bullwits.com
A lot of this is very true. I had a friend who was dating a filipino man and she broke it off because she found out the amount of debt he had was outrageous. He would buy her very expensive presents, go on nice holidays, nice car, clothes etc… but he didn’t have the money for that lifestyle. He insisted they always go to restaurants to eat and she suggested instead she cook for him and his friends and he laughed. She’s a great cook, but he said him and his friends like to go to restaurants.
The women are super sweet and sometimes have very cute names! That’s something I’ve noticed. They always have gentle voices and are just so upbeat even if they’re going through a hard time. It’s very rare you will meet a bitchy filipino woman.