Aida P. Yap
WG101
4.22.12
Assignment 3
Women In The Pacific

During my investigation for this assignment, I visited the ABC Store and the Dollar Discount Store at the mall. I thought about going to a place that was common and popular for many of the tourists that come to Guam, these two stores seem to fit the bill perfectly. As I began my searching’s for representations of Pacific Island women, I was caught slightly off guard by the things that I found. I never really paid much attention before but I was surprised at how difficult it was to actually find products that had representations of Pacific Island Women. I couldn’t help but think it was strange that a tourist store on Guam didn’t have many products that actually showcased the island.
I searched for representations of different Pacific women from Fiji, Chuuk, and even Chamorro women but, in reality, there were actually very few things. Majority of the products only portrayed the Hawaiian culture. When I did find some representations of “Guam Women”, it was on this little bag of banana chips and on the front of the bag was a small cartoon rendition of what I assume the manufacturer tried to pass off as an Island Woman of Guam. She wore a coconut bra and a grass skirt. All I could remember thinking was, “What part of this is Chamorro? What part of this is even Guam? All I see are Hawaiian representations. “ Instead of serving to “Polenesianize” the diverse women of the South Pacific, as Berno and Jones stated , I felt as if some of these products were beginning to “Hawaiianize” the women of Guam. Some of the other products I found were a calendar and t-shirts that were full of pinups of bikini clad “Island” women. Just as it is stated in the Berno and Jones reading of Power, Women, and Tourism Development in the South Pacific, these calendars and shirts “support the popular misconception that ---