Two months ago, BB Gandanghari was taking an Eva Air flight from New York bound for Manila. She was sitting beside an elderly Taiwanese lady, who chatted with BB on and off during the 22-hour flight. Being a Taiwanese airline, the plane also made a stopover in Taipei, before finally reaching Manila.
The elderly lady buzzed the cheeks of the pretty BB, bid her goodbye, and left the plane. Back in Manila, the giddy Ms. Gandanghari was telling everybody that her fellow passenger had no inkling that she was a he, that BB Gandanghari used to be Rustom Padilla — he of the macho Padilla clan, formerly married to Carmina Villarroel, and an actor who used to play hunky roles on the sizzling screen.
Such confusion still swirls around BB, two months after her triumphant return from Manila. And since Manila is the gossip capital of the world, questions are still flying in the air.
Did he have a sexual-reassignment surgery in the US, since he told Ruffa Gutierrez in The Buzz that “puwede na akong makipagsabayan sa iyo, sister”?
Is he doing this to revive an allegedly moribund showbiz career? Remember that his last, big role was that of Zsa Zsa Zaturrhna in the movie of the same title. Penned and drawn by the talented Carlos Vergara, the film did not make enough money in the Metro Manila Film Festival three years ago, enough to make the producer smile from ear to ear. One wag even said that after he came out of the closet in Pinoy Big Brother, Celebrity Edition two years ago, the only roles he could play henceforth would be the flamboyant ones reserved for Manny Castañeda.
And why, oh why, does she go around claiming that the “old Rustom Padilla” is now dead, buried, and would never be reincarnated, Eastern religions be damned? And the focus and fulcrum of the world should now be on the shimmering BB Gandanghari – a stylish combination of Audrey Hepburn and an Anime Queen?
I first caught BB Gandanghari on TV playing the role of a talent manager on a TV teleserye, Eva Fonda, and was vastly amused by her hair. Obviously a wigaloo (a wig), she nevertheless dressed it up with a scarf, a headdress, a crown, anything that would make poor Pokwang look like a second-rate, trying-hard copycat. It was an outré performance, to say the least, self-referential and parodic. It’s the kind of role-playing that would make the bisexuals and the straight-acting gays in the nine-million-strong Philippine gay community shiver in revulsion.
And then I heard that she went the rounds of the showbiz talk shows, like a reigning queen visiting the different parts of her vast territory. Wherever she went, jaws dropped, screams filled the air — and autograph-seekers ran to get her prized signature.
She even landed in the top five topics searched in Google, Philippine edition, and spawned a million blog entries. In the wide world of the web, the words on BB either dripped with vitriol, or showered her with pink petals of admiration.
One of the most witty and level-headed comments came from the blog entry of “smoketalk.” Listen:
“It does seem like a brave, new world out there, doesn’t it? One that is no longer bound by old conventions, or even old sensibilities. It seems like the world has found a new normal, and many of us are floundering.
“Take Rustom Padilla, for instance. He’s gone from matinee idol, to husband of one of the most attractive girls in show business, to estranged hubby, to a showbiz exile, to a wannabe come-backer, and finally to re-emerge — as he says — a brand-new person who wants to be called BB Gandanghari.
“I was one of those at a loss on what to say when I saw Padilla (or Gandanghari) sashaying onstage with all the trappings of a woman, but still quite unmistakably a man. Was it noble self-actualization, as one netizen put it? ‘Ang galing niya, siya na yata ang pinakamatapang na taong nakilala ko ngayon. Hindi takot na magkapakatotoo. Mas mabuti nang magpakatotoo kesa maging ipokrita.”
“Or was it a last-ditch attempt at reviving a career which — while not exactly moribund — was certainly on the skids? So hard to tell, and so easy to heap accolades on someone for doing something different simply because he did something different. Just as it is incredibly easy to brand as bigots those who refuse to embrace Gandanghari as unquestioningly as Oprah (Winfrey) might.
“I think Rustom Padilla might have been heavily influenced by drag queens in the States. Seeing the lack of serious drag queenery in Philippine show business, seeing the lack of any serious chance of himself standing out in the biz as yet another pigeonholed gay actor, and finding in himself both the predisposition and the courage to be Priscilla, Queen of the Desert of this country, he took the plunge.
“But could it really have been as mercenary as that? Why not? He is, after all, an entertainer, and all entertainers need something to set them apart from the crowd. Without the comedy chops of the other gay entertainers, without any stellar acting skills to speak of, what else did he have going for him except his willingness to dive into the outrageous?
“Of course, he is not likely to admit to such a base motivation. Knowing our penchant for drama, the emergence of BB Gandanghari will evolve into some self-affirming act, complete with complex psychological underpinnings, butterfly imagery, and a Danton Remoto-esque social agenda. But in the end, I think it will all be revealed to be more of a fabulous fight for continued relevance in a business that seemed on the verge of forgetting him, than anything else.
“The bravery of this new world, we will find, is nothing more than an act of desperation.”
Thank you for the free plug about myself and the rainbow butterfly that is the logo of the unsinkable Ang Ladlad Party List. Now let us analyze the comments of “smokescreen.” It is a carefully-cultivated judgment, but one that does not completely fly in the face of facts.
For one, Rustom Padilla is not really a bad actor, as evidenced by his Urian Award for his gay role in Zhsa Zhsa Zaturrnahhh. One can claim he did not act in that film but only played himself, the way Katherine Hepburn did not play the role of an old woman in On Golden Pond but just played herself.
For another, I do not think she was influenced by the drag queens in the United States. I lived for a few years in the US, and in my visits to Los Angeles, my Fil-Am friends would drag me to a, well, drag club. And I would be horrified not because I was one of the few gay men not in drag, but at the sight of muscle-bound drag queens, who walked stiffly in gowns, and who looked oh so sad! If this is the Philippines, I thought, they would already be sashaying up and down the crowd, and flitting from one friend to another, like butterflies in a perfumed garden. In short, the drag queen in the US is not BB’s model; more like the drag scene in Thailand, where the transgenders are as languid and as pretty as any you could find in Manila. It has even come to a point that one famous shirt in Bangkok now reads: “Believe me, I’m a girl.”
What I think is that the young gay boy who was bullied by classmates and beaten up by his father because he was caught cross-dressing was forced to marry to pass for a straight man, has now grown up to be taller and prettier than the rest of them, and has chosen to assert himself. To shape her own identity, to form her own self, widen the horizons of her being — which is the way it should be. I’ve said this once and I’m saying this again: The liberation of a nation is as important as the liberation of a person. And the horror of the closet, as the English writer Angela Carter would put it, is something you would not wish even on your most bitter enemy. For the closet is like a coffin where a person with the name of Rustom Padilla was forced to conform, to be like the living dead.
And whether she makes money, she becomes more famous, or snags more fabulous boyfriends because of this blossoming is now just an add-on in the reign of Her Majesty, Bebe Gandanghari.
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