Grid magazine slams critics of Fang-Od cover

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Aren’t people funny sometimes?

When Grid released online its latest cover featuring the great mambabatok from Kalinga, Fang-Od, people quickly overlooked the accomplishments of the 93-year-old artist — or the fact that the local travel magazine was paying tribute to “people who are changing the way we travel” — and instead eagerly called the magazine out for (1) supposedly misspelling her name and (2) the “wrong costume” Fang-Od was wearing.

“There’s an obvious big mistake in this photo. She’s not wearing an ethnic Kalinga ‘tapis’,” said one keyboard know-it-all. “It’s Wang Od, not Fang-Od,” was another comment, which was backed up by similar replies, “Agree, Wang Od. Saw a documentary of her.”

And another: “It’s Whang Od. Not Fang Od.”

It forced Grid editor Kristine Fonacier and Grid photographer Francisco “Paco” Guerrero to write notes on Facebook and clarify the, um, non-issue.

Explains Guerrero, it was Fang-Od who chose her clothes for the cover. “At no point did I request she wear or not wear any specific item of clothing that she did not freely choose herself. What you see in the photograph are clothes and artefacts that she and Grace [Fang-Od’s niece] freely chose to wear, this is how they wanted to be photographed,” Guerrero wrote.

Fang-Od’s name meanwhile is a complicated matter that will require linguists and experts. According to Fonacier’s note, there are at least four acceptable versions of the great Filipina artist: Fang-Od, Wang-Od, Whang-Od, and Wang-Ud.

Issue of her name is way more interesting. Pay attention to a portion of Fonacier’s note: “The sound is neither fully represented by ‘F’ or ‘W’, but it falls somewhere in the middle. Our indigenous languages have phonetic nuances that too rich to be captured by the modern English alphabet, and it is ultimately useless to argue which spelling is ‘correct’. We are trying to capture the sounds of one language using the spelling conventions of another.

“But since we have to decide on the best representation using the modern alphabet, it does have to be a choice between ‘F’ or ‘W’. For this, we went with the simplest, most authoritative source: Fang-Od herself.”

Which is a very fine explanation to a topic that overlooks a more important issue such as the dying tradition of tribal tattooing that the 93-year-old Fang-Od still preserves and upholds to this very day.