Extracted from Rustom's rib, wholly human

Some of them were former Rustom Padilla fans. Some were just curious. Others were excited. Some even brought their children; one of them, blogger Frances, brought not only her one-year-old son but her husband Dex. They all had one thing in common, though-- they were all bloggers, and they had all gathered at Mag:Net Cafe on Bonifacio High Drive that afternoon of Saturday, 14 March 2009, for one reason: to meet and greet BB Gandanghari.
After short introductions and backgrounders by event hosts Dine Racoma and Noemi Lardizabal-Dado and Vibal Foundation Editorial Director Kristine Mandigma, BB took the stage to speak with the assembled bloggers and answer questions.

And there were a lot of questions, ranging from showbiz to political to downright personal. BB answered them all with great poise.

"How do you feel when people tell you that you look like Carmina?" was the first question thrown at BB, from blogger Wena. "Well, I feel very beautiful and very flattered," BB answered.

Other questions tackled BB's future plans. Rustom Padilla had said at one point that he wanted to be a director; did BB still want to pursue that goal? What are BB's plans for her life? Does she plan to run for politics? What does BB want for the LGBT community in 2010?

Rustom had studied filmmaking in UCLA, BB said, and filmmaking encompasses many things, not just directing. It also includes acting, and that BB might be interested in pursuing. She wanted to portray interesting characters, she said. As for her plans in life, BB stated that she just wanted to enjoy the present. "I live day by day, I live by the moment, I enjoy what is going on." But, she added, "I just want to be home. If acting for me is home, then I want to do that." Politics, though, was not her thing. She did intimate, however, that she would want to see the legalization of gay marriage. "I don't want to speak too soon, but I'm a believer of marriage... So yeah, one day when I see my partner I want to get married," BB said. Asked if she had a lovelife, however, BB just laughed and said she didn't.

Did BB plan to make any physical changes to her body? Did she ever regret not having children while Rustom was still married to Carmina?

No, BB asserted, she had no plans of going under the knife. "I'm very comfortable with myself, with my body," she said, adding that when she started to discover she was indeed a lady, her body changed in conformity to her belief that she was a woman. "It's really power of the mind, naniniwala ako (I believe), our body responds," she quipped. As for children though-- much as she loved children and the concept of a family, BB says she is thankful that Rustom's short-lived marriage had not produced a child, as she herself had been going through enough emotional turmoil without subjecting a child to it. She would rather bring BB up properly, she commented, so that BB would be a good mother to any child she might have someday-- and she did want children.

Why did she have to bury Rustom? Even if she said Rustom was dead, did BB still share the same values that Rustom had? How is her relationship with her mother?

BB explained that she believed in the resurrection. "Nabasa ko sa Bible na ... para ang isa ay mabuhay, kailangan may mamatay. (I read in the Bible that for one to live another had to die.) I had to let go of Rustom to really live as BB," she said, because the two were totally different entities. Even then, she claimed, BB learned a lot from Rustom. "The foundation of BB is basically Rustom. If I may put it, sabi nga nila, saan ba nanggaling... si Eba, di ba sa tadyang ni Adan? So I think that's it, saan ba nanggaling si BB, sa tadyang ni Rustom (As they say, where did Eve come from, if not from Adam's rib? So I think that's it, where did BB come from, if not from Rustom's rib)," BB opined. She is still trying to gain her mother's (Eva Carino Padilla) acceptance, though. "Hindi pa niya masyadong natatanggap na mayron siyang panglimang babae (She still cannot fully accept that she has a fifth daughter). [But] I'm getting there," she said.

Some questions were just plain controversial, such as: Was BB simply a publicity stunt to revive a career on the skids? BB explained that, well, "playing BB is not actually playing a character." When Rustom appeared as Gandanghari at the Gawad Urian in October 2008, that was just Rustom playing BB, not BB herself, she stated. Questioned further as to the "macho" roles Rustom used to play, BB simply said that those were "roles played by a being formerly known as Rustom. That was not Rustom."

What could BB say about being one of the LGBT icons in the Philippines? Why did she make herself accessible on the Internet, when other celebrities were not? What made her try to reach out?

BB fielding questions from bloggers.

"It's an honor," BB said upon being called an LGBT icon. When she was in UCLA, she was able to avail of support from the LGBT community there, she said, and she was grateful for that. As for being accessible on the Internet, BB said, she just didn't want to waste the opportunity to reach out to a wider audience and communicate her message, not only on her own behalf but on behalf of others like her.

What was BB's reaction to nasty remarks made about her by other people? Did she ever had any face-to-face nasty remarks thrown at her?

"Much [as] I want to pay attention to [those nasty remarks], I can't," said BB. It would be unfair to the people who support and love her, she went on to explain, saying that she had been to a lot of places already and found nothing but love and acceptance. Even little children and very old people approach her to express their support, she recalled, saying that the nastiest thing that happened to her, perhaps, was going to the ladies' room in a certain restaurant and then being told that she couldn't do the same thing next time. Aside from that incident, she said, she had only encountered acceptance and understanding from people.

Blogger Ryan's mother even sent a question to BB through her daughter: Had BB had any other name choices aside from the name BB Gandanghari?

"Mayumi!" BB quipped. She wanted a name that was ladylike, she said. At first she thought Gandanghari was to be her first name, but when she arrived in the United States, people had a hard time pronouncing it. "What's your name? Gandanghari. What? Gandanghari. What? Oh never mind, it's Rustom," she narrated to laughter from the crowd. So she made Gandanghari her last name, but now needed a first name. She thought that if she ever had a daughter, she would name her Binibini, which means "lady," so she adopted the name instead. Once again, foreign tongues had difficulty with the repeating syllables. "What's your name? Binibini. What? Binibini. What? Bibini-bi- gaah! Okay, BB for short."

So what would BB say to those who still did not want to come out of the closet?

It's their choice whether to stay in the closet, whether to accept or to deny that they are gay or transgender, BB opined. "All I can say is that the closet is dark...it's really very dark and close to desperation when you're inside the closet, and I don't see the reason why you have to stay [in there]. God sees you anyway, saan ka man magtago, God sees you. Whether you're in or you're out [of the closet], God sees you."

BB then turned the tables upon the bloggers by asking them why they had come to see her.

Quite a number of them, it transpired, had been huge fans of Rustom Padilla, who had come to see the person he had transformed into. "Mas maganda pa sa akin (You're prettier than I am)!" one of them exclaimed. Others came, they said, because they were curious. Still others expressed support for BB. "I wanted to meet you," said one blogger, "because you could really make a big change. You're so accessible, you're so open and honest with your thoughts." Mandee, an Applied Physics student at UP Diliman, said "I came here because... I know there are a lot of people who support you, but in my own way I want you to know that there is a Mandee out there who loves and supports you. And second, I read somewhere that you actually look better in person. Well, totoo pala, mas maganda ka in person! (Well, they were right, you look even better in person!)" (Salamat Mandee, baka mainlove ako sa yo [Thank you Mandee, I might fall in love with you], thank you," BB quipped.)

Blogger Kel called BB's transformation "a triumph of the human spirit." He explained that formerly, when one person revealed that he was gay, once people started bashing him the rest would join in. With BB, however, it was another matter. Kel recounted an instance on Plurk where someone reacted negatively to BB and all the other plurkers told him off. To him, he said, it showed that BB's presence had altered perceptions of what it meant to accept a person regardless of sexual preference and gender.

Another blogger, Marck, who had originally written what he called a "borderline homophobic" blog entry when BB first came onto the local scene, stated simply: "Now I've come to realize... I was wrong." "It's never about what you wear, how you act, what comfort room you go to... Sexuality is completely irrelevant," he added, when it comes to dealing with a person as a person. According to him, although meeting BB personally did not completely change him, it had made a difference in the way he thought about what, in BB's own parting words, was "hindi babae, hindi lalaki... pero tao (not male, not female, but a human being)."

Photos by Richard Grimaldo for ThePOC.net. Licensed under Creative Commons License BY-NC-SA-3.0.PH.

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