I was a child star in the Philippines. I'm glad no one notices me now

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/28/child-star-philippines-transwoman

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Back in the early 80’s when I was six or seven years old, my mom took me to an audition for a Filipino sitcom called Bisoy, which had been around for a few years but was struggling in the ratings. The network decided to give the couple in it an instant son and expand the name of the show to Bisoy: Ang Daddy Kong Baduy, which meant Bisoy: My Dad Who’s Out of Fashion. (Trust me, the title’s catchier in Tagalog.)

I enjoyed showing off my ability to memorize things quickly because it got me attention, and I liked attention – and the director was pleased that I followed directions and learned lines so fast, so he cast me. The next couple of years were a bit of a blur – there were articles in magazines about me and variety show appearances, along with small parts in movies. The whole thing was fun at first, but then the work ended up being so boring – I said variations of the same cute lines over and over again, got into variations of the same trouble with my TV dad. It wasn’t a satisfying kind of attention to be recognized just for repeating lines and being a cute kid.

Tapings for the show regularly ran past midnight even on school nights, when I had to be up by six the next day. My report cards came back and I saw mediocre grades for the first time in my life. I got crankier on set and had to be cajoled in public, then castigated in private by my mother to obey.

As child celebrities went, I was ill-mannered and taciturn, annoyed when people recognized me from TV. I dreaded being in public, and mostly spent what little free time I had by myself as my grades kept plummeting. I turned into a major brat.

Then I had a brilliant, liberating idea: I figured I could write a script for the show myself. I was nine. I took some official script paper stamped with the network logo, found a typewriter, and wrote an episode that, for once, explored my relationship with my TV mom. The actress who played her, Isabel Rivas (who is still well-known in the Philippines), was so glamorous and affectionate that I wanted to be with her more, as I often did with women I admired. (Adults teased me then about having crushes on these women, but I simply wanted to be like them, not be with them. None of us knew then that I would eventually grow up to be a woman myself.)

At first the studio humored me and told me they’d like to produce my script. But a couple of weeks later, they hired a new director of programming who decided to cancel the show. I felt some remorse at having been so ungrateful for my celebrity, but quickly recovered when I thought of reading books again rather than memorizing lines. I walked away from my acting career with few regrets.

I continued on my studious path and immigrated to the US six years later, in part because my parents decided I would have more educational and career opportunities here. I sometimes wonder though whether my mother would have wanted to stay had I remained an actor. And I wonder if I would have still transitioned shortly after college had I stayed. I guess we’ll never know.

I briefly returned to the Philippines for work last week. In a cab in Manila, a couple of new friends told me about BB Gandanghari, a former Filipino matinee idol who left the country for three years and returned a woman. My friends marvelled at how the muscled man who graced magazines half-naked took a three-year break in the US and returned as a svelte model and actress.

I’m not the only Filipino trans woman with a celebrity past, I guess.

They didn’t recognize me, though, nor did anyone else I came across there. I’m not particularly surprised; it was a long time ago and I look a lot different now. I wouldn’t have minded had I grown up to be a man, but it’s a relief not to be associated as an adult with the boy I used to be. It’s one thing for people to be amused that a glamorous star used to be a kid with braces or a gawky teenager; it’s another for someone’s present self to be unceasingly compared to a person they’re fundamentally alienated from.

Had I taken a different path – had my mother not declined a job offer from a popular daily telenovela out of loyalty, say – my return to the Philippines in an unexpected gender might have ended up the subject of sensational headlines just like Gandanghari’s. There’s so much public fascination with people’s gender transitions right now, be they celebrities or non-celebrities. I can’t wait until there’s less of it. When the public comes to better understand the changes we undergo as part of our development, we can then be noticed less for the spectacle of our transition and more for the contributions we make as human beings.

I don’t really mind watching myself as a kid – there are fewer gendered expectations of boys in the Philippines than here in the US in any case. So if you happen to be in the Philippines and turn on the TV, you might randomly come upon a rerun of one of my movies, as I did a few years ago – but there’s no sign of my show on the Internet. It’s amusing to think that thousands of people can still watch that version of me to this day, but I still desire to be known for my words, not my face.