Two Saturday nights ago, at the grand ballroom of City of Dreams, over 400 distributors nationwide were all excited to hear the announcement made by Alexandra Roque, brand manager at M&Co. Cosmetics, that it has found an iconic ambassador, and it was no other than Kapuso star Rhian Ramos.
The guests at the sales/distributors gig that night gave the star a stirring welcome with a thunderous applause and unending screams, making Rhian nearly teary eyed though held her tears back as she was wearing the company’s make up, M&Co. Cosmetics. For less than an hour, she stayed on stage giving the guests pep talk on why she accepted the offer to be the face of the makeup brand.
Later, Rhian stepped out of the ballroom to face some members of the press, including this columnist.
She said, “I did my make up tonight. Well, I do most of my makeup, just like in my latest soap, The One That Got Away, I also did my makeup and in some other shows and events as well.”
Rhian might have access to some of the best makeup artists in the ’biz but she is just as capable as doing her own makeup. “That’s for continuity purposes,” she noted.
“I always want to look like Rhian kasi. Di ba ang tendency kapag iba-iba ’yung nagme-makeup sayo, minsan nag-iiba din ’yung look,” she explained. “Most of my events, I’ll do my own and natuto ako out of necessity talaga.”
The 27-year-old actress believes in the saying, “The way you present yourself is how you want to be treated sometimes.” It’s the reason she advises every makeup enthusiast to “always look for the right product for your skin” as makeup “helps boost your confidence.”
“Kasi di ba not everything works for you talaga. Like, first, you have to understand your skin tone pa, kung anong shade ang bagay sa’yo. Ako, I use concealers na hindi magmu-mukhang ‘Ay naka-foundation siya.’ I prefer a no makeup look kasi it’s very feminine and non-threatening,” she shared.
“When I want to feel tough naman, I put some eyeliner and dark lipstick. So sometimes it depends on your mood din.”
Rhian is the first-ever celebrity endorser of M&Co. Cosmetics Inc. She looks forward to have her own makeup line soon.
“I would really love to do that in the future. Kasi I’d been doing makeup for myself for seven years na and I guess, marami naman na akong na-discover na secrets or tips that I can share with the girls so let’s see,” she said.
Rhian Ramos is another celebrity in the Philippines that is being used in marketing a brand of cosmetics line. There have been celebrities before her, including a gay man who has his own lipstick line.
This word war between a director and his star is the item du jour among entertainment tabloid columnists, some even going further to presume there might be something deeper than just professional misreading between them.
Atom Araullo’s argument against Mike de Leon’s accusations that the actor disappointed him during the shoot of Citizen Jake (the film, by the way, has been pulled out in most theaters as it did poorly during the week it was screened) is by far his defense as his stature as a media celebrity and reputation as a journalist (which De Leon’s questioned if it were anything more serious than being just a pretty boy on screen and talking about things that many people are not able to relate with) is being threatened. And why not, it is Mike de Leon, an iconic filmmaker talking, and not just anyone who learned to shoot a video on his cameraphone.
I am particularly affected, though agreeing in a way, by his statement on Araullo’s kind of journalism. He wrote that he “only realized later that Atom’s journalism was not exactly the kind of journalism’ he had in mind.
“It’s not the gritty kind but more of the celebrity-centered schlock that sometimes verges on entertainment, even showbiz. Looking back, I can see why he wanted to become a movie actor. Perhaps the journalist was really a closet movie star,” Mike said in a post that has since been removed.
The success or failure of Citizen Jake in the box office is not because it starred a lackluster lead performer whose popularity is dubious and neither because it was made by an eremite of a filmmaker whose only wish for his film is for his “class” perception of what’s wrong with the Philippine society to be the living gospel among the young.
Unfortunately, with social media being the latest wave among the tools for information among the young, Citizen Jake was less a sensation but more of a curiosity among a small percentage of the country’s population.
Whether this conflict between director and actor would generate further interest in a movie that not many people agree with is still something that I should see in the next coming days.
Just as now, Lav Diaz’s four-hour epic musical-without-musical accompaniment is screening in empty theaters.