Fashion SONA

MANILA
Leave it to us Filipinos to trivialize a serious occasion. Last July 22 President Benigno Aquino III went to Congress to report on his work and his audience turned the event into an over-the-top fashion show.
The President’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) is an annual summing up of the executive department’s accomplishments and plans. And yet every year legislators make it a parade of expensive wardrobes designed expressly for the occasion.
Women congresspeople and their male counterparts’ spouses make grand entrances to blinding television lights and the gushing inquiries of breathless journalists about who they’re wearing and other such worthless minutiae. The scene is no different from the glittery “red-carpet” spectacles put on by Hollywood as they tout their stars for the whole world to see.
And Congress obliges everyone’s ego by conveniently providing specially mounted photo-op backdrops to make the whole process even more enchanting for the viewing public.
Really? Why the excess and the ostentatious display?
The President reports on the government’s efforts to rev up the economy and reduce the number of poor people in the country and his audience comes to the occasion dolled up in their finest, specially put together by the nation’s top and expensive couturiers. No need for the President to highlight the great contrast between rich and poor, his audience has already provided visual proof of that.
It’s proper to welcome the President with dignified attires. But to overdo it with a display of extravagant dresses and showy bling-bling is simply going over the top. The event morphs from a serious reporting by the chief executive to something like what the show biz industry puts up during their awards rites, or like a gala among the Philippines’ wealthy.
Next time, the President must politely ask his congressional counterparts to take it easy on the glitter and makeup and instead come in more business-like attire. At this last SONA mascara must have been on sale because many of the ladies came smeared too heavily with it.
What made it worse is that the reporters who cover the event also came decked in gowns and elaborately embroidered barongs Tagalog as if competing with the people they’re covering.
It’s so typically Filipino to overdress. We’ve mastered the art of overkill in everything we do, whether in the way we build unnecessarily huge houses or our penchant for expensive cars and garish jewelry. And then we’re surprised when the poor wonder how our elected leaders are able to live sumptuous lives.
Is this the over-compensation of an insecure people making up for their inferiority complex? People build palatial homes here even though they don’t need them, buy showy cars instead of utilitarian ones, and throw bashes that make the poor disgorge their last spartan meal in disgust. Is this just plain showiness and bragging or is ostentatious display the refuge of the insecure?
This is a poor country, for crissakes, this kind of excess is a no-no. For example, the news that Rolls Royce was opening a dealership here and that orders had already been coming in should make us all throw up. Show biz stars and socialites are reported to spend a cool million pesos on a single designer handbag. If asked why, their typical answer would be callous, like: because I can.
Our congresspeople must really be making big bucks to be able to custom-order expensive gowns and tailor-made suits or barongs. The people aren’t surprised at this because they know that people in Congress have creative ways of making money.
But shouldn’t a sense of proportion prevail? Why not come dressed in proper attire apropos the occasion, which is an honest-to-goodness oral reporting by the President on the state of the nation? Why turn the occasion into a fashion event which is, if you think about it, a disrespect toward Mr. Aquino because it trivializes his visit to the Congress to report on his work and distracts everyone from the serious business of the state? To this, the congresspeople might claim that they’re honoring the President by dressing up, but this writer takes the opposite view.
We borrowed the tradition of making a SONA from the United States. There, everybody who attends, including their president, comes dressed in daily business attire. For them, it’s just another day in the office. For our congresspeople, it’s just another fashion show.
Unwittingly, our legislators cut up a telling caricature of themselves. Leave it to us copycats to lampoon ourselves by doing things in excess. And in the most inappropriate times.
No wonder the poor want to have their own SONA: the men and women in those expensive costumes look so different from them, they can’t really be their representatives.
***