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

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.