Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States, 1920S–1930S

‘‘These Guys Came Out Looking Like Movie Actors’’: Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States, 1920s–1930s

MINA ROCES

The author is professor of history in the School of Humanities and Languages, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia.

This article analyzes the dress and consumption practices of the ﬁrst generation of Filipino male migrants to the United States who arrived from 1906 until the end of World War II. It argues that Filipino migrant men used dress and consumption practices to fashion new identities that rejected their working selves as a lower-class marginal group. The contrast between the utilitarian clothes worn during working hours and the formal suit accen- tuated the sartorial transformation from lower-class agricultural laborer or Alaskan cannery worker to fashionable dandy and temporarily erased the stigma of manual labor. Two groups of well-dressed Filipino men behaved in contradictory ways: as binge consumers and as anti-consumers. Collectively, Filipino consumption practices that included dress challenged the parameters of social exclusion.

Segundo Valdez Bautista migrated to the United States in 1927 at the age of twenty-six and by the 1930s made Stockton,

Research for this article was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP120100791, A History of Filipino Migration and Identity, 1906–2010). I would like to thank the editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments. I would like to acknowledge the help of Anita Navalta Bautista of the Filipino National Historical Society-Stockton Chapter, for providing me with sources and photographs for this article and also for helping me research the origins of the McIntosh suit. I am grateful to Thomas Carey the librarian/archivist in the San Francisco Public Library for his invaluable assistance in locating the shop in Powell street where the Filipino men had their suits tailor-made, Dr. Michael Cullinane and Associate Professor Dawn Mabalon for sharing their photography collections with me, and to Dr. Anthony Corones in the School of Humanities and Languages UNSW for alerting me to the Todd article. Finally, I owe a debt to the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle, the archives at the University of California-Davis, and the Filipino American National Historical Society of Stockton for letting me use their archives and for giving me permission to publish their fabulous photos.

Paciﬁc Historical Review, Vol. 85, No. 4, pages 532–576. ISSN 0030-8684, eISSN 1533-8584 © 2016 by the Paciﬁc Coast Branch, American Historical Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals. 532 php?p¼reprints. DOI: 10.1525/phr.2016.85.4.532. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 533

California his home. Bautista was known to his friends as Manong Sunny, ‘‘Manong’’ being a term of respect in the Ilocano language. Like many of the first wave Filipino male migrant laborers to the United States, he performed seasonal work in the agricultural fields of California and in the Alaskan canneries. In the 1930s, after a hard day’s work cutting asparagus he would come home and take a bath and a nap. Afterward, he would embark on the ritual of dressing for his evening at the Stockton Rizal Social Club. The evening outing required careful and loving preparation. First, Manong Sunny would put on his expensive one hundred dollar tailor-made MacIntosh suit, complete with formal necktie, and would don a pair of squeaky-clean and shiny Florsheim shoes. Then he would splash himself with Tabu cologne, pomade his hair with Three Flowers, and, with a wire applied to the top of his head, meticulously part his hair in a perfectly straight line from the middle of his forehead to the back of his neck. When his transformation was complete, Man- ong Sunny became the ballerino (his nickname at the club)—handsome, dashing, and ready to dance the swing with any woman.1 In this attire no one would possibly guess that a few hours previously he had been covered in the peat dust of the fields as he toiled as an asparagus cutter in the hot sun. Instead, he looked like a wealthy man dressed in the most expensive fashion of the time. Manong Sunny had photographs taken decked out in his splendid expensive attire to send to relatives in the Philippines. In his self-representation, Manong Sunny was a successful migrant and a man with enough money to look like an American movie star (Figure 1). This paper analyzes the dress and consumption practices of the first generation of Filipino men in the United States who arrived from 1906 until the eve of World War II. It argues that Filipino migrants used dress and consumption practices to fashion new identities that rejected their working selves as a lower-class marginal group. This sartorial transformation was a symbol of rebellion and leisure for one group of Filipino laborers and a sign of conservatism and conformity for another group of Filipinos who were members of the fraternal organization the Filipino Federation of America (FFA).

1. The story of Segundo Valdez Bautista appeared in Anita Navalta Bautista, ‘‘Taxi Dance, Cock-Fights and Gin Rummy,’’ newsletter FANHS-Stockton, January, 2014, p. 5. I thank Anita Navalta Bautista for information about Mr. Bautista, who was a close relative of her husband. 534 Paciﬁc Historical Review

Figure 1. The Bautista cousins in a formal studio portrait taken circa 1930s. Left to right: Back row, Segundo ‘‘Sonny’’ Bautista, Cornelio ‘‘Charlie’’ Bautista. Seated: Estapanio ‘‘Larry’’ Bautista. Source: Personal papers of Anita Navalta Bautista.

I suggest that from the 1920s to the 1930s, dandiacal dress and consumer behavior were strategies deployed by Filipino men to achieve the white masculine ideals touted by Hollywood movies of the time, and to communicate success to relatives back in the Phi- lippines. The audiences for their fashionable performance included their peers, white society, and their families in the homeland to Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 535 whom they sent photographs of themselves along with remittances, in letters posted regularly. But Filipino men were not a homogenous group. Two groups of well-dressed Filipinos in formal suits distinguished themselves through consumer behavior, underscoring the complex ways migrants negotiated the terms of their leisure life. Historians of the zoot suit have made a similar argument about the use of dandiacal dress as a strategy for rejecting working class identities.2 The zoot suit was bright in color with exaggerated shoulders, an extra-long jacket, and pleated slacks that billowed from the waist but were tight at the ankle.3 African Americans and Mexican Americans quickly popularized this fashion style and cre- ated a whole new subculture associated with it that included a new unique pachuca/o slang called calo´ that was incomprehensible to outsiders.4 Historians writing about the late 1930s–-1940s argue that the very public behavior of many zoot suiters ﬂaunted their privileg- ing of leisure over work.5 The choice to wear this exaggerated and ﬂamboyant style challenged or countered the dominant culture, transforming the places they occupied into, in the words of the historian Luis Alvarez, ‘‘subaltern counter-publics.’’6 According to Alvarez, Zoot suit wearers were ‘‘race rebels,’’ ‘‘carving out a distinct generational and ethnic identity, and refusing to be good proletar- ians.’’7 The politicization of the zoot suit and its connections with ethnicity—epitomized by its link with the identity of the pachuco/a— fashioned a distinctly Mexican American subculture and celebrated the dignity of the wearer’s ethnicity amidst racial, economic, and

2. Luis Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot. Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994); Anthony Mac´ıas, Mexican American Mojo: Popular Music, Dance, and Urban Culture in Los Angeles 1935–1968 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); Elizabeth R. Escobedo, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits: The Lives of Mexican American Women on the World War II Home Front (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013); Catherine S. Ram´ırez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit. Gender, Nation- alism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); Sarah Elizabeth Howard, ‘‘Zoot to Boot: The Zoot Suit as Both Costume and Symbol,’’ Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 28 (2010): 112–31; Holly Alfrod, ‘‘The Zoot Suit: Its History and Inﬂuence,’’ Fashion Theory 8, No. 2 (2004): 225–36; Shane White, Stylin’: African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). 3. Howard, ‘‘Zoot to Boot,’’ 113. 4. Macias, Mexican American Mojo, 84. 5. Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot, 117. 6. Ibid., 116. 7. Ibid., 163. 536 Paciﬁc Historical Review

social discrimination.8 Mexicans who wore the zoot suit, set off by a ducktail hairdo and a gold watch and chain, were called pachu- cos/as, and were associated with radicalized youth who rejected traditional Mexican values as well as the mainstream United States conceptions of race, sexuality, and labor.9 The zoot suit’s semiotic ties with the fabrication of a new subculture allowed both men and women to experiment with the style and the choice to wear the fashion ranged from expressing a radicalized ethnicity or indulging in criminal behavior, to simply a desire to look cool.10 The fashion had its gendered implications: Hispanic women who wore it rebelled against traditional constructions of Mexican femininity that required chaste, obedient daughters at a time when they were gaining ﬁnancial independence through participation in the wartime economy.11 Thezootsuitwasthere- fore much more than a suit of clothes; it was a fashion style that signaled rebellion that had in the words of Sara Elizabeth Ho- ward ‘‘iconoclastic implications that taunted the dominant society;’’ it evoked hyper masculinity and was intrinsic to the cultural construction of Mexican American and African American ethnic identities.12 Like the patrons of the zoot suit, Filipinos in an earlier era of the 1920s and 1930s found dignity through fashionable dress, refusing, writes Alvarez, ‘‘to allow wage labor to be the primary signiﬁer of their working-class identity.’’13 But unlike those scholars who argued that those who wore the zoot suit were attempt- ing to look foreign or distinct from the rest of mainstream Americans, I am arguing that Filipino men wore the formal suit to look like white Hollywood’s leading men.14 Instead of dressing to exude ethnic difference, Filipinos aspired to achieve the white U.S. masculine ideals epitomized by the Hollywood dandies of the era.

8. Mac´ıas, Mexican American Mojo; Escobedo, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits, 2; Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot, 115–16. 9. Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot, 116; Escobedo, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits; Ramirez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit; Kelley, Race Rebels. 10. Escobedo, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits; Ram´ırez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit. 11. Escobedo, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits; Ram´ırez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit; Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot, 129–34. 12. Howard, ‘‘Zoot to Boot,’’ 113–14. 13. Alvarez, The Power of the Zoot, 98. 14. Howard, ‘‘Zoot to Boot,’’ 115–16. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 537

The dandified hero emerged in Hollywood in the late 1920s and 1930s and became a masculine ideal. The film historian Drew Todd describes this new type of hero as follows: elegant and suave, he glided across burnished dance floors, assimilated to any social situation, and held a spell over women with his charm. An avatar of refinement, he belonged to a new self-made aristocracy founded on the principles of leisure, performance, and good taste rather than mere lineage.15

Hollywood actors who played this urbane, debonair personality on the screen included the likes of William Powell, Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Ronald Colman.16 This Hollywood dandy, writes Todd, ‘‘preferred the ballroom, nightclub, and pent- house to the jungle, desert or office; cocktails and champagne to beer; lovers to wives. (Children were out of the question).’’17 Fastid- ious to a fault and always dressed in formal attire, the suave, dashing hero bon vivant used his charm, intellect, and impeccable refined taste to achieve his ends.18 In 1930s musicals, Astaire appeared in modern suits, pressed pants, patent leather shoes and bucks, ascots, canes, formal hats, and his trademark tuxedos.19 The Hollywood ideal man who was not associated with any particular social class, was also an ultimate consumer of expensive items and haute cou- ture.20 This Hollywood masculine ideal became the model for Fili- pino working-class laborers in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly those who lived and worked in the West Coast of the United States. In her seminal article on Filipino American consumption of Amer- ican and Philippine films in California, the ethnic studies scholar Denise Khor notes that Filipinos there were great patrons of Holly- wood films from 1924–-1948, and argues that ‘‘Filipinos remade their identities and communities through their consumption of Hol- lywood films and urban leisure.’’21 Khor’s research indicates that

15. Drew Todd, ‘‘Decadent Heroes Dandyism and Masculinity in Art Deco Holly- wood,’’ Journal of Popular Film and Television 32, No. 4: 168. 16. Ibid., 169. 17. Ibid., 168. 18. Ibid., 175–76. 19. Ibid., 175. 20. Ibid., 169–70. 21. Denise Khor, ‘‘‘Filipinos are the Dandies of the Foreign Colonies’: Race, Labor Struggles, and the Transpacific Routes of Hollywood and Philippine Films, 1924–1948,’’ Pacific Historical Review 81, No. 3 (Aug., 2012): 372–73. 538 Pacific Historical Review

Filipinos throughout the 1930s provided the bulk of the patronage of Stockton theatres since they often returned to see ﬁlms three or four times.22 Anita Navalta Bautista, a second-generation Filipina American mestiza (she had a Mexican mother), recalled that when the Filipino farm laborers went to Stockton, ‘‘the movie were a must.’’23 There were also a number of Filipinos who worked as uncredited extras in Hollywood ﬁlms representing various ethnici- ties such as Chinese, Mexican, and Polynesian and who worked in the studios as assistants, chauffeurs, and cooks.24 Working alongside the grand leading men of Hollywood made it natural for them to adopt these celluloid heroes as the role model for fashion and deportment. This case study will illustrate that rejecting the mainstream American culture through donning a zoot suit was not the only way that ethnic minorities employed fashion as a form of resistance to racist policies of segregation and discrimination.

The formal suit The style of dress that Hollywood leading men wore in the 1920s and 1930s exuded fastidious elegance: modern tuxedos, and smooth, slick modern suits, pressed pants, patent leather shoes, sometimes with canes, ascots, or formal hats.25 According to the scholar Linda Espan˜a Maram, Filipinos wore a ‘‘McIntosh suit’’ deﬁned as ‘‘expensive formal attire with padded shoulders and wide lapels worn by some of Hollywood’s most famous leading men, such as William Powell.’’26 The historian Dawn Mabalon also referred to a ‘‘McIntosh suit’’ as the leisure attire of Filipino agricultural workers in Stockton in the 1920s and 1930s.27 Neither scholar explores the origins of the term. My research has led me to a tailor shop called

22. Ibid., 389. 23. Anita Navalta Bautista to Mina Roces, email, March 11, 2015. I refer to Bautista as a Filipina American mestizo rather than as a Mexipino because that is the label she prefers. 24. Carina Monica Montoya, Filipinos in Hollywood (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Pub- lishing, 2008), 7–24; Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, March 11, 2015. 25. Todd, ‘‘Decadent Heroes,’’ 171–75. 26. Linda Espan˜a-Maram, Creating Masculinity in Los Angeles’s Little Manila Working- Class Filipinos and Popular Culture, 1920s–1950s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 111. 27. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart. The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 56, 124, 157, 177. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 539

MacIntosh Studio Clothes (spelled differently from the way Filipi- nos spelled it in their memoirs) with the address of 222 Powell Street in San Francisco.28 According to a 1984 column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Richard MacIntosh, ‘‘the postreet tailoring shop’’ that was ‘‘favored by show people,’’ opened in 1922 and closed in 1984.29 The McIntosh suit referred to a brand of suit made by this particular tailoring shop in San Francisco known for making the suits worn by the Hollywood stars, rather than a fashion style. Filipinos aspired to wear suits made by this exclusive brand that represented itself as ‘‘the ﬁnest tailor you could choose’’ because it was the same clothing company that made the clothing of the Hollywood leading men they saw in the movies.30 In 1953, The New Yorker published a letter on behalf of the Richard MacIn- tosh Organization that claimed:

We all like dealing with success. In the past 25 years Richard MacIntosh has tailored over 41,400 suits for ladies and gentlemen in northern California. No other tailor can offer this background and you, being successful, will appreciate the profoundness of their success. Here at Richard MacIntosh we feel success is a journey, not a destination.’’31

Jerry Paular, a Filipino salesman for the company, travelled to the labor camps, the pool halls, restaurants, cafes, card rooms, and dance halls to take measurements and then send them to be made in San Francisco.32 Anita Navalta Bautista recalled that her husband Cornelio ‘‘Charlie’’ Bautista would go to San Francisco in the 1950s to be ﬁtted by tailors in order to buy his McIntosh suit. He never referred to it as a suit—calling it ‘‘my McIntosh’’ rather than ‘‘my

28. Both Espanã-Maram and Mabalon spell it as ‘‘McIntosh’’ appropriating the spelling used in the memoirs of Filipino second-generation Americans writing about their ancestors. Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart, 56, 124, 157, and 177; Espanã-Maram, Creating Masculinity, 111–13,117, 130, 139–40. In the Pictorial book Filipinos in Hollywood, two photograph captions used the spelling ‘‘McIntosh Suit.’’ Montoya, Filipinos in Holly- wood, 31, 33. The 1943 San Francisco directory lists MacIntosh Studio Clothes on 222 Powell Street. Polk’s Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory, 1943, p. 1569. Herb Caen’s column refers to Richard MacIntosh and the Postreet Tailoring shop that opened in 1922. Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle, March 21, 1984, p. 37. 29. San Francisco Chronicle, March 21, 1984, p. 37. 30. Willard Curtis Bryon for the Richard MacIntosh Organization, ‘‘Inner Happiness in Northern California: A Letter Received by Somebody in San Francisco,’’ The New Yorker, October 17, 1953, 129. 31. Ibid. 32. Anita Navalta Bautista gained this information during an interview with Jerry Paular in Stockton. Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, March 23, 2015. 540 Pacific Historical Review

suit.’’33 When a California based Filipino declared that he was going to ‘‘wear his McIntosh,’’ it meant he was going to wear his best suit.34 In this paper I will use the phrase ‘‘formal suit’’ rather than McIn- tosh suit to refer to the popular leisure attire of Filipino men in the 1920s and 1930s that resembled the clothing worn by leading men in Hollywood movies of the time. The term ‘‘McIntosh’’ seemed to have local specificity, used primarily by Filipinos in California and particularly in Stockton, Hollywood, and Sacramento.35 My sources from Filipinos in Hawai‘i and Seattle do not use the term, preferring instead to use the generic term ‘‘suit.’’ According to Anita Bautista, ‘‘McIntosh is not a style, it just meant suit to the Stockton pinoy [Filipinos].’’36 But I want to underscore the point that many Stock- ton Filipinos aspired to have a McIntosh suit because that was the tailor shop that made the clothes for the Hollywood stars who were their role models. Filipinos wore tailor-made suits whether or not they were made-to-order by the actual MacIntosh studio in San Francisco. Oral history accounts claimed that Filipinos ‘‘would never buy a suit at the chain stores such as Sears, Roebuck or Montgomery Wards.’’37 Part of the reason according to Nicolas Catanio (who was 91 years old in 2015) was that the Filipino physique did not easily fit into the standard department store sizes, and in order to look good, the suit had to fit the individual body’s contour.38 The formal suit Filipinos wore that mimicked the costume of Hollywood dandies was usually double-breasted, with padded shoulders and a tapered waist. Filipinos preferred to wear suits in light grey with blue pinstripes, made of light material or gabardine (called Shark Skin), and woolen or wool blend suits in the winter.39 (One memoir from Hawai‘i, however, refers to the purchase of a suit in ‘‘banana-green’’ color). They also wore vests that transformed the

33. Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, March 11, 2015. 34. Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, March 24, 2015. 35. According to Anita Navalta Bautista, MacIntosh was the dominant brand fa- voured by Filipinos in the Stockton and Sacramento area. Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, March 11, 2015. 36. Ibid. 37. Nicolas Catanio (member of FFA, 91 years old in 2015), interview by Anita Na- valta Bautista, 2015 (interview transcript received in Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, March 16, 2015); Jerry Paular in Marisa Aroy, Little Manila Filipinos in California’s Heartland, DVD, 2007. 38. Catanio, interview. 39. Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, March 23, 2015. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 541 ensemble into a three-piece suit, and accessorized with a hat (Stet- son for example), a silk handkerchief in the breast pocket, and a cigar or pipe. Hair was heavily pomaded and combed into a slick style and parted on one side. Filipinos wore their best suits to all occasions: to parties, funerals, weddings, taxi-dance halls, and formal banquets held by Filipino organizations.40 Filipinos wore tailored suits went they went on promenades in the streets downtown on their days off. They put on their best suits to pose for the photograph to send home to relatives in the Philippines. Mem- bers of the FFA also wore their best suits in photographs used for their membership identity cards.41

Consumption and masculinity, exclusion and inclusion The Philippines became an American colony at the turn of the twentieth century. From 1906 until the 1930s many young Filipino men became pioneer migrants providing the mobile labor force that worked in the sugar plantations of Hawai‘i, the Alaskan salmon canneries, and the agricultural ﬁelds of California. More than one hundred thousand Filipinos came to Hawai‘i and the U.S. mainland by 1946.42 Filipinos also came to the United States as nurses, as members of the U.S. navy, and as government scholars (pensionados) to study at U.S. universities.43 My case study here focuses primarily on the young males (many of whom arrived in their teens) who were agricultural workers and who also performed seasonal work in the Alaskan canneries during the salmon season. The demographic sta- tistics favored men: the ratio was 10:1 in Hawaii, 14:1 in California, 33:1 in Washington and 47:1 in New York, with the 1930 Census showing only 2500 women out of 42,500 Filipinos in the entire United States.44 Anti-miscegenation laws prevented Filipino men from marrying white women, making gender a crucial factor with

40. Ibid. 41. The Benny Escobido collection of FFA identity cards shows a number of afﬁliates from their Hawai‘i branch in white suits wearing the organization’s special hat and regalia. 42. Dawn Mabalon, ‘‘Writing Angeles Monrayo in the Pages of Pinay History,’’ in Angeles Monrayo, Tomorrow’s Memories (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), 250. 43. Catherine Ceniza Choy, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2003); Rick Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898–1946 (New York: New York Uni- versity Press, 2011). 44. Mabalon, ‘‘Writing Angeles Monrayo,’’ 251. 542 Paciﬁc Historical Review

which to interpret the migration experience.45 Arriving in the United States in their teens without their extended families, these youth were on their own as they navigated coming-of-age in a racist environment. In the absence of elder Filipino male role models, these young Filipino men emulated the dashing leading men found in Hollywood films—characters who were not wealthy men (like themselves) but who looked rich and elegant and who lived glamorous lives spending money on the good things. Maram has already written an excellent analysis of the way Filipinos in the United States crafted new masculinities by celebrating the prizefighter, the athlete, the well-dressed fashionable dandy in a formal suit, and the hard worker with the sturdy physique.46 My study builds on this work by suggesting that Hollywood film stars became one of the male role models for these young Filipinos who were attracted to the fact that these celluloid heroes had no fixed economic or social class positions.47 By dressing like the movie stars, Filipinos were radical in two ways: First, these Hollywood leading men differed from the ideal men in the Philippines—Filipino masculine ideals in the homeland did not emulate the dandy. Instead men having relationships with several girlfriends simultaneously if they were single or keeping mistresseseventhoughtheywere already married, as well as politicians with power and patronage were admired.48 Second, through imitating the dress and deportment of film stars, Filipinos dared to claim equality with white middle-class men. My study departs from Maram’s work because it proposes that there were competing masculinities of at least two types. Two groups of well-dressed Filipinos distinguished themselves from each other by consumer practices. While one group represented the binge consumer—dancing in taxi-dance halls, gambling, drinking, and spending lavishly on expensive suits, the other group represented by the FFA banned drinking, smoking, gambling, and dancing while proposing a frugal vegetarian life.

45. Espan˜a-Maram, Creating Masculinity. 46. Ibid. For an article on Filipinos in the United States and changing gender narratives see Mina Roces, ‘‘Filipina/o Migration to the United States and the Remaking of Gender Narratives, 1906–2010,’’ Gender & History 27, No. 1 (April 2015): 190–206. 47. Drew Todd argued that the Hollywood dandy was ‘‘classless,’’ see Todd, ‘‘Dan- dyism and Masculinity,’’ 168–81. 48. See Roces, ‘‘Filipina/o Migration to the United States.’’ Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 543

The harsh reality of their working lives in the 1920s to 1930s Depression-era society was nothing like the social life of the movie characters in the ﬁlms. Filipinos in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s were excluded from U.S. citizenship, were not permitted to own private property until the 1940s, were compelled to live only in designated spaces such as the so-called Oriental quarter or the less salubrious parts of downtown, were not allowed in many public theatres (or relegated to segregated areas) or swimming pools, and were not served in restaurants.49 Public signs that warned ‘‘No Fili- pinos Allowed’’ were prominently displayed in hotels and restaurants.50 Filipinos were subjected to racial segregation in movie theatres.51 Sylvester Pili Mateo recalled, ‘‘in the restaurant, it says, ‘No Filipinos Wanted.’ The hotel ...‘No Filipino Allowed’ big sign in front.’’52 They were also ostracized in public spaces such as bea- ches, parks, lounges, and certain nightspots.53 Racist attitudes prevented them from obtaining anything more than the very lowest status jobs such as busboy, houseboy, waiter, dishwasher, agricultural laborer, cannery worker, and janitor. Even those few Filipinos who managed to acquire college degrees from universities in the United States were denied employment in their professional ﬁelds and were compelled to deskill.54 This spatial, social, and economic exclusion

49. Because of the unique position of the Philippines as a colony of the United States, these labor migrants until 1935 were given the status of nationals, an ambiguous category classifying them as neither citizens nor foreigners. The status of national meant that they were not subjected to the draconian 1924 Immigration Act, which barred foreigners from entering the United States. This special status facilitated the massive immigration that brought thousands of Filipinos first to Hawai‘i and Alaska and then to the West coast. But despite their status as colonial wards, they were prohibited from naturalized citizenship until 1946 because of race (see Rick Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898–1946 (New York and London: New York University Press, 2011). Once the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 was passed prom- ising Philippine independence after a ten year Commonwealth period (1935 onwards but it was disrupted by the Japanese Occupation), Filipinos lost their special title of nationals and were reclassified as aliens restricted to an immigration quota of only fifty a year. See Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart, 27–28, Fred Cordova in John Wehman (Director) Filipino Americans: Discovering Their Past for Their Future, VHS, FANHS 1994 FANHS produced by National Video Profiles, Inc., and Espanã-Maram, Creating Masculinity, 41. 50. Fred Cordova, Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans A Pictorial Essay/1763–circa 1963 (Seattle: Demonstration Project for Asian Americans, 1983), 114–15. 51. Khor, ‘‘Filipinos Are the Dandies’’, 377. 52. Quoted in Cordova, Filipinos, 115. 53. Ibid., 191. 54. Wehman, Filipino Americans Discovering Their Past for Their Future; Fujita-Rony, American Workers. 544 Pacific Historical Review

was intended to keep Filipinos marginalized as a racial group and invisible as a major labor workforce. By exclusion I mean that Fili- pinos were denied citizenship rights and were subject to segregation in housing, employment, and the use of public spaces, particularly leisure spaces. They were also prohibited from owning private property. Exclusion as segregation was not a uniquely Filipino experience—it affected the non-white population such as the Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans and the African Americans. But Filipinos did not simply accept the rubrics of their exclusion. They used the courtroom to challenge anti-miscegenation laws.55 Filipinos organized labor strikes for better wages and conditions in the sugar plantations of Hawai‘i and the agricultural ﬁelds of California and in the Alaskan canneries.56 Filipinos also formed mutual aid societies some of which were masonic organizations. The most notable ones were the Grande Oriente, the Cabal- leros de Dimas Alang, the Legionarios del Trabajo, and the FFA. A comprehensive history of the lodges has yet to be written, and only one scholar has written a major work on the FFA.57 These mutual aid societies were crucial not just in pooling resources to rescue those in need of ﬁnancial aid particularly during times of emer- gency such as sickness and death, they also became imagined as the new kinship group of these migrants, replacing the extended families in the homeland.58 Although the scholarly literature has given us a nuanced account of Filipina/o American history where the portrayal of the victimization of Filipinos is balanced by the inclusion of Filipino resistance in the form of unionism or civil rights activism, there is less attention given to the other areas where Filipino migrants might

55. For an excellent discussion of this matter, see Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion. 56. Melinda Tria Kerkvliet, Unbending Cane Pablo Manlapit: A Filipino Labor Leader in Hawai‘i (Honolulu: Office of Multicultural Student Services, 2002); John E. Reinecke, The Filipino Piecemeal Sugar Strike of 1924–25 (Honolulu: Social Science Research Institute, University of Hawai‘i, 1996); Dorothy Fujita-Rony, American Workers, Colonial Power: Philip- pine Seattle and the Transpacific West, 1919–1941 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 57. San Buenaventura, ‘‘Nativism and Ethnicity Nativism and Ethnicity in a Filipino- American Experience’’ (PhD diss., University of Hawaii, 1990). 58. Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart, 106–112; Chris Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor. The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry, 1897–1942 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 545 have been empowered.59 I would like to shift the analytical lens here by focusing on one other area where Filipino men could exercise power—as consumers. Maram’s landmark pioneering analysis of Filipino masculinity in Los Angeles introduces us to Filipinos as consumers of taxi-dance halls, where one purchased tickets to dance with women in short ritualized sequences.60 The scholars Dawn Ma- balon and Denise Khor reveal that Filipino consumer power was indeed recognized by Stockton business operators (Mabalon) and Japanese cinema owners (Khor) from the 1930s to the 1940s.61 There were no sumptuary laws that controlled the way Filipinos should dress. Their salaries no matter how small were able to give them disposable income to spend as they wished. Some of them pooled their financial resources together to purchase a shared car, an essential acquisition to take them to and fro the many farms in the West coast in search of employment. Many sent remittances to their families in the Philippines. Others spent their hard-earned money on gambling or at the taxi-dance hall. Before World War II most Filipinos in Stockton together spent around $2 million annually in the 1930s on gambling, cockfights and prostitution.62 Given the stiff competition for a bride or even a girlfriend, many of these men tried to woo a woman (whether a fellow Filipina or white, Mexican, Native American, or African American) by lavishing them with expensive presents. Mexican-Filipina mestiza Anita Bautista remembered that when she was only fourteen years old the man- ongs gave her expensive gifts such as a 14-karat gold bracelet with a heart-shaped locket, a platinum Hamilton watch, and a 14-karat gold necklace with a cross or locket.63 The huge disparity between the income earned by the men whose average wages were a dollar a day and the price tag of their

59. See Estella Habal, San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino Ameri- can Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007); John E. Reinecke, The Filipino Piecemeal Sugar Strike of 1924–1925 Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996); Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart; Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion; Kerkvliet, Unbending Cane; Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor; Fujita-Rony, American Workers. 60. Espan˜a-Maram, Creating Masculinity, Ch. 4. 61. Dawn Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart, 122; Khor, ‘‘Filipinos Are the Dan- dies’’, 371–403. 62. Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart, 84, 131. 63. Anita Navalta Bautista, ‘‘Love in the Time of Taxi Dancers,’’ Filipinas Magazine, Oct., 2007, 43. 546 Paciﬁc Historical Review

purchases may be referred to as ‘‘binge consumption’’—a term coined by scholar Richard Wilk to analyze the hedonistic style of consumption that is the ‘‘evil twin’’ lurking in the background behind the ideology of thrift and reasoned, socially integrative forms of consumption.’’64 Wilk argued, ‘‘Binge-like behavior emerges repeatedly when household institutions and family structures are weak, and working lives are highly gender-segregated.’’65 Wilk’s case study of British Honduras led him to conclude that the most common context of bingeing was:

‘‘A workforce that lived and worked in an isolated space outside of conven- tional human communities, away from conjugal families and the kinds of open public life where workers could escape from the workplace when their labor was ﬁnished. The usually male workforce was sustained on some form of ration and had few or no opportunities to spend their earnings while working. When workers returned from isolation, they spent all of most of their wages, often in a context of social revelry and release, in ways that left them either broke or indebted.’’66

In some ways, the predominantly male Filipino mobile workforce in the United States before World War II was compatible with Wilk’s description of binge-spenders. But while Wilk found it difficult to interpret these workers’ spending sprees as empowering and suggested that their rationale might be to live for the moment, my reading of what I call the Filipino American ‘‘migrant archives’’ (see below) modifies this interpretation.67 Contrary to Wilk’s more pes- simistic view that binge spending is disempowering, I propose that these Filipino men had power as consumers. Dressed like the Hol- lywood stars that served as their role models, these men proclaimed visually on their day off work that they could look and spend money romancing women just like glamorous movie stars and middle-class white American men. Collectively, Filipino dress and consumption practices also complicated the artificial binary division between inclusion and exclusion. The FFA held annual banquets and conventions at posh hotels in major cities such as San Francisco and

64. Richard Wilk, ‘‘Consumer Culture and Extractive Industry on the Margins of the World System,’’ in Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transna- tional Exchanges, eds. John Brewer and Frank Trentmann (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 123–44, quote on 125. 65. Ibid., 124–25. 66. Ibid., 133. 67. Ibid, 135, and 138–40. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 547 invited white American politicians as special guests. If Filipinos were not allowed into restaurants, hotels, and theatres, how were they able to enter the ﬁve-star hotels as patrons and customers? And how come they were able to rub shoulders with white U.S. mayors and local politicians? The scholarship has tended to emphasize the violence Filipinos experienced when they tried to break the color line—and indeed there are many personal accounts that recall how Filipinos suffered beatings, insults, and violence when they tried to go to white neighborhoods, for example.68 But there is hardly a men- tion of the many banquets hosted by the FFA and other Filipino organizations in places that normally excluded them. Tailors, including white-owned establishments, also welcomed Filipino customers to their businesses, even advertising in the Filipino- owned newspapers such as the Filipino Nation published by the FFA. Photography studios, cued to the Filipino penchant for taking photographs of themselves in their best attire to send to relatives back home, also opened their doors to Filipino clients. The willingness to part with their hard-earned dollars enabled them to enter spaces normally closed to them, illustrating the impact of consumer agency.

The photograph as a staged event My sources come from what I label the ‘‘migrant archives’’: primary sources generated by migrants themselves who are currently busily collecting data and writing their own memoirs and community histories.69 I also consulted the ethnic newspapers, particularly the Filipino Nation (of the FFA), archives of the Filipino American National Historical Society and Wing Luke Asian Museum, the Man- ilatown Heritage Foundation, the Steffi Buenaventura Papers (on the FFA), the Benny Escobido photograph collection and documentary films. Since official photography is a staged event eloquently capturing the self-presentation of the subjects, the plethora of

68. Rudy Guevara, Becoming Mexipino. 69. There are a plethora of memoirs, autobiographies and community histories written by and about the ﬁrst generation of Filipino migrants to the United States. One physical archive actually exists; the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) has the National Pinoy Archives in Seattle. There are around thirty chapters of FANHS each with its own local history projects and publications. The Little Manila Foundation in Stockton and the Manilatown Heritage Foundation in San Francisco also have their own projects and archives. 548 Paciﬁc Historical Review

photographs migrants sent to their relatives in the Philippines was also an important source for analyzing how these young men fashioned new identities away from home and what sorts of images they wanted transported to the homeland. While the subjects of the photographs wanted to send the message that they lived comfortable lives in the United States and communicate the point that they had achieved their dreams of success away from home, they had no idea of the enormous impact this material object would have on the recipient. The picture of health and wealth that the photograph captured in that moment, and the well-dressed man with the cocky pose and expensive suit began to propagate a powerful mythology of a poor man’s journey to America that ended in middle class status—inspiring more Filipino migrants to come to the United States. This was an unintended consequence since those sending these photographs did not want their own families to experience the harsh life and discrimination they encoun- tered every day. Journalist Frank Perez was lured to migrate to California simply by a photo of his cousin Poe Palacpac who immigrated to California in 1927: ‘‘There he stood with his Stetson hat on his well-groomed head, clad in a handsome Macintosh suit, an expensive overcoat draped over one arm, an impressive cane in one hand and leather gloves on his hands. He was a picture of success.’’70 The reality was totally different: to his shock Perez discovered that Palacpac worked in a restaurant.71 Instead of telling the real story of the harsh working life they experienced, the photographs were silent about racial discrimination and the life of exclusion and hardship, and sent the fantasy that these men were in high status positions. Community histories remembered the impact of these photographs. One account recalled: ‘‘Pinoys [slang for Filipino Americans] bought McIntosh suits and posed for glamorous formal studio portraits to be sent home; this inspired more immigration.’’ Another memoir noted, ‘‘I had a cousin who was here in the U.S. He’d usually write to my relatives in the Philippines, and he’d tell us about the life in the States. He always sent us a good picture of himself; in photos he’d be all dressed up, you know, in a suit with a nice Stetson hat and cane and even sporty black-and-white shoes. That inﬂuenced me,

70. Quoted in Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart, 56–57. 71. Quoted in Ibid, 57. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 549

I thought, if I could go to the U.S., maybe I would have clothing like that.’’72 These ofﬁcial studio portraits are classic examples of the photograph as a staged event. Migrants wished to represent themselves as successful people who assimilated in the new country. The self-representation in photographs sent to relatives back in the Philippines was not their working selves, celebrating instead the disposable income they could spend on expensive items. Such pictures failed to communicate the suffering many experienced in racist America. This discussion in this paper is organized to mirror the argument about two competing Filipino masculinities in the 1920s and 1930s. A section on Filipino dandies examines the way Filipinos embraced the Hollywood male ideal in dress, deportment, and consumer practices. It is followed by an analysis of the FFA as the alternative masculine ideal. A third section suggests that white society recognized the consumer power of Filipino men and invited them to patronize public spaces normally closed to non- whites—thereby unsettling the conceptual binary between inclusion and exclusion. Finally, a concluding section summarizes the points and hints at the decline of the Hollywood dandy as an ideal by the end of the 1930s.

The Filipino dandies The first batch of Filipinos to work as laborers in the sugar plantations of Hawai‘i arrived in 1906 and the total number of Fili- pinos there was 20,400 by mid-1919 with 10,354 Filipino plantation workers or 23 percent of the plantation labor force.73 Most were recruited by the Hawaii Sugar Planters’ Association (HSPA) to work and live in most of its affiliated forty-five plantations. The majority of workers lived in the plantation accommodations and worked in the fields six days a week, ten hours a day (with a fifteen minute break for breakfast and thirty minute break for lunch) doing backbreaking work harvesting and replanting cane.74 Their wages ranged from $0.75 to $1.15 a day which made it difficult to make ends meet considering that they had to buy food and clothing from expensive

72. Voices, no page numbers; Filipino Oral History Project Inc., Stockton, Cal., 1984, 2000. 73. Kerkvliet, Unbending Cane, 17, 23. 74. Ibid., 18–19. 550 Paciﬁc Historical Review

plantation stores.75 Hawai‘i was different from the mainland because of the other ethnic groups who were also part of the migrant workforce: Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese being among the other major ethnic groups represented in the plantations. By 1922, Filipi- nos comprised 40 percent of the plantation workforce but since they were the last ones to arrive as workers they were assigned the lowest stratum of the racial hierarchy. It was typical for many of these men to be employed in a number of jobs moving from plantation work to city work particularly during the Depression years in the 1930s.76 By 1930 Filipinos constituted 17 percent of Hawai‘i’s population.77 Between 1909 and1946, HSPA brought in 126,831 Filipinas/os, with about 16 percent moving to California and the West coast in this time period.78 During the 1920s, 31,000 Filipinos moved to California from Hawai‘i.79 In the U.S. West coast, the majority of working-class Fili- pino men lived peripatetic lives traveling around local farms following the crop seasons (such as asparagus, hops, peas, and lettuce), with some of them making an annual sojourn to Alaska to work in canning factories. Farm work involved long hours of arduous stoop labor. Cipriano Parlon Insular recounted the challenge of working in the peat dust of the asparagus fields in Salinas: ‘‘Working in Terminous, how dusty! I can’t stand it. In the fields ...I saw how, really it’s hard ...how dusty it is and itchy. Peat dirt even goes inside your shoes ...even how tight your shoes. If you wear high-tops ... when you take your shoes off, you see about inch of dust inside.’’80 To combat the ubiquitous peat dust of the asparagus fields, laborers covered their entire bodies. Working clothes included a long- sleeved shirt, a kerchief, wraps, a piece of cloth tying the pant legs snug, and a wide-brimmed Stetson hat (Figure 2).81 Manong Sunny Bautista wore work clothes of cotton weave, long sleeved undershirt and over shirt as well as long cotton pants with the legs tied with a string to keep the peat dust away from his shins. In addition he

75. Ibid., 19–20. 76. Jonathan Y. Okamura, ‘‘Filipino American History in Hawaii,’’ in Tomorrow’s Memories A Diary, 1924–1928, eds. Angeles Monrayo and Rizaline R. Raymundo, (Hono- lulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), 235. 77. Ibid., 240. 78. Mabalon, ‘‘Writing Angeles Monrayo,’’ 250. 79. Ibid. 80. Quoted in Cordova, Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans, 40. 81. Mabalon, Little Manila, 77. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 551

Figure 2. Filipino asparagus pickers in California, attired in their working clothes. This photo was taken in the 1950s. Source: Haggin Exhibit photo collection, Filipino American National Historical Society. wore a large square neck chief around his neck and a head cover, which he wrapped around his head and topped with a straw hat with a loose weave or vents to cool the head.82 When Demetrio Ente Jr., a Stockton resident, recalled his experiences as an asparagus cutter, he emphasized his work wear: ‘‘I wore two pairs of pants, three shirts, a bandana over my head, and a scarf and goggles. Yeah, goggles and you had to tie the shoestrings around your shoes because that peat dirt gets up into your pants leg [and] you are going to itch like crazy when you sweat.’’83 In the collection of oral histories published by the Filipino Oral History project in Stockton, accounts captured the physical pain of farm work: ‘‘First I went to Hawaii. It was very bad that ﬁrst week. I cut sugar cane with that big bolo, and the following day my ﬁngers were sore from holding the bolo. I did that for a dollar a day for ten hours.’’84 Another recalled: ‘‘I worked for 24c an hour picking toma- toes. We lived in the bunkhouse. We had no electricity. There was

82. Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, March 13, 2014. 83. Marisa Aroy, Little Manila Filipinos in California’s Heartland, DVD, 2007. 84. In Voices, A Filipino American Oral History (Stockton: Filipino Oral History Project Inc., 1984, 2000), no page numbers. 552 Paciﬁc Historical Review

only a firewood stove and the bunkhouse was dilapidated.’’85 Wages were on average a dollar a day although sometimes the workers would be paid by the piece or by the crate. Filipino Farm Laborers in the Salinas Valley in California in 1927 worked for ten hours and earned $2.75 a day. Jacinto Sequig remembered that when he arrived in 1928 he worked hoeing cabbages for a dollar a day for ten hours.86 Our ballerino Manong Sunny moved to Stockton in the 1930s to work cutting asparagus in the surrounding delta fields and in the salmon cannery in Kethan, Alaska after the asparagus season. After cutting asparagus he would make the noontime meal (since he also worked as the camp cook), and spent the afternoon packing asparagus.87 According to Mabalon, Filipinos had become essential to the processing of asparagus in the San Joaquin Delta where they comprised over 80 percent of workers in 1930.88 More than three thousand Filipinos came annually to the Pacific Northwest to work in fruit orchards, berry and hop farms, mines, lumber mills, and Alaskan canneries. When their work was completed they returned to Seattle where they lived in the Interna- tional District in where according to Doug Chin ‘‘the boundaries of Filipino enclaves were specifically marked;’’ since they were ex- pected to live only in the area relegated as the Oriental quarter.89 At its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, six to seven thousand Filipinos called ‘‘Alaskeros’’ worked in the Alaskan canneries cleaning, processing and canning salmon working from 6 in the morning until 6 pm at night, six days a week.90 In housing, food, and wages, there were treated separately from white workers—they lived in run-down segregated barracks, they ate lower-quality food in segregated mess halls, and they earned sixty to seventy dollars a month.91 Sanitary conditions were poor and workers had no chance of ever being promoted to higher paying managerial positions.92 Many of those who worked in the canneries were self-supporting students at the

85. Ibid. 86. Quoted in the documentary film, Geoffrey Dunn and Mark Schwarz, A Dollar a Day, Ten Cents a Dance, A Historic Portrait of Filipino Farmworkers in America, VHS, 1984. 87. Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, March 13, 2014. 88. Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart, 69. 89. Doug Chin, Seattle’s International District: The Making of a Pan-Asian American Community, (Seattle: International Examiner Press, 2001), 46, 48. 90. Ibid., 50. 91. Ibid., 50–51. 92. Ibid., 51. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 553 various universities and colleges in Seattle—there was no clear line between cannery worker and university student.93 Work in the Alaskan canneries was ‘‘a good source of income’’ in the 1920s, according to labour historian Chris Friday. Between 1929 and 1933 however, wages for unskilled cannery positions dropped by 40 percent, providing only the bare minimum for sur- vival. Half of Filipino self-supporting college students in Seattle had to abandon their studies and graduates dropped from eight hundred in 1932 to hundred by 1939.94 Work in the service sector dis- appeared, labor wages in the agricultural industry plummeted to ten cents per hour and Filipinos (who, as non-citizens, were ineligible for New Deal relief) were compelled to live in crowded hotel rooms in squalid conditions.95 With close to 75 percent of more than twelve thousand Filipino laborers losing their jobs, most Filipinos were hit hard by the dire economic times.96 It was in the 1920s and 1930s that these young men earned their first income, and spent it on adornment and leisure. The most popular past times were gambling, pool halls, boxing matches, prostitution, escrima or Filipino martial arts, illegal cockfighting, music, and regular visits to the taxi-dance hall.97 But among the first items purchased by Filipinos when they arrived was a suit. Justin Arreola, an Alaskero, gave an account of his very first purchases when he arrived in Seattle in 1925 at the age of 21:

I landed here with black and white shoes. I got on silk pants made in the Philippines and my white hat. One Filipino, an oldtimer Filipino, he Taga- log me. But I did not understand, so he English me. ‘‘Where you came from? Honolulu?’’ ‘‘No, I said, ‘‘The Philippines’’. ‘‘We do not wear those things in the United States.’’ You got money?’’ ‘‘Yeah, I got some left.’’ Then, I went to the Eastern Hotel, 50 cents. And the next day, I got a suit worth about $17. Its very good. Then there is the shoes $2.50. Got $10 left, so I went to buy a hat, $5.00. Then I went to my room and changed. Then I am just like an old timer.98

93. Fujita-Rony, American Workers. 94. Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor, 134–35. 95. Mabalon, ‘‘As American as Jackrabbit Adobo: Cooking, Eating, and Becoming Filipina/o American Before World War II,’’ in Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader, eds. Robert Ji-Song Ku, Martin F. Manalansan IV, and Anita Mannur (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 155. 96. Espan˜a-Maram, Creating Masculinity, 121. 97. Chin, Seattle’s International District, 132–334; Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart. 98. Alaskero Exhibit, Wing Luke Asian Museum Seattle. 554 Paciﬁc Historical Review

Arreola’s story underscored the importance of wearing the right kind of suit, hat, and shoes. It was not a matter of necessity; Arreola had brought clothing from the Philippines. Yet the ﬁrst thing he did on the advice of another Filipino was to discard them and purchase new clothes. It was also signiﬁcant that Arreola was proud to look like other Filipinos (like the old timers) rather than aspiring to look like the Americans he saw in the streets all around him. He wanted to look like other Filipinos, in order to feel he belonged in the new country. But the suit Arreola bought was ready-to-wear and cheap. It was all he could afford since he had not yet begun work. After a year of working in the sugar plantations near Hilo in Hawai‘i’s big island, Virgilio Menor Felipe wrote in his autobiography that the purchase of a double-breasted tailored suit was a turning point in his migration story:

‘‘For the ﬁrst time I duke’d up myself and bought a tailored suit with double-breasts. That style is back again. It was dark banana-green sharkskin with a matching Stetson that I banded with chicken neck feathers. With a little bit of dressing up, the good looks came out fast.’’99

Once the Filipino had earned enough money, the purchase of a tailor-made suit and the transformation into a dandy became a rite of passage into proper manhood. Menor wanted to communicate that his suit was tailor-made and that he adorned his hat with chicken feathers. Espanã-Maram pointed out that in California, ‘‘Filipinos regarded the possession and the donning of the double-breasted McIntosh as a measure of achievement in America.’’100 The emer- gence of the formal suit as Filipino fashion coincided with the suit’s debut in the films of the 1920s and 1930s that characterized Art Deco Hollywood produced to appeal to Depression-era audiences.101 Filipinos who were becoming men in that era earned their first income at that time. The suit fulfilled their fantasies of looking like leading men and living the glamorous life of white American celebrities. In Carlos Bulosan’s autobiographical novel—declared by Fili- pina/o American scholars to be the classic depiction of the life of

99. Virgilio Menor Felipe, Hawai‘i A Pilipino Dream (Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 2002), 148. 100. Espan˜a-Maram, Creating Masculinity, 111. 101. Todd, ‘‘Dandyism and Masculinity.’’ Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 555 the pioneer generation of Filipino men in United States—the nar- rator described his ﬁrst encounter with Filipinos in El Dorado Street Stockton California with the words:

‘‘I saw many Filipinos in magniﬁcent suits standing in front of poolrooms and gambling houses. There must have been hundreds in the street some- where, waiting for the night ...the asparagus season was over and most of the Filipino farmhands were in town, bent on spending their earnings because they had no other place to go. They were sitting in the bars and poolrooms, in the dance halls and gambling dens; and when they lost or spent all their money, they went to the whorehouses and pawed at the prostitutes.’’102

Bulosan’s text captured the atmosphere of El Dorado street Stock- ton after the asparagus season with Filipino male laborers ﬂush with their hard-earned salaries but faced with the boring prospect of nothing to do and the dim reality that they had no place to go. Vera Cruz’s memoirs described in detail how his comrades aspired to achieve the appearance and aura of the middle-class white Ameri- can professional or landowner through their deportment and through accessories such as the Havana cigar:

‘‘The Many Filipinos in Delano preferred going to pool halls, trying to look and feel important. A common sight in these places would be a Filipino entering and walking erectly, seemingly with dignity. He’d stop at the counter and survey the Havana cigars and probably ﬁll his shirt pocket with those fat cigars. There was nothing more prestigious then; it really was the style then to have your pocket full of those Havana cigars. Then the poor grape picker would light up and smoke a big cigar in the corner of his mouth to get the feeling and semblance of being a prosperous grower or maybe even a banker.’’103

In the Little Manila Foundation’s DVD production on the history of Filipinos in Stockton, a the plethora of stunning ofﬁcial photographs of young men dressed in formal suits take center stage while Jerry Paular, a resident of that place told the audience:

‘‘But who were these guys who arrived in America? Now this is not just my imagination. They arrived you would think they were movie actors! The way

102. Bulosan, America Is in Heart: A Personal History (Manila: Anvil Publishing, 2006, originally published in 1946). 103. Craig Scharlin and Lilia V. Villanueva, Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 14. 556 Paciﬁc Historical Review

they dressed, the way they smiled, and their moustaches (laugh). ...Filipino men dressed whether they were in Chicago, New York Seattle; they dressed like they did in Stockton. They all were ﬂashy. They wore suits that were just unbelievable. They would never go to a store and buy a 20-dollar suit and hit the streets. These guys came out looking like movie actors. And yet, they were common laborers working in the agricultural industry!’’104

Outside working hours, this generation of male Filipino working-class migrants dressed like wealthy bankers or growers. Claro Candelario arrived in the United States in 1930 and got a job as a houseboy for actor Ramon Navarro in Hollywood.105 He then worked as a valet for wealthy shoe manufacturer. When he came to Stockton on his days off he dressed just like his employers, complete with the mustache and the pipe as an accessory (Candelario did not smoke).106 In his attire, Candelario chose to identify with his bosses and dressed or overdressed to achieve that look. Candelario became president of the Filipino Community of Stockton and a labor activ- ist.107 But in his 1937 studio portrait, shown in Figure 3, he appeared like the promotional photographs of Hollywood stars William Powell and Clark Gable. In his suit, tie, matching kerchief, pomaded hair that was slick and parted in one side, and an impeccably groomed moustache, he exuded elegance. His pose: smiling, looking directly at the camera, holding a pipe but not smoking it, presented a very neat, conﬁdent, successful, elegant and dashing wealthy man—underscoring his identity as a prominent, good-looking, glamorous Filipino community leader rather than as working-class man. Second generation Filipino American Peter Jamero, who lived in an agricultural labor camp where his father was a labor contractor, wrote in his autobiography that ‘‘when they went into town on their days off during harvest season, they always dressed fashionably, as if to tell the world that they were as good as anyone else.’’108 The stereotype of the ‘‘Old Timers’’ as extremely well-dressed men who

104. Aroy, Little Manila: Filipinos in California’s Heartland. 105. Anita Bautista, ‘‘Claro Alcantara Candelario,’’ in Manong/Manang’s Corner, Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) Stockton Chapter Newsletter, July/Aug., 2014, p. 2. 106. Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, February 25 2014 and September 4, 2014. Navalta, a second-generation Stocketon resident and former (three-term) President of the Filipino American National Historical Society-Stockton Chapter, knew Candelario. 107. Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart, 122, 256–57. 108. Peter Jamero, Growing Up Brown: Memoirs of a Filipino American (Seattle: Uni- versity of Washington Press, 2006), 47. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 557

Figure 3. Portrait of Claro Candelario, 1937. Courtesy of the Little Manila Foundation and Filipino American National Historical Society-Stockton Chapter. looked like Hollywood stars became very much tied to the identity of this group. In Philip Vera Cruz’s autobiography he tells the story of Bennie, a kitchen hand at a Chicago restaurant nicknamed ‘‘Holly- wood’’ ‘‘because he liked the movies, looked a little like some actor, and was a ﬂashy dresser.’’109 Filipinos who lived and worked in Hol- lywood ‘‘spent most of their paychecks on clothes and cars in an attempt to be accepted among the Hollywood-types for whom they worked.’’110

109. Scharlin and Villanueva, Philip Vera Cruz, 12. 110. Montoya, Filipinos in Hollywood, 31. 558 Paciﬁc Historical Review

Filipino Old Timers emulated the dress and images of the film stars of the time and by the sheer absence of sumptuary laws, they were actually able to achieve these aspirations. The leisure dress transformed them from lower-class agricultural laborer or Alaskan cannery worker to fashionable dandy and temporarily erased the stigma of manual labor. Unable to climb up the social hierarchy in terms of wealth or employment, and prohibited from owning property and even from occupying or visiting certain prime parts of the city, they discovered that it was still possible to look like a movie star or a wealthy man. And these young men who watched Hollywood films and bought the fan magazines were able to mimic white American celebrities at least in fashion. A charter member of the original Alaskan cannery union Antonio (Tony) Rodrigo was captured in candid camera walking down the International District in Seattle, looking very dashing wearing a McIntosh suit and hat, accompanied by Henry Arviso also in a very dapper suit. Both men hold a cigar (Figure 4).111 Anita Navalta Bautista noticed that the men of her father’s generation that she knew owned cigars but did not smoke them.112 In her view, a cigar sent the message that you belonged to the professional classes suggesting that men used them as a status symbol to send the message that they were better than working-class men. The transcript of an interview with Tony Rodrigo in 1976 disclosed that he came to the United States at the age of seventeen in May 1927 and worked in the railroads and in the Alaskan canneries. Although he said he did not visit the taxi-dance hall because ‘‘I got no taste though on those kind[s] of life, I got no taste,’’ the photograph revealed that Rodrigo walked the streets of Seattle dressed in his finest attire.113 This photograph is one of the few candid photographs taken of this generation’s men in formal dress. It shows that Filipino men dressed in their finest suits on their days off, whether or not they were planning to go dancing. And they carried the cigar or pipe as an accessory (even if they did not smoke) mimicking the promotional photographs of movie stars Clark Gable and William Powell.

111. See photo and caption in Dorothy Laigo Cordova and the Filipino American National Historical Society, Filipinos in Puget Sound (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2009), 38. My copy was courtesy of the Wing Luke Asian Museum. 112. Anita Navalta Bautista to Roces, email, September 4, 2014. 113. Tony Rodrigo, interview by Dorothy Cordova, October 15, 1976, FIL-KNG 76– 53dc, Washington State Archives, Olympia. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 559

Figure 4. Tony Rodrigo (left), a founder and ofﬁcer of the Alaska Cannery Union, walking down the streets of downtown Seattle with Henry Arviso around 1939. Photograph Courtesy of Tony Rodrigo, from the Wing Luke Asian Museum archives, Seattle.

Good grooming was also essential in the gendered context faced by these intrepid men who were compelled to compete with each other for the hearts of the few Filipinas around as well as the white women who offered their services in the taxi-dance halls for ten cents a dance. The taxi-dance hall was a favorite pastime for many of the young bachelors and they sometimes literally fought 560 Paciﬁc Historical Review

each other for the attention of the women dancers.114 In order to win this game of high stakes the men had to outdo their competitors in appearance, deportment, manners, and dress. The well-dressed Filipino man in a tailor-made suit who transcended his lowly status of working-class laborer by appearing just as handsome and suave as a white American Hollywood star paid a heavy price for his sartorial choice. White nativist Americans exaggerated this Filipino stereotype to its extreme, representing Filipinos as hypersexual men who were a danger to white women and whose addiction to the vices of gambling and the taxi-dance hall made them a ‘social problem.’ Whites adamantly objected to Filipino fraternization of the taxi- dance halls, crossing the color line and dancing, dating, and romancing white women. White men resorted to violent methods to drive the Filipinos out of the public places, beating them up in the streets. Anti-Filipino riots erupted starting from 1927 (in Yakima, Washington) and reaching a climax in the 1930s especially in Wat- sonville, California. The FFA headquarters in Stockton was bombed in 1930.115 (As the next section will illustrate, the FFA was against dancing, gambling, and other vices. So in this case it fell victim of white racist stereotyping that all Filipinos were a social problem.) In 1927 in Toppenish, Washington, organized armed mobs were determined to kill Filipinos. This racial anger was epitomized by one resident’s remark: ‘‘if I had my way I would declare open season on Filipinos, and there would be no bag limit.’’116 Vigilantes in Watsonville ﬁred a volley of gunshots into a Filipino bunkhouse killing Fermin To- bera. The discourse legitimizing this anti-Filipino violence pointed to Filipino dress and deportment, criticizing the audaciousness of this visual display because it ﬂaunted the group’s ability to cross the color line and romance white women, and because it called graphic attention to their success in presenting themselves as handsome, eligible, and fashionable bachelors. The Monterey County

114. For a scholarly discussion of Filipinos patronizing taxi-dance halls see Paul G. Cressey, The Taxi-Dance Hall. A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life (New York: Greenwood Publishers, 1968), 145–74; Rhacel Salazar Parrenãs, ‘‘‘White Trash’ Meets the ‘Little Brown Monkeys’: The Taxi Dance Hall as a Site of Interracial and Gender Alliances Between White Working Class Women and Filipino Immigrant Men in the 1920s and 30s,’’ Amerasia Journal 24, Part 2 (1998): 115–34; Espanã-Maram, Creating Masculinity, Ch. 4, 105–133; and San Pablo-Burns, Puro Arte, Ch. 2, 49–74. 115. Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart, 104–5. 116. Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion, 137. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 561 magistrate was quoted to have said that Filipinos ‘‘possessed unhealthy habits and were destructive to the living wage scale’’ of others and that Filipinos were ‘‘little brown men attired like ‘Solo- mon in all his glory,’ strutting like peacocks and endeavoring to attract the eyes of young American and Mexican girls’’ San Francisco municipal court judge George Steiger described the ‘typical’ Fili- pino ‘‘walk[ing] our streets clad in the extreme loud pearl- buttoned suits, wearing spats, light hats, brightly colored ties, who followed our high school girls’’ around the city and exploiting them.117 Espanã-Maram explained that this brutal reaction from the dominant society was related to the fact that these well-dressed Fili- pinos ‘‘subverted the icons of white middle-class American masculinity including the ability to dress stylishly, exhibit proper manners toward white women, and dance well.’’118 In this sense, one could argue that Filipinos succeeded in the project of rejecting their working-class identities. Likewise, Mabalon argued that white Stock- tonians objected to the way Filipinos did not know their place in the racial hierarchy, claiming equality with whites. One fruit worker complained in 1931: ‘‘they want to step right in amongst whites. A Filipino asked my sister to dance at a street dance and [I] took a poke at him. They think they’re just as good as you are.’’119 Focusing on Filipino men’s dancing as performance rather than on Filipino men’s dress, Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns suggests that what white men termed Filipino men’s ‘‘splendid dancing’’ was a ‘‘profound spectacle’’ of colonial mimicry, but ‘‘this very performance of bodily knowledge and ability further enhanced Filipino difference and contributed to the hostility toward Filipinos.’’120 White men reacted so violently to the figure of the well-dressed Filipino in a tailor-made suit because, attired in these clothes, Fili- pinos appeared equal to the movie stars—the middle-class ideal fashion role models of the dominant white society. The expensive suit made these men visible at a time when the host country wanted them to remain invisible.

117. Quoted in Cordova, Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans, 116; Quoted in Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion, 121. 118. See Espan˜a-Maram, Creating Masculinity, 130. 119. Quoted in Mabalon, Little Manila Is in the Heart, 140. 120. Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns, Puro Arte: Filipinos on the Stages of Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 57–58. 562 Paciﬁc Historical Review

Michel de Certeau argued that consumers act autonomously and cannot be controlled by outside forces such as state organizations and the media.121 This theoretical position underscored the potential agency that consumers held. But the violence the Filipino dandies endured as a consequence of their consumer practicesalertsustothewaysbywhichsuchagencycanbecon- strained by hegemonic forces. In fact, as the next section will reveal, another group of Filipinos acutely aware of the limits of Filipino consumer power proposed to reject the binge consumption of the Filipino dandies.

Opposing the stereotype: The Filipino Federation of America It was not just the white nativist Americans who criticized the Filipino consumption practices associated with vice—the pool halls, the taxi-dance halls, the houses of prostitution and gambling. The Filipino Federation of America (FFA) was a mutual aid society founded in 1925 that also advocated for Philippine independence. It differed from the other Filipino mutual aid organizations because it had a ‘‘Filipino American’’ identity signaled by its English name and its orientation toward the immigrant situation in the United States.122 It targeted Filipinos who wanted to be part of America. Thus, its activities included participation in the Fourth of July par- ades (by the Federation Band), and it incorporated golf into its annual celebrations.123 It began in California, and it established a branch in Hawaii in 1928.124 Steffi San Buenaventura was the only scholar to write a comprehensive history of the FFA, but this excellent study focused primarily on the FFA’s religious beliefs and practices and the role of its founder Hilario Moncado and his most influential disciple Lorenzo de los Reyes. I will not be discussing the organization’s unique form of Filipino folk or nativist religion that identified its founder Hilario Moncado as the Tagalog Christ or the reincarnation of Jose Rizal (the Filipino national hero executed by

121. Michel de Certaeu, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of Cali- fornia Press, 1984). 122. Steffi San Buenaventura, ‘‘Filipino Folk Spirituality and Immigration: From Mutual Aid to Religion,’’ in New Spiritual Homes Religion and Asian Americans, ed. David K. Khoo (Honolulu and Los Angeles: University of Hawaii Press and UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1999), 54–55. 123. Ibid., 56. 124. Ibid., 53. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 563 the Spanish colonial regime). I will not dwell on its controversial aspects particularly those that had to do with whether or not the founder was a con artist who duped his followers into donating their hard-earned money to the organization. Instead, I want to fill a vac- uum in the scholarship by analyzing the way the FFA chose to pres- ent an alternative Filipino identity to the dominant white American society; one whose behavior was the complete opposite of the common stereotype of the hypersexual male and the conspicuous consumer. The motivation for this refashioning of the Filipino male was to prove that Filipinos were not a ‘‘social problem.’’ Instead, members of the FFA wanted to fashion the Filipino as a morally pure individual upholding their fundamental belief that ‘‘before any people can be really free they must be self-respecting.’’125 Since one of the organization’s primary goals was to convince the United States to grant independence to the Philippines, the FFA believed that Fili- pinos had to be morally upright in order to deserve political free- dom. The barometer for moral behavior was abstention from the dance halls and gambling parlors because ‘‘no group of people, however idealistic at heart, can remain self-respecting when they must resort to gambling parlors and dance halls for companionship and recreation, as the majority of Filipinos do in the large cities of America.’’126 FFA members also wore tailor-made suits.127 Stockton FFA member Nicolas ‘‘Nick’’ Catanio remembered that FFA members watched Hollywood films and dressed like the Hollywood film stars.128 Photographs of their membership identification cards in the Benny Escobido collection showed them in neat, white formal suits and hats (see Figure 5), although the suits appeared more modest in comparison to those worn by the Bautista cousins in the photograph that opened this essay. Many advertisements for tailor- made suits appeared in the FFA’s newspaper, The Filipino Nation. The Federation ran annual banquets and conventions in posh hotels so that members had occasion to don formal dress. Given that there were two groups of well-dressed Filipinos, the only way to distinguish between them was social behavior. Philippe Perrot’s brilliant book

125. Filipino Nation, April 1931, 28. 126. Ibid. 127. Catanio, interview. 128. Ibid. 564 Paciﬁc Historical Review

Figure 5. Identity card of a Filipino Federation of America member, Hawaii branch. Source: Benny Escobido Collection.

about the fashioning of the French bourgeoisie argued that the advent of the department store and ready-to-wear clothing had the effect of visual uniformity, with the middle class attired in a somber dark suit. In order to create distinctions, the bourgeoisie invented etiquette. Social status was no longer solely determined by one’s Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 565 attire, but also by one’s savoir faire, one’s manners, one’s deportment, and one’s style.129 In a similar way, the FFA chose to differ- entiate itself from the other well-dressed Filipinos through its strict code of morality, eating practices, leisure and consumption practices, and manners. Article VII, Section VI of the constitution of the FFA declared: ‘‘In order to become a matriculate or sub-matriculate member, he hall [sic] show the organization that he upholds the highest standard of morality. He must keep from dancing, drinking alcoholic drink, gambling, smoking, pool halls, strikes, violence, resistance, and all things that are destructive to humanity.’’130 All members were required to memorize Moncado’s ‘‘Man’s Moral Concept,’’ which included the lines ‘‘The moral of man is against all earthly vices. All vices are destructive to man’s physical fitness and therefore man should fight against all vices.’’131 In the FFA’s national conven- tion, members of the headquarters of Los Angeles California took a patriotic pledge to ‘‘urge our members to abstain from the use of alcoholic beverages, drugs, opiates, tobacco; to keep away from questionable resorts and to live moral lives and uphold the laws of the USA and its Constitution.’’132 The pages of their publication The Filipino Nation gave examples of the evils of binge spending and gambling and the benefits of a prudent life. For example the career of Filipino pugilist Peter Sarmiento was recounted as an example of how not to live one’s life. The successful boxer spent his entire fortune of $300,000 by buying $150 suits three or four at a time, $20 silk shirts by the dozen, two automobiles at a time and dia- monds. Unfortunately Sarmiento also loved to gamble so that after fourteen years in the ring and burned-out as a fighter he ended up penniless.133 The newspaper warned readers of the tragic results of gambling by giving examples of those who lost all their money, and it offered as role models those who were once addicted to vices but managed to turn their lives around. Victor Aranjuez proudly

129. Philippe Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Princeton University Press, 1994). 130. Jose G. Deseo, Moncado the New Apostle Filipino Federation of America (Chicago: FFA Religious Department, 1931), 25. 131. ‘‘Man’s Moral Concept’’ published in the 39th Anniversary banquet honouring the arrival of ﬁve star general Honorable Dr. Hilario Camino Moncado as immigrant to the territory of Hawai‘i, Niumalu Hotel, March 5, 1953, program. Benny Escobido Papers. 132. Deseo, Moncado the New Apostle, 98. 133. Filipino Nation, May 1931, 38. 566 Paciﬁc Historical Review

described his transformation from reckless spender and decadent proﬂigate drifter to reliable man with no vices:

I was a gambler, a drunkard; I used to smoke incessantly; I used to go to dance halls and spend all my money in one night. I was the worst among the bad, but when I joined the Federation I gave up such vices. Nobody told me to give up my vices, but I saw the faces of my brothers that they did not approve of these, so I made up my mind that I would give up all bad habits and live a clean life as the ideal of the organization wants me to.134

The FFA’s recipe for the moral life and clean living extended to diet and physical exercise. The organization discouraged the eating of meat and recommended that people eat raw foods recommend- ing a mixture of raw oats, honey, shredded coconut, and raisins pressed into a rectangular mold called ‘cimento’ because it resembled a cement bloc and drinking peanut juice (made of crushed peanuts and water and called mug mug).135 The FFA proposed a vegetarian diet, and even in their banquets and conventions they never served red meat (although they would occasionally have chicken or ﬁsh). Lorenzo de los Reyes, Moncado’s right hand man, and the leader of the religious arm of the Federation invented physical ex- ercises called physical culture (a form of yoga) that transformed the body so much that the regular practitioners appeared to be anorexic. A keen golfer, Moncado encouraged his followers to take up the sport. The FFA’s spiritual members based in Hawai‘i would become hermits and test their skills of fasting in the mountains. These devoted members grew their hair and beards since they believed this practice made them resemble Jesus Christ and the saints.136 The pages of The Filipino Nation rarely mentioned the religious elements of the organization (perhaps because it was addressed to white Americans as well as Federation members), but the newspaper often gave pointers on how to maintain the physical health of the body through a vegetarian diet as well as lessons on manners and etiquette. A regular etiquette column discussed the proper way to eat alone in a restaurant, to call on people in a hotel, to leave a hotel, and to otherwise be a perfect traveler.137 Part of the educational

134. Deseo, Moncado the New Apostle, 36. 135. San Buenaventura, ‘‘Nativism and Ethnicity,’’ 315. 136. Julita M. Chic, ‘‘A Historical Study of the Filipino Crusaders World Army, Inc. in Sudlon Cebu’’ (MA Thesis: de la Salle College, 1973), 126. 137. Filipino Nation, October 1931, 24. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 567 topics of the newspaper included how to behave like a gentleman; the column extolled the virtues of not borrowing money particularly from a woman, never taking advantage of a woman in business, refraining from the ostentatious display of wealth (or even talk of money), controlling one’s temper, and never visiting women when under the inﬂuence of alcohol.138 In this sense, the FFA also gave advice on how to cope with life in the modern urban United States and how to navigate the cultural differences in public society. After all, many of these Filipino migrants came from the Philippine pro- vinces and had not much experience of modern life in the city. Since they prohibited members from indulging in the common leisure pursuits of many Filipinos, the FFA had to provide alternative recreation. The organization planned early on to build a gymnasium or recreation center and in 1927 they purchased a house with eleven rooms in Los Angeles and one in Stockton.139 According to their brochure the objective of the recreation center was ‘‘to promote the spirit of a more wholesome life or otherwise among the men and women of the Filipino community.’’140 They held classes in gram- mar, speech and diction, introduced Spanish language classes, and organized weekend teas.141 FFA members were encouraged to read English literature and were provided with a list of suggested authors depending on what intellectual skills they needed to develop.142 Moncado’s solution to the problem of the shortage of women was to promote celibacy and give positive capital to the bachelor’s life. Moncado encouraged his followers to remain single, claiming that he could only fully depend on men who were bachelors since they were free from the pressures of family life.143 Although the FFA and Moncado in particular lobbied aggressively for Philippine independence, the organization was against labor activism for better working conditions in the United States. They opposed labor strikes. In this sense, the FFA, despite its transnational focus (it later established branches in southern Philippines and Moncado himself ran for political ofﬁce in the Philippines) was concerned with presenting

138. ‘‘The Fundamentals of Good Behavior,’’ Filipino Nation, March 1930, 24, 42. 139. Filipino Nation, December 1929, 13; Deseo, Moncado the New Apostle, 93. 140. Our Home, Filipino Federation Community Center Brochure, Box 49, Papers of Stefﬁ san Buenaventura, Archives, University of California-Davis. 141. Filipino Nation, April 1931, 28–29, 36. 142. Ibid., March 1928, 1. 143. San Buenaventura, ‘‘Nativism and Ethnicity,’’ 326. 568 Paciﬁc Historical Review

an image to the United States that Filipinos were hardworking laborers who shunned vices, and behaved morally. The FFA wanted to demonstrate to white society that Filipinos possessed the traits of the model citizen (since Filipinos at the time were denied US citizenship but were classified as ‘nationals’). Hence the FFA’s code of conduct was a strategy for Filipino inclusion in a society that was determined to keep them at the fringes. Although he asked his followers to pursue a simple life that eschewed material goods, including most food, Moncado himself was the epitome of the conspicuous consumer—he always appeared dapper in his tailor-made suits, he played golf regularly, and even went on a world tour financed by the members of the organization in the middle of the Great Depression (Figure 6). It was a pleasure trip that his followers funded from their savings (the benefits of their simple life and lack of consumption spending). His world tour received blow-by-blow reports in the pages of the Federation’s newspapers, and he himself wrote a book about them entitled World Travel Memories. Those outside the Federation were heavily critical of Moncado’s lifestyle and accused him of taking advantage of his followers’ monetary contributions for his self-promotion. A mass meeting was held December 21, 1930 in Los Angeles, which a flyer announced would be an ‘‘Exposure’’ of ‘‘(‘‘Dr’’) Hilario C. Moncado as ‘‘The Greatest Impostor the World has Ever Known.’’144 The membership fee to become a matriculate member of the FFA was steep: a $100 (lifetime) fee plus a mandatory $10 for the Federation pin. There were 1728 matriculate members and many managed to come up with the required amount through an installment program.145 Among the criticisms directed at Moncado was that he wanted his members to live a simple life so that they could donate their money to his organization, and certainly many willingly contributed not only to his travels but also to his political ambitions for office in the Philippines. When Moncado entered Philippine politics, his image as a flashy dresser and his spendthrift lifestyle were the predominant features of his reputation.146 Given that his own lifestyle was the very antithesis of his fundamental message to his

144. Primo E. Quevedo, Flyer. Mass Meeting Exposure of (‘‘Dr’’) Hilario C. Mon- cado, President-Treasurer FFA Inc., Box 17, Buenaventura papers. 145. San Buenaventura, ‘‘Filipino Folk Spirituality,’’ 60. 146. San Buenaventura, ‘‘Nativism and Ethnicity,’’ 368. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 569 followers about living a simple life, it is feasible that his followers condoned his habits because, as Buenaventura argued, they were living their lives vicariously through him. They donated their earnings to the man who was able to cross the color line as he rubbed shoulders with American politicians, played golf with the rich and powerful, and invited American elites as guests to FFA banquets.147 In other words, they rejected the lifestyle of a consumer since their founder lived that life for them. Is choosing not to be a consumer also a form of consumer power? The FFA’s policy of abstaining from the pool halls, gambling joints, and dance halls could be interpreted as the organization’s rejection of the only public spaces they were permitted to occupy. Their ideal of a life of simplicity, austerity, sacriﬁce, and celibacy was the antithesis of the binge consumer. Their spiritual practices that included fasting and eating raw foods trained them to survive with the bare essentials of living. Members recalled how they ‘‘easily’’ survived the depression because they were trained in fasting.148 They deprived themselves of the necessities of life in order to popularize their leader.149 FFA members embraced the Hollywood leading man’s dress but not his lifestyle.

The well-dressed Filipino crosses the color line White businesspeople recognized Filipino consumer agency by acknowledging the potential income businesses could earn by tar- geting this demographic with disposable income. Tailors, photographers, and hotels encouraged Filipinos to break the color line and patronize their establishments. They did not tell Filipinos what to buy but were instead responding to Filipino demands. Many advertisements inviting Filipinos to patronize various tailors (Filipino and white) featured regularly in the pages of FFA’s newspaper The Fili- pino Nation. Robert’s Tailors and Designers published several advertisements in 1928: ‘‘Don’t be fooled! Better Dressed Filipino Boys go to Roberts. They know style and clothes,’’ and ‘‘The better dressed Filipino boys wear ROBERTS.’’150 Broadway Tailoring Co. owned by

147. Ibid., 466, 449. 148. Ibid., 324. 149. Ibid. 150. Filipino Nation, March 1928, 7; Ibid., May 1928, 15 570 Paciﬁc Historical Review

Figure 6. FFA Founder Hilario Moncado. Source: Benny Escobido collection.

Henry D. Sommer claimed to be ‘‘the most popular tailor among the Filipinos all over the world for snappy clothes’’ advertising their only store in San Francisco.151 L.A. Vitt Tailor claimed to have the best value for money with suits that were ‘‘exclusive but not expensive.’’152 Merrit Toggery advertised pure wool fabrics, sewed custom-made, while the oddly named ‘‘Ohio Misﬁt Clothing Com- pany’’ offered ‘‘nifty tailor made suits at greatly reduced prices’’ in a promotion that came with a coupon that promised a 30 percent

151. Ibid., July 1930, 45; Ibid., March 1931, 37. 152. Ibid., March 1931, 37; Ibid., April–May, 1932, 4. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 571 reduction.153 Not to be outdone, Smidt and Weitz Inc. welcomed the FFA members as customers for suits that duplicate the latest Hol- lywood styles ‘‘worn and approved by the leaders in the ﬁlm world.’’154 What was remarkable was not just the sheer number of shops that offered tailoring services to Filipinos but the fact that thesebusinessespromised,inthewordsofoneadvertiser,‘‘courteous treatment’’ to a minority group that was often excluded from most establishments patronized by the dominant white majority. Hence the full-page advertisement for Smidt & Weitz Inc. included an endorsement by a Filipino (Tonieng Balbuena), the number of satisﬁed Filipino customers (4500) and the claim that such customers ‘‘are spreading their news of satisfaction in our workmanship and courteous treatment.’’155 At the very top of the page, the company invited members of the FFA to its business premises, in stark contrast to the signs commonly posted at Stockton-area restaurants that proclaimed: ‘‘No Filipinos allowed.’’ While a small number of Filipinos also set up tailoring businesses such as the Los Filipinos Tailoring Shop at number 232 South El Dorado Street in Stock- ton in the late 1920s, the advertisements published in the Filipino Nation included non-Filipino-owned tailoring businesses.156 That these advertisers tried to woo Filipinos to be their clientele was a stark contrast to the general social attempts to overtly exclude Filipinos from white restaurants, shops, and public places. That these businesses sought to publicize themselves in Filipino space—in a Filipino newspaper addressed to an almost exclusive Filipino group—meant that the Filipinos were accepted as consumers. Photography studios also advertised in the Filipino Nation. These advertisers included some studios owned by Japanese Amer- icans, such as the Ninomiya Studio that represented itself as the ‘‘Filipino’s favorite photographers’’ in Los Angeles, Tanaka Photo studio in Los Angeles, George Studio (owned by George Hishida) in Fresno, and Fukuki Studio in El Dorado St. Stockton.157 Two other

153. Ibid., February 1931, 3; Ibid., May, 1928, 15. 154. Ibid., December 1930, 6. 155. Ibid. 156. Mabalon, Little Manila is in the Heart, 119. 157. Filipino Nation, October 1931, 36; Ibid., June 1929, 32; Ibid., April–May 1932, 17; Ibid., February 1931, 3; Ibid., April–May 1932, 4; Ibid., February 1931, 3; Ibid., April–May, 1932, 17. 572 Paciﬁc Historical Review

photography studios possibly owned by white Americans also advertised in the Filipino Nation: the Empire studio and H.G Davis Com- mercial Photographer.158 These photography studios knew of the Filipino practice of taking official photographs of themselves dressed in formal suits to send back to the homeland and hoped to make a profit out of it. Although individual Filipinos were generally not welcome in the posh hotels as patrons or guests, the FFA was able to book these same hotels for their annual banquets and conventions. In 1931, the FFA held its evening banquet at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki and had a tradition of hosting a banquet every year (since 1926) at the Alexandria hotel in Los Angeles.159 Mon- cado invited prominent white Americans such as the mayor of Los Angeles, heads of political parties, elected politicians, educa- tors, presidents of patriotic organizations, law enforcement offi- cials, and heads of Protestant church organizations as special guests to these formal occasions.160 FFA members (except the spirituals) attended these banquets with great enthusiasm, dressed in their formal suits (Figure 7). During the banquets and conventions these Filipinos experienced one element of what it was like to be a middle-class American. At the same time, these were rare occasions when Filipinos shared dinner in the same room with prominent Americans in the community.161 In these special evenings, Filipinos as a group crossed the color line and hobnobbed with not just white Americans but the cre`medela cre`meofU.S.society.TheseeventsrevealthesuccessofFFA membersinpresentingthemselvesasrespectablesubjectsand good citizens, who conformed to middle-class standards of dress, behavior, and deportment. In contrast to the Filipino dandies who patronized the taxi-dance halls, the FFA’s annual conventions and banquets were conspicuously lacking dancing. Thus the banquets served as venues for performing the alternative masculine ideal propagated by the FFA: a Filipino subject that was conservative, law-abiding, and willing to work with American politicians. When Filipinos crossed the color line in these banquets,

158. Ibid., February 1931, 3; Ibid., November 1931, 3; Ibid., April-May 1932, 17. 159. San Buenaventura, ‘‘Nativism and Ethnicity,’’ 236–40, 273. 160. Ibid., 238. 161. Ibid., 239. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 573

Figure 7. FFA banquet, circa 1930s Honolulu. Hilario Moncado is at the center wearing a lei and seated at his left is a white American and his wife. Source: Benny Escobido collection. in photography studios, and in tailor shops, these successful transgressions revealed that the barriers of exclusion and inclusion were porous despite the hegemonic white racism that deﬁned the era.

Conclusion Filipino Americans developed their own sartorial fashion in theperiodfromaboutthe1920stobeforetheWorldWarII. Their carefully crafted look resembled the Hollywood movie stars these men admired and rejected their working identities as agricultural laborers or cannery workers. Filipino male migrants were willing to part with their hard-earned money in order to refash- ion themselves into glamorous celebrities—even going to the extent of buying suits from the exact same tailor shop that made the suits for the Hollywood stars who were their role models. This 574 Paciﬁc Historical Review

sartorial style was a complete contrast to the everyday working clothes of this migrant group.162 Men dressed to impress: to impress the women that they courted, to impress their fellow Filipino recruits if they were a labor contractor, and to impress the boss, and to impress each other in formal banquets held by fraternal organizations and the expatriate community. They also dressed up deliberately for the official photographs that they sent back to their relatives in the Philippines. But there were two types of well-dressed Filipinos. There was the group that frequented the taxi-dance halls and the gambling joints, and another group that abstained from smoking, drinking, dancing, gambling, and eating meat. The decision of one group to be conspicuous consumers and the other to be anti-consumers was a reaction to the host country’s harsh exclusionary policies. These two strategies were both deployed by Filipino men to empower themselves. One group dominated the only public places it was allowed to occupy—gambling joints and taxi-dance halls—while the other group deliberately fashioned itself as virtuous in order to dismantle the stereotype of the Filipino as a social problem. White society could only see one category of Filipino men, the ‘‘flashy’’ dresser with ‘‘evil designs’’ on white women. But in manners, etiquette, religious beliefs, and consumer practices, these two groups of men in formal suits were poles apart. It is difficult to say which of the two models provided more room for self-definition and self- determination. Both strategies empowered their users to fashion a new Filipino masculinity that exuded elegance, glamour, sophisti- cation and savoir faire. Outside working hours, they succeeded in looking like Hollywood stars rather than working-class laborers or cannery workers. They were able to rub shoulders with the Ameri- can political elite at posh hotels and to dance with white women at taxi-dance halls. Both paid a heavy price for their consumer choices: while the Filipino binge consumer dandies suffered violence in the hands of brutal white men, critics of Moncado would argue that

162. Given that Filipinos moved from Hawai‘i to the U.S. West coast, and up and down the West coast to Alaska, there was some uniformity in their dress particularly if they patronized the same tailoring shop (MacIntosh) in San Francisco. The FFA had major strongholds in Hawai‘i and Stockton. All members of the FFA, wherever they were located in the United States, were supposed to adhere to the constitution and membership regulations. Filipino Dress and Consumer Practices in the United States 575 members of the FFA were innocent victims of their leader who spent their hard-earned money on his world travels. There were also other Filipinos who neither joined the FFA nor danced and gambled. Many lived frugally and regularly sent remittances home to their families. Peter Jamero wrote of the men in the labor camp where he grew up that ‘‘Many men faithfully sent money home, not only to their immediate families but also to distant relatives.’’163 Fred Cordova’s seminal pictorial essay on Filipino Ameri- can history noted that: ‘‘Despite labor severity and plantation austerity, these Filipino laborers [referring to those in the Hawaiian plantations] managed to send back to the Philippines much of their hard-earned money. Approximately two million dollars were sent ‘‘home’’ by Sakadas in 1928 and again in 1929.’’164 Along with their remittances, Filipino migrants enclosed photographs of themselves in their best suits. These photos propagated the myth that their senders had become wealthy men living the good life; the pioneer generation did not tell relatives back in the Philippines about their hardships in the new land. They were generally silent about the racism, violence, discrimination, and exploitation they experienced. This case study reveals that the Hollywood ideal man was a powerful model for a racial minority group in the United States of the 1920s and 1930s. In order to fully understand that era, it is important to include the way white men’s ideal forms were appropriated and refashioned by minority groups such as Filipinos. Filipinos used dress and consumption practices to reject their working-class identities but they did not aspire to dress or act like the American elites epitomized by the Rockefellers or the Kennedys, for example. Movies were more inﬂuential in disseminating white American masculine models to the Filipinos who hoped to achieve the visual appearance of these celluloid heroic men. The white nativists who objected to the Filipino sartorial fashion justiﬁed it with the argument that it was deceiving—that is, it disguised their working-class origins. But, well-dressed Filipino men behaved just like the Holly- wood classless hero who was seldom a wealthy man but always looked like one. Filipinos were so successful in mimicking their ideal that white men found it presumptuous—this dynamic partly explains the white violence directed at Filipino men. At the same time, such

163. Jamero, Growing Up Brown, 47. 164. Cordova, Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans, 33. 576 Paciﬁc Historical Review

fashion sense also succeeded in gaining Filipino men some accep- tance into white society, as when the FFA hosted banquets for Amer- ican politicians in expensive hotels. The case study also illustrates that minority groups such as Filipinos experimented with several strategies in order to gain accep- tance into white society. In their view, the Hollywood leading man must be white America’s ideal; by mimicking him they were themselves conforming to American standards. Such a case study provides a good contrast to the studies of the zoot suit subculture whose members clearly rejected white American values, dress, and consumption practices. The suave Hollywood dandy that dominated the big screen in the 1920s and 1930s began to fade beginning about 1939, the year that Gone with the Wind swept the Academy Awards.165 Instead of the reﬁned Leslie Howard (in the role of Ashley Wilkes), the hyper-masculinized Clark Gable (in the role of Rhett Butler) replaced the dashing dandy and ‘‘dandyism became obsolete, or worse, marginalized.’’166 By the 1940s some Filipinos sported the zoot suit along with African Ameri- cans and Mexican Americans.167 Other Filipinos simply modeled themselves on the next generation of Hollywood male stars symbolized by Humphrey Bogart. In Peter Bacho’s short story ‘‘Dark Blue Suit’’ about Seattle in the 1950s, the author recalled his childhood accompanying his father, a labor contractor for the Alaskan canneries, doing the rounds in Seattle’s Chinatown. Pete described his father’s attire:

That day, like most days, Dad was also wearing a suit. This one, though, was especially sharp—a somber, dark blue suit, pressed and perfect, ﬁt for a mayor, a movie star, or an Alaskero. ‘‘Like Bogart,’’ I heard him mumble earlier as we left the house for Chinatown. ‘‘Got to look good,’’ he said. ‘‘Show the boys.’’168

The reference to Humphrey Bogart, one of the biggest Hollywood stars in the 1940s, reveals that in the decades after the 1930s Holly- wood stars continued to be the role model for Filipino men. But Humphrey Bogart was not a dandy. And thus, the 1940s also marked the end of Filipino dandy as masculine ideal.

165. Todd, ‘‘Dandyism and Masculinity,’’ 180. 166. Ibid., 180. 167. Espan˜a-Maram, Creating Masculinity, 137–39. 168. Peter Bacho, ‘‘Dark Blue Suit,’’ in Peter Bacho, Dark Blue Suit and Other Stories (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997), 5.