People strive for ‘better lives’. Young women in Bohol temporarily out-migrate to Manila and other urban centres for economic and aesthetic reasons, which are both complementary and contradictory. Their temporary out-migration is a kind of rite of passage in which they transform themselves into beautiful and marriageable women in far-away places in the proximity of beautiful people and things in the city. The modernizing state translates the question of ‘better lives’ into a solvable problem via purification. Towards the end, I introduce Japanese gold, the metaphor and metonym for plundered wealth brought from Singapore, which is pursued by both Japanese experts and Boholanos. Japanese gold enables us to see ‘better lives’ as an unpurified hybrid equally sought after by Boholanos, Japanese experts, the dictator and his prodigal beauty queen.
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