When coming out is letting in

So Charice is a lesbian.

Which tells the rest of us what, exactly? That the rumors, insinuations, and leading questions were right all along?  

Well then, let’s not deprive ourselves of the knowing grins and self-congratulatory handshakes. She’s a butch, the hounds of mass media are vindicated, long live the Rocker-Mod haircut.

We can all move on now, except that Charice’s coming-out should probably warrant a closer look. She is, after all, a phenomenon in her own right, a myth writ large by the strength of her international (or at least American) fame.

For the most part, Charice’s life has been modeled on the fairy tale ethos: a young girl singled out from the obscurity of provincial life by a fateful YouTube video, catapulted into the good graces of the fairy godmother herself, and showered with an abundance of celebrity-related blessings for sticking it out when she was younger.

Even the initial maintenance of her image has been decidedly fairy-tale-like as well—the sweet smile and demure giggle, the flowing locks and unblemished skin, the air of affected innocence. Fast-forward to 2010, when signs of Charice wanting to take control of her self-image became increasingly apparent. Her long hair was cut short, the princess-y dresses replaced with boots and leather jackets, her sweet smile converted into a smirk. With this, Charice would begin to tread the path that many pre-packaged American teen stars had taken before her, and as expected, the backlash against her revamped image would make itself known through artfully-produced memes, fueled by the vigilance of social media and networking sites.

Fast-forward to 2013, and Charice’s recent confession can simply be seen as the icing on top of the cake.

But this is the Philippines. Her big reveal is greeted with the obligatory fire and brimstone; only interrupted by tweets of support here and there.

In a country that has yet to produce its own prototype of the angelic-teenybopper-to-tough-(lesbian)-punk, Charice is as close as it gets. The punch line is that we never really had a hand in her image production, seeing as from the get-go, the 21-year-old has always been beholden to the forces of Western production. Charice is probably our most globalized (read: Americanized) public figure, and it shows. She is a repository of influences. Her fashion sense imbibes the style of such global icons as Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, and Psy. Her probinsyana accent is laced with a faint American twang to it, and her sensibilities are cut from the same liberal cloth as that of the West’s highly sexualized culture. She has oscillated between identities, has tried new ones for size, and has stuck to the one that fit (for now). In the end, her roots are not here. Not really.

That said, it is probably the strength of the fairy tale ethos which ties most Pinoys to the old Charice. Her iconography revolves around her 15-year-old self, a self that has idealized the romance of a rags-to-riches story, and what’s more, achieved it. 

Yet, of late, what Charice has done is to poke holes in her own myth. In her attempts to detach herself from the clean-cut image of her youth, she’s managed to subvert the process of icon production in which she’s been privy to.

If a celebrity stakes her fame on enforcing and sustaining a thoughtfully controlled image, then she becomes a successful product, a contemporary ‘icon’ readily and immediately available for mass consumption. If she steps off her pedestal and attempts to come into her own, then she becomes inaccessible, irreproducible for immediate cultural consumption, and unfit to meet the growing demands of the public. 

By telling the world that she’s a butch and proud, Charice does not turn herself into an image. By not becoming an image, Charice repudiates the sustainment of her public myth. By turning her back on an idealized myth, she becomes irreproducible as a product, and is able to reclaim her own identity in the process. This is no mean feat. With an insatiable audience blasting their demands on the web 24/7, hankering for access to a perfectly-presented icon; Charice has done herself, and her impressive home base of young fans, good, so far.

By all accounts, we should be proclaiming the girl a hero.