For years, I rarely saw my culture in the media. The Wiggles helped change that

Sydney Morning Herald

30-04-2025

While scrolling on Instagram recently, I saw John Adamo Pearce – the purple Wiggle – teaching kids how to sing Bahay Kubo, the Filipino song I sang as a child that names vegetables growing in a backyard. Pearce, a proud Filipino-Australian, often showcases his culture through fun Instagram reels with his mum, Flordeliza.
When I see my culture represented in the media, I still experience a 'pinch-me' feeling. Growing up in the '70s and '80s, it was rare to see it depicted in mainstream Western media. But that's gradually changing.
Two years ago, Sesame Street introduced TJ, the first Filipino-American Muppet. Arvin Garcia, a Filipino nurse from Melbourne, won the reality cooking show The Great Australian Bake Off last year. And in the 2023 season, MasterChef Australia featured Filipino-Australian chefs, including Ross Magnaye, cooking traditional dishes (both Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay have dined at Magnaye's Melbourne restaurant, Serai, with Ramsay hailing Magnaye's taco sisig as the best dish he's tasted in years).
There's more: the Good Food Guide (produced by Nine, publisher of Sunday Life) awarded one hat to Askal, a Filipino restaurant in Melbourne. The owners of Askal have also opened a bar called Inuman (Filipino for 'drinking session'), making it the first rooftop bar in Australia that serves cocktails using ingredients such as lemongrass, durian, lambanog (Palm liquor), ube (purple yam) and pandan.
Representation matters. It is empowering for children of any non-white background to see their culture showcased in the media. It is not just about cultural pride; seeing someone in the media who looks like them sends the message that they, too, can succeed.
In 2022, there were 320,300 Filipino-born people living in Australia, up from 206,110 a decade earlier. This makes us the fifth-largest migrant community in the country. But that fact hasn't stopped me from sometimes feeling isolated.
As an exchange student in Perth in 1994, I was the only Filipino in my dorm. A Singaporean roommate said to me, 'You're the first Filipina I met who's my equal.' I don't think she meant to be disrespectful. But the only people from my culture she encountered in Singapore in the '90s were domestic helpers. I am mighty proud of these women; they are often teachers who make the sacrifice of working abroad to provide financially for their families at home.
I am often mistaken for Vietnamese, Malaysian, Thai, Singaporean or Chinese. At university, many Spanish-speaking students assumed I'd be Latina because of my surname. Recently, an Australian neighbour told me, 'You're not like the other Asians. You don't use chopsticks, right?'