Recently, TikTok has been booming with controversy about a discourse regarding a well-known Asian store named “H-Mart.” It started when TikTok user @say_qis posted a video talking about an experience shopping in H-Mart, specifically when she came across a white girl and gave her a “side eye.” The user would comment in the video that “I can’t stop myself from giving snark to the [white] people at Asian grocery stores.” This sparked outrage and a hotbed of debate, birthing the concept of “H-Mart gate.” Many commenters expressed that she was wrong for gatekeeping public spaces, but others argued that there is validity in her argument about white counterparts overutilizing foreign cultural spaces, taking access from those within said culture who can recognize the importance of spaces such as a market.
Another controversy that was fueled by the flames of H-Mart-gate when a popular white TikTok food enthusiast named Logan, known through his name @logagm, collaborated with Fly By Jing, an Asian brand, creating the “First ever Hot Pot Bomb,” a pre-made Hot Pot soup base cubes for easier at-home Hot Pot.
The issue? Pre-made Hot Pot cubes have already existed long before this collaboration. Before this, Logan was known for sharing many recipes associated with Asian culture, specifically Korean foods like cucumber salad (Oi Muchim) or soy marinated eggs. The popularization was seen as appropriation when multiple creators came out to credit Logan more than Korean food creators, praising him for “discovering” a recipe that had existed before TikTok was created.
Food is one of the most important foundations of a culture, and alongside that are beauty and aesthetic trends. The beauty community has always cycled through different makeup looks and trends like Y2K makeup, Douyin and more. This time, a Filipino beauty trend began circulating the internet after a song named “Bebot” by the Black Eyed Peas became popular, with many beauty content creators mimicking the “Bebot” makeup look from the music video.
The “Bebot” makeup look was from the early 2000s, heavily influenced by the Y2K culture at the time, with the term “Bebot” in Tagalog referring to a “babe” or “hot girl” in direct translations to English. The look consisted of thinner, sleeker eyebrows, tanner complexion, glossed lips and smoky eye makeup, embracing the similar natural features of Filipinos at the time.
When it came to my attention that Filipino makeup and aesthetics were trending all over social media, I was ecstatic to see which content creators would participate, especially someone who looked like me. To my disappointment, I saw little to no features similar to mine trending on social media in my algorithm. It was mainly East Asian creators, white creators or any other person who was not Filipino. But, I was more surprised at the fact that comments would praise these creators, crowning them as “Queen of the Bebot trend.”
As the trend grew, non-Filipino content creators began to participate in the “Bebot” trend. They used the “Bebot” song, tag #Bebot, but barely credited their Filipino counterparts, who essentially created and popularized the makeup trend. The lack of credit to the original creators feels intentional, and the sudden rush seems to be more about hopping on the bandwagon than actually celebrating the cultural roots.
Bebot isn’t just a makeup trend to everyone; it carries cultural and social weight. In the modern beauty industry, Filipinos have always been under scrutiny for their aesthetic features. This is exemplified in the slur “Jungle Asian,” used to antagonize and bully mainly Southeast Asians for the way they look.
“Jungle Asians” because of the tropical nature of the country, or Southeast Asian countries, like Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and others.
Growing up with tan skin, a flatter nose and fuller lips, I am familiar with the term Jungle Asian, especially coming from my East Asian counterparts. I was called “different” and even “ugly” because of how I looked. There has barely been representation of ethnocentric Filipino beauty in the mainstream American media, and if there was, they mainly had Eurocentric features like Olivia Rodrigo and Pia Wurtzbach.
Even in mainstream Philippine media, they praised the Eurocentric ideal of beauty, promoting skin bleaching, nose jobs and the “re-beautification” of Filipinos. It created a stigma against those who could not conform to such standards, resulting in bullying or severe insecurities since childhood. These insecurities are created and then capitalized by companies promoting treatments to “solve” these problems, with half of the country’s population interacting with some form of skin whitening product or procedure.
Similar to the H-Mart gate, there is a stigma against foreign food, especially Asian food. Kimchi “smelled weird,” seaweed was “gross,” balut was “disgusting.” But now that it has become trending due to the popularization of those foods by white content creators, it has become more “palatable.” But why does it have to be trending for it to be considered good?
Many fail to acknowledge that, while yes, it is great for these things to be trending, it still lacks the proper cultural appreciation, specifically when white counterparts are praised more than the people who originated them. This appreciation has turned into a modern-day cultural colonization because of the lack of credit given towards the trend’s ancestry and practitioners.
These ”trends” have existed long before many of us were born. Social media has made it easier to “appreciate,” but also to appropriate different cultures and practices without understanding the importance behind them. Acknowledging the ancestry and history of a trend is what contributes to healthy cultural diversity, especially in online spaces like TikTok or Instagram.
There are dozens of Filipino content creators who deserve applause for the popularization of “Bebot,” and crediting early 2000s Filipinos is an important aspect to the participation in this trend. It’s not Y2K, it’s not just an aesthetic and it’s not just makeup. It has been about identity and the reclamation of the point that beauty isn’t about conforming to Eurocentric standards.
