WHY A PURPLE ROSE ICON?
For over 30 years, horticulturists the world over, largely in the West, cross-bred and hybridized roses to create the perfect purple rose. It does not occur in nature and is a created thing. It is no different from any other rose, except it has been exoticized and set apart by human will. It is artificial and yet no different from any other rose: looks the same, smells the same, has thorns, leaves, stems, roots. But it was forced to be different. The purple rose exists not for its own evolutionary purposes but for the pleasure of others. The same with our women who are forced into becoming a created stereotype (not even a historical stereotype but a deliberately concocted one, to serve the needs of globalization) a thing for other’s use. In adapting to that persona, our women suffer immeasurable self denial, as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, as Filipina women. Just as the Purple Rose is set apart, isolated and denies, to a certain extent, its self as a rose and its affinity with o
