By Maxene Mamba / Correspondent
I’M sure I am not the only Filipino to notice it. I’m also sure many of us have seen the similarity that some characterized flip-flops with a torrential flood of class and brand distinction. But flip-flops are tsinelas.
There, I said it. I feel like the little boy yelling, “The emperor is naked!” I actually undressed the power of the fad.
The fad has powers stronger than Harry’s wand. (No sexual reference here.) The fad has the power to embellish, enchant and gather its victims like the children to the Pied Piper’s flute.
How did my senses get suspended? How did I spend hundreds of pesos more for something I can get in the palengke (local wet market).
Some say it’s only being human because humans are social beings and they do want to be sosyal: what used to mean fashionably trendy but now is referred to as aspirational.
I’m only being real, not judging. I have sosyal in my blood too. I have fallen from my intellectual horse for the likes of certain kinds of phones and brand-preferred drinks. No one told me to like it. The thing is, I like it for no reason other than just because most people like it. In most minds, that means it should be liked and the unconscious cycle of liking the popular begins.
Like most fashion fads, they are sought after, and for a time, people flock to the fad like bees to honey. They come in drones until the fad is undeniably everywhere. Then time does its little trick to the fad: it turns everyone’s liking into hating or, worse yet, indifference. In time, every fad will be hated. That’s what I think happened to the bakya.
The bakya was once the most common footwear for women. It was all the rage in the US in the fifties. It was considered a novel item bought and worn abroad to show the distinct culture of the Philippines. After being worn by the richest women, everyone started wearing the bakya. Mass production, hence, arrived and the rich people left: They didn’t want to wear the bakya anymore. But everyone else still wore it and so the bakya became a by-word to mean what Wikipedia now describes as “low-class, unsophisticated and cheap.”
I guess what they actually meant is that the bakya isn’t popular anymore; it is no longer the fad. With as much fervor there was to acquire one, there is now the disdain in still having one.
The fate of the bakya, however, was quite contrary to the specific brand of flip-flops created cheap and affordable by a Scotsman in 1962. Only the poor wore it until 1990s when they flipped the color of the sole over to create a one-toned footwear. The rich started wearing them and, until now, even wear them to even the most formal occasions like weddings.
Flip-flops, tsinelas, if you may, probably took off from our trade with the Japanese. Our Asian neighbors called it zori, which is a slipper made of wood and rice straw. Gender classification also revolved around the zori: black straps for men, red for women. A zori was also only worn with a formal kimono.
A zori shouldn’t be mistaken for the wooden clogs seen worn by sumo wrestlers. The footwear is called geta and can be worn informally. Finally, there is a waraji, which is the footwear for common people. I try not to think that we don’t like the tsinelas because it’s Asian. I like to think it is more because they are manufactured cheaply.
These footwears are all slippers yet they carry the undertow of social meaning, culture and price tag that is theirs alone. That is sort of how the social human operates. It’s never just a pair of shoes: It’s price, it’s brand, it’s culture.
My challenge: Walk a mile in another person’s footwear.
Take a look at people in the street and friends you see. Try to understand why they wear the shoes that they do. Does it say something about their personality, culture and generation? Do your shoes resonate with who you are or are you just following a fad?