TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: The Bachelors and Femina Days of Cebu

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The Bachelors and Femina Days of Cebu - Memorabilia photos of Cecilia Brainard

Dear Readers,

I'm still scanning some old pictures and here are some more. The ones where the ladies (me included) are wearing formal Filipina dresses were taken at the Bachelors and Femina ball in Cebu City. The Bachelors and Femina club was a social group that started in 1919. The group fizzled out in the 1980s but was revived recently. I hear it's not the same. To understand why the original group was special, one has to know Cebu. There are so-called "Old Families" who can trace their Cebu roots three-or-four-generations back. Their children were the ones in the original Bachelor and Femina group.

The BF annual ball in December was the biggest social event in Cebu, and the young ladies and men were "presented" if you will to the public. There was an old fashioned dance, the rigodon de honor, where the men were on one end of the dance hall, and the women on the other, and they marched toward the center, met, bowed, twirled, moved about in formation. It was very quaint and complicated and we had to practice for weeks to learn it. In fact the practices were more fun than the ball itself because that's where the socializing actually took place. That's were the flirtation, courtships, and other drama happened.

The young ladies dressed to the hilt, and mothers went to their bank vaults to take out their heirloom jewelry for these ladies to wear at the ball.

l-r: Chickie Reyes, Cecilia Manguerra, Ana Manguerra, Paching Victorino

Here are a few pictures with me dressed for the ball. The one where I'm wearing blue is for another event, because it's not a Filipina dress. It may have been for the Kahirup ball in Manila, another high-society event similar to the Bachelors Femina ball.

I have a few pictures when I was younger. My model posing is silly; at some point, someone taught us how to pose and do the catwalk. I prefer the casual stance of the picture where I'm sitting on the verandah. Oh... that picture is now so faded.

The pouting -- I have no idea why I have a lot of pictures wherein I'm pouting. At some point I wore braces, while I was in college, and maybe I was wearing braces then. Or maybe I was just moody.

Thank you for allowing me to indulge in this memorabilia.

(I'm in the middle, in green with white beads at the bottom part)

I'm fifth from the left, standing, middle row, behind the man

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard's official website is ceciliabrainarddotcom. She is the award-winning author and editor of 22 books, including When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, The Newspaper Widow, Magdalena, Selected Stories, Vigan and Other Stories, and more. She edited Growing Up Filipino 1, 2, & 3, Fiction by Filipinos in America, Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America, and other books.. Her work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and articles have been widely anthologized. Cecilia has received many awards, including a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st District, and the Outstanding Individual Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has lectured and performed at UCLA, USC, University of Connecticut, University of the Philippines, PEN, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many others. She has served in the Board of literary arts groups such as PEN, PAWWA (Pacific Asian American Writers West), among others.