Gold surrounded Mrs. Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady who sat across me in
her apartment explaining, “In terms of the Philippines, especially in the case of President
Marcos and myself, we based ourselves on the role of man and woman, because of the
cultural genesis of Adam and Eve.”1
She went on, clarifying, “From this there were
doubts about whether women had souls; it was even suspected that Eve was the root for
the word „evil‟.”2 Mrs. Marcos delineated the story of Genesis in order to introduce the
framework through which she characterizes the roles that she and her husband assumed
as First Man and Wife of the Philippines. These roles align with the essential gender and
cultural conceptions she attributes to the Catholic Philippine mindset. She continued,
outlining an inversion of the traditional story, “In the Philippines, the man was malakas
(strong), the opposite of weak Adam, and the woman was maganda (beautiful), the
opposite of evil Eve. During the term of Marcos‟s presidency, I was very criticized, but I
followed the dream of Filipinos, to be beautiful while Marcos was strong.