The Muse Inks

Love transcends. 💞

Kat & Adena from “The Bold Type”. Watching these two women’s love story onscreen was a huge first for me when I watched the series a few years ago. It’s with them that I really saw the complexities in romance and relationships brought by differences in cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds, as well as in sexual orientations. And yet—they still loved.

This past two months has seen the first time I’m featuring pride content for The Muse Inks. Granted, it’s not even much; I know I’ve barely scratched the surface. 😅 I realize I have so, so much more to learn about pride—from turning to existing stories in books, movies, and art to writing more narratives surrounding the q***r and non-binary experience.

In a way, this beauty & pride issue for The Muse Inks has challenged me to finally start. It matters even if I’m starting small like reading my first q***r novel (“Going Bicoastal” by Dahlia Adler), making a pride playlist (“Unapologetic”), or creating my first somewhat-related-to-pride artwork (“Woman and a Panther Chameleon”).

I may be finishing this issue of content, but I’m still just starting—and hoping that whoever reads this can start, too. One pride story at a time. 🌈

P.S. I’m looking at September to October for the next TMI issue, so watch out!

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“Dance of the Spirit” by Fernando Modesto, from a private collection displayed in Galerie Hans Brumann.

Here’s something to visualize the energy we want to embody going forward: vibrant, whimsical, playful, and odd in the best way. 💛🎨💚

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Adding these books to my stack of local reads. 📚 And since every day is a celebration of pride, I want to continue reading more pride-centric books. I threw a q***r story into the mix, “You, Me, U.S.” by Brigitte Bautista, alongside my usual romance read, which in this case is “Beginner’s Guide: Love and Other Chemical Reactions” by Six de los Reyes. I’ve been curious about these Blush Books stories by Romanceclass Books since I first saw them at Common Room PH. I mean, just look at those covers. Here’s to championing Filipino authors and q***r narratives. ❤️💛💙

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Creatures covered in colors.

There’s safety in the anonymity of vibrant displays. We wear the most colorful clothes, paint our faces with kaleidoscopes that catch the eye but really camouflage our identity in a sea of saturated personalities. We put on bright smiles, loud laughter, and big attitudes that make people look but protect us from being truly seen. That deep inside, underneath all these vibrant scales, we’re just skins and souls who are fragile.

Like the Panther Chameleon—known to have the most vivid colors among chameleons and native to the coastal forests of Madagascar—we control what we want people to see.

Art: “Woman and a Panther Chameleon” by Gabrielle Lopez (2025)

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This is honestly my first time reading a book where the main character is LGBTQIA+. 😅 It might seem like a small thing, but aren’t we shaped by the stories we know? So if we could read more openly about different gender identities—even if we don’t identify as the same—then we can understand them and also learn how to make our society a safe space for everyone. 🌈 I don’t mean to oversimplify; if feminism has taught me anything, it’s that our struggles towards freedom have layers, and so do the solutions. But I do believe in the power of small efforts such as turning the page on non-binary narratives. 📖 It’s in these that we can write the next chapter together.

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Songs to stay loudly, boldly, proudly you. We are who we are every day—why not embrace it and live beautifully unapologetic? ❤️💚💙💜 Happy Pride, everybody! 🏳️‍🌈

Scan the QR for the full playlist or go to tinyurl.com/unapologetictheplaylist

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It took me three years to have the courage to share this article, but finally, here it is. My weakness, my truth. My body, my love. Internalized standards on beauty are hard to get out of when it’s the only mold available in society to fit ourselves into. But I have learned to slowly step out of what I’m made to believe I should be and step into my own skin into what I am.

I write these words because no one wrote them for me before: You are normal, but more than that, you are extraordinary for your unique body, your specific soul.
Read more at www.themuseinks.com or visit the link in our bio.

Link to article: https://themuseinks.com/thats-what-she-said-how-peoples-opinions-affected-my-body-image/

Art: "Rose" by Gabrielle Lopez (2021)

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Beauty itself is poetry—intricate, inciting, and never simply the one thing we think it to be. In these back-to-back poems, we grasp the ambivalence of beauty the way we grasp at our reflections in the mirror.

“I don’t wear make-up like they do.”
“I know now what it’s like…to be a pretty thing.”

By yours, truly. Dug up from a poetry collection I wrote in 2020, “People ask me what I’m thinking—this is what I’m thinking about.”

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This month, we’re all about the body. A vital experience for women’s bodies is our menstruation. It can be painful, unbearable, uncomfortable, tiring—but if anything, it can also be empowering, especially if we can treat the subject of periods with open minds and we, women, are given equal access to a variety of period products for our healthcare. One of these products is the menstrual cup. Here are the reasons why it’s a good option to consider, one that hopefully becomes more accessible to women worldwide in the long term. We choose how we bleed. Swipe for a sneak peek of the benefits of using menstrual cups or read the full article at www.themuseinks.com .

Link to the Article: https://themuseinks.com/its-been-a-bloody-empowering-journey-benefits-of-using-a-menstrual-cup-based-on-personal-experience/

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“She said, ‘Belle, what are you doing to yourself? You could be so pretty.’ Like that’s the most important thing to be.” She looks down at her rock. “I wish it was the reverse. I wish she could be looking at my Masked face, my fake face, my face that doesn’t look like a face at all, and I wish she could say, ‘Oh my darling, you could be so free…’”

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In between the pages of this book is a dystopian world where girls are allowed the freedom of choice—to be Pretty or to be Objectionable. But is it truly a choice if you are made to feel like you have to follow the status quo to be accepted?

As Holly Bourne herself wrote in a parting note at the end of “You Could Be So Pretty”, this isn’t a dystopia. “This is now. Normal. Our world today.” In the story, their society is guided by The Doctrine—one that says girls have a choice in what they become. And yet, those who do choose other than being Pretty are punished—humiliated, disrespected, and treated as outcasts. In our world, how are we any different? We might be able to say that we, women, have more mobility in our society today—but is it enough? Are we truly free if at the end of the day, we’re still conditioned to adhere to standards of beauty and femininity, punished if we embody otherwise?

Nothing says “Feminism is not over” better than this book. It reminds us that it's even more important to ask these questions now because of the complexities that modernity has added to the challenges faced by the women’s movement.

There’s this scene from the book that I personally find unforgettable. A group of women—Objectionables, as their world calls them—come together for their regular discussions on being Awakened. In one session, young members pair with old ones to paint gold into the lines or wrinkles on the older women’s faces.

This reminds me of the Japanese ceramic art of kintsugi, where the fine lines of brokenness are mended, the gaps in between filled in with gold. The scene from the book does the same. It reminds us of the pricelessness of experience; it brings out the light in the passage of time that is marked on our faces. That our skin should be wrinkled at all, that we should have lines on our face is a testament to the tears, the laughter, the frustrations, the hopes, and everything in between that we’ve experienced. The moments that we’ve lived.

What can be prettier than a soul who’s truly lived life in all its beauty? What can be freer than the heart who isn’t afraid of the truth, the inevitable? A face that still knows to smile for all its flaws?

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Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who’s the fairest of us all? Definitely not the old—or so society and our media say.

When we think of beauty, we think of someone young. Through an analysis of the female gaze in “The Substance” (directed by Coralie Fargeat), we see how damaging internalized beauty standards like this can be. And yet changes to our faces and bodies through cosmetic procedures have become the norm. Through the film, we see not only how these impact us, our identities, views on beauty, and the fight for women empowerment, but we also get to understand why we believe they are necessary. Why they are, in fact, not. Read about it at www.themuseinks.com or visit the link in our bio.

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Link to Article: https://themuseinks.com/beauty-on-borrowed-time-the-substance-2024-internalized-beauty-standards-and-cosmetic-procedures-in-todays-feminism/