BEAUTY PAGEANTS MIGHT AS well be the national sport of the Philippines. The way Americans watch football or basketball is how Filipinos watch pageants. They take place in mountain villages, provincial coliseums, and concrete stages next to rice fields. They are so embedded in mainstream culture that you can catch one almost any month of the year. Because they are a part of Fiesta celebrations where we honor Christian saints and patrons—and because nearly 95 percent of the population is Catholic—Fiesta pageants are just another wholesome activity that nearly everyone enjoys.
I still remember the feeling of neighborhood Fiesta celebrations as a kid in Manila where I grew up. It was a fun and exciting time, with people on the streets drinking, going from one house to another without formal invitations—and somehow you were always just welcomed into the homes of random people. Kids, grandmas, aunties, friends, and entire families sitting outside, eating and applauding, all eyes on the stage. Fiesta included singing contests, dancing contests, and transgender beauty pageants. The irony of transgender beauty pageants being a popular shared custom in one the most conservative religious celebrations is not lost on me. Even though there was no word for transgender—and certainly no acceptance of being transgender in the church—these pageants were hugely popular. No one called them transgender beauty pageants, but that’s what they were. There was no shared vocabulary or context for explaining to your parents that you knew you were not the gender you were assigned at birth. So I wore T-shirts on my head to pretend like I had long flowing locks and walked down our hallway like it was my runway. And when Fiesta came around I was sitting in the front row at every single pageant.
I remember seeing my first one around seven years of age. The contestants—mostly teenagers—all lined up in their costumes, striding out with such poise and glamour. I was transfixed—especially by one contestant who was a Phoebe Cates impersonator. I had no idea who Phoebe Cates was at the time, but I was fascinated. She and all the others were compelling, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Immediately I felt a connection. Maybe I am like them. Maybe I can be them.
I never shared this dream with my mother, but I made it very clear that I was pageant material. I used to steal the lipstick from her purse before she’d leave for work. I chose to play with little girls and dress up Barbies for fun. She was an elementary school teacher, always surrounded by young children, so she must have noticed what was different about me, but she never made me feel shame. I told her I was really a girl, and she just said, “Okay, if that’s who you are . . . whatever makes you happy.”
When I turned eleven she left for America, something we always knew was coming. Members of the older generation in my family had fought for the United States in World War II and were granted opportunities to come to the United States and bring family members over to become citizens. Going to America meant that my mother could be with her mother and some of her eight siblings who had already been there for several years. It meant more opportunities for her children. It meant she could work and send money home until she could petition to get us there. This had always been our family’s destiny, so it did not come as a surprise, but it still sent shock waves through my whole existence.
After my mother left for San Francisco, my sister and I stayed with our dad in a small province outside Manila and attended school. I wore a boy’s uniform every day. Most of the subjects were taught in the formal version of English that I have spoken from a very young age, but at home we spoke Tagalog—and cried for our mother, who we missed every day.
And then I met Tigerlily, my trans mother figure for two of the most important years of my life. I was fifteen years old—still a die-hard fan of pageants—and had just gotten a taste of participating in my first one when a friend of mine asked me to be a backup dancer for the opening number of one in our province. A few days later, my friend Reynald invited me over to her house because a pageant troupe from Manila was going to be getting ready for that night’s pageant at her place. Reynald knew how exciting it would be for me to see these queens in person, who I normally only saw onstage or on TV. When I arrived, Tigerlily, the manager, and all her girls were there, doing hair and makeup, sewing costumes, and blowing my mind. When Tigerlily saw me, she told me I was tall, fresh, and beautiful. She asked if I was interested in being in pageants, and within a few minutes I put on another girl’s swimsuit and showed her my walk. She offered me a spot in that night’s pageant. It was like a fairy-tale moment for me, where the small-town girl gets discovered by her fairy godmother.
That night was unforgettable and surreal. Tigerlily quickly threw together a set of garments for me to wear, and I lined up with all the other girls for this most exciting rite of passage. My swimsuit was a two-piece bright orange number that looked great with my dark skin, and my gown was borrowed from another girl on Tigerlily’s squad. For my casual wear, I dressed like a young ballerina in fuchsia pink and super-high heels. I looked like a living Barbie doll. It was thrilling. I impersonated Assunta de Rossi, a beautiful actress who’s very popular in the Philippines. When I walked on the stage, I felt a sense of validation I had never felt. To hear a crowd cheer for you at your best, brightest, and most beautiful—it was the most exhilarating thing possible. I made it all the way to the semifinals. Out of forty-five candidates, I was in the top twelve.
And that is how I became a fifteen-year-old beauty queen literally overnight. The rest was history, and I was hooked.
Tigerlily was like a coach and a manager and a mother all rolled into one, helping our group of young trans girls define and perfect our performances. We not only needed guidance on our clothing, talent, and poise—we needed help with our makeup, preparing for the interviews, finding resources for travel, and developing our impersonations. Every village or town had a pageant mom who ran the pageant scene in her territory. Although we all competed against one another at pageants, we were each other’s best support system too. Tigerlily’s girls were my new family. I still technically lived in my house with my father and sister, but my new home was with my pageant sisters, where I completely immersed myself in a community that provided validation and fun for a young trans girl. We traveled all the time, and when I would come back home to my father and sister, I loved sharing my winnings, taking my sister out shopping or to the movies. She could see how happy I was that I’d found this group of friends.
It changed everything for me. I remember a few pageants in, thinking, This is me now. I am going to go full-time as myself! No more boy’s uniforms at school! I started wearing female clothes all the time—not just onstage—and used my pageant winnings to buy hormones—something many trans girls were beginning to do. It was dangerous because it was unsupervised by medical professionals, but it was also crucial in our journey to become more authentically ourselves. It was survival for us.
The pageant community was my survival too. Tigerlily not only helped us manage our careers, but she also served as a mentor and emotional supporter in a very tumultuous teenage time. I found a sisterhood of best friends who accepted me and understood me in a way I only dreamed of when I was a kid. Pageants are considered sexist to many people all around the world. I am a feminist, but where I grew up pageants were the only place where I could express myself and earn money for my performance. Through pageants, I learned how to command a stage, speak without fear, and love who I am—not to mention I found a community of women who had my back no matter what. The skills I learned being a beauty queen are the same skills I used several years later in my activist work.
We were competing in so many pageants—sometimes two or three per week—that I was able to make hundreds of dollars and it became my full-time job when I finished high school. By then I had done nationally televised pageants and become one of the most prominent queens, winning most of the big titles. I was more happy and secure than I’d ever felt in my life.
And then at the age of seventeen, everything changed. My papers had come through for me to immigrate to San Francisco to be with my mom. It should have been good news—and it was. But it was complicated. I had missed my mother so much, but leaving Tigerlily and my pageant girls was devastating. We didn’t have Facebook or texting then. I remember landing in San Francisco and writing Tigerlily a letter because even a phone call was very expensive. I felt so cut off from the family who had been my only home for the last two years. They were my safety net and my mirror, showing me it was okay to be me for the first time in my life. It felt like cutting myself in half to leave all that behind.
It did not help that San Francisco felt so foreign to me. Even though I spoke English, my version of the language was formal and polite—and slang or everyday idioms were completely lost on me. Even the fresh, balmy air was strange to me—it was wonderful of course—but I was used to the gritty, dirty smell of the city. Where I grew up houses were literally stacked up next to each other, separated only by thin plywood walls. This new white-picket life was very alienating to me. San Francisco felt isolated compared to Manila, where kids played out in the streets at all times. And even though a lot of people were Catholic in San Francisco, they didn’t celebrate Fiesta. I missed the rowdy outdoor parties and wandering from house to house to talk to neighbors.
And no Fiesta celebrations meant no trans beauty pageants. I was heartbroken and homesick.
“This is America; it’s not the same as the Philippines,” my mother would say.
She fully accepted me as I was, and allowed me to be me—but she had to get real with me about the fact that I wasn’t going to make money from pageants in the United States. And I had to find work because I needed to earn money. It was so hard to let go of “trans beauty queen” as my job title. My mother knew the feeling—she went from being a teacher in the Philippines to being a factory worker in America. She kept suggesting that I apply at a grocery store or maybe try for some sort of customer representative job. But I was hardheaded and seventeen and had just left the most affirming, exciting career I could have ever hoped for. It was more than a career—it was a lifestyle—and a glamorous one, which is not something most seventeen-year-olds get to enjoy. So I was having trouble signing up to work in a food court at a mall. I felt so disconnected and needed to find my people.
And I wasn’t just a beauty queen without a pageant. I was an immigrant now, trying to find a home in a completely new country. Something told me that the secret to my survival was to find other immigrants from Manila. I started asking my pageant friends back home to see if anyone had a friend in San Francisco. A friend of a friend in Manila told me about Lucy. She’d been living in San Francisco for a few years and invited me to visit her apartment and meet other Filipinos.
That night was the beginning of my new life in America. Lucy introduced me to a great group of girls. We went to a late-night Thai restaurant and danced until the wee hours of the morning. The next day, we had Filipino brunch in Daly City—otherwise known as Little Manila. What a welcoming place for any Filipina immigrant! After our brunch, one of the girls mentioned that there might be a job opening at the cosmetics counter where a bunch of the girls worked in a big department store. Even though my only experience with makeup was when it was being applied to my face by someone else, I insisted I would be good for the job. She laughed at my resolve and set up an interview for me.
I went to that job interview like a true beauty queen, ready to conquer the world. I looked like my best self. I got my hair done, in a nice, understated way. Not a pageant style, but a nice blowout with layered waves that didn’t move no matter how hard the wind blew on my way there. Somehow I got the job. The first day at work made me feel at home. It may not have been a pageant, but I was surrounded by makeup and lovely women and a lot of the girls I’d gone dancing with a few weeks before. In no time at all, this group of girls had become my new family. Instead of sharing a love for pageants, we had our love of cosmetics, dancing, and garlic fried rice.
The Asia and Pacific Islander Wellness Center became a regular hangout for me and the girls, every Wednesday. It was a place that served the immigrant and LGBTQ communities, and Wednesday was trans-girls’ night. We would meet up to share our stories, have a potluck, connect, and learn about ways to improve our health and our relationships with ourselves. API Wellness became my refuge, where I could get critical information about things like taking hormones and finding doctors who would provide compassionate care. This new source of information and community-building gave me a better sense of my own worth and belonging in America. As I developed deeper friendships, I was able to share more about my passions and dreams until I finally felt determined to find a trans pageant in San Francisco.
If you’re lucky there’s maybe one per year there, but a girl at API Wellness had mentioned she’d heard about one coming up. Lucy helped me sign up for the pageant and helped me find the supplies I needed. I got right back into my old rhythm, putting together a look and costumes. If it couldn’t be my career anymore, I was still going to work this pageant like it was my job. I couldn’t wait.
The pageant was at the Palace of Fine Arts, a beautiful old building in the Marina District. It had a huge stage. I had borrowed a red halter gown from Lucy and was most nervous about the interview portion, since my English was still a little too formal and I had trouble communicating my real personality. But as soon as I arrived and began getting ready in the dressing room, I felt so inspired. Unlike the Philippines, where most of the girls are Filipina, here there were contestants from so many cultures and nations. Samoan, Taiwanese, Polynesian, Thai, Latina, and a lot of Filipinas too, of course. As I looked around at all these American faces, I loved seeing all the many ways there are to be trans. There’s not just one way. And beauty is more diverse than we imagine too. I thought of Tigerlily and all my Filipina girls back home. In the Philippines, trans people were highly visible—even celebrated in pageants—but they weren’t politically recognized. In America, it seemed just the opposite—at least at the time. Trans people were more politically recognized in America, but not nearly as visible and celebrated. How lucky I am, I thought, to experience both of these cultures.
I couldn’t wait to sashay out on that stage and give it everything I had. If I was only going to get to do this once a year as a hobby, I was going to make it count. As I predicted, I struggled a little in the interview portion with my English. I didn’t say anything grammatically incorrect, I just had trouble conveying my intelligence and personality. I wanted them to see who I really was. One of the judges asked if I was enjoying my new home in the United States. I smiled and nervously replied, “Yes, I love being here with my family.”
As I uttered these words, I looked out across the audience to see dozens of Filipinos smiling and rooting for me. They had come out in droves to enjoy their favorite pastime—just like at Fiesta.
I ended up winning second runner-up. Not bad for my first American pageant, but mostly I was just happy to be home.