Miss Singapore Universe a materialistic Barbie doll

Posted on September 17, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Miss Singapore Universe denies getting boob job’, 16 Sept 2012, article by Charlene Chua, TNP

…The netizens have been working overtime. Some took pictures off her (Lynn Tan’s) Facebook account and posted it elsewhere online. A picture of Miss Tan in her new car – a gift from her British boyfriend – was re-posted on online forums after her win, with netizens calling her “materialistic”. On the HardwareZone forum alone, Miss Tan has also been accused of having had a “boob job”, a nose job and even being a former man.

…On ‘being materialistic’ (after posting a picture of herself in her Nissan GT-R) “I was thrilled as anybody would be to be given the opportunity to drive a nice, fast car (a gift from my boyfriend).”

On ‘looking like a Barbie doll‘: “That’s actually a compliment. I was lucky, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

…On being called ‘a Sarong Party Girl (SPG) for having a Caucasian boyfriend’: “You can’t choose who you want to fall in love with or when or how. Love just happens.”

The MSU national costume is the traditional whipping boy for critics, but so are recycled insults about our Ms Universe looking too masculine or being an SPG. In addition, we have forum trolls ranting about her being a gold-digger and looking plastic fantastic like a Barbie Doll. In 2009, former MSU Rachel Kum ‘came clean’ about having breast enhancements, and such little surgical makeovers in the age of Botox and Lasik are so commonplace that it’s no big deal anymore. You don’t even need to be a natural-born ‘woman’ to participate in MSU in time to come. Lynn Tan can be a computer generated anime chick for all I care, and maybe in a couple of decades, once we get tired of pageants and the transgenders have squeezed out all the competition, the geek fandom’s dream of a ‘virtual’ beauty queen may well be a reality that’s not that cracked up to be anymore.

On Lynn’s ‘materialism’, my guess is as good as anyone’s. What’s certain, though, is that she loves flaunting her boyfriend’s expensive gifts on Facebook, with a photo album consisting of nothing except shoes, pendants and a Dior bag. What’s missing is the $300,000 black Nissan GTR. Well the guy can pamper her however he wishes if he thinks she’s worth it, though if one can get a woman a sportscar as a random present, the only thing that comes to mind for a wedding proposal is a 1 Carat diamond (at least) and a seaside Villa. Maybe a Hello Kitty helicopter too, so that she can fly over a lava-spurting volcano once again in it.

Some girls (and guys) have all the luck, and she does admit a preference for men with burning ambition in them (among other characteristics that you WON’T find in Singaporean men) and resemble ‘James Bond’. You can draw your own conclusions about her choice of mates, but she’s probably not old enough to see all the James Bond films where the charismatic spy acts like a total misogynist womaniser. If detractors continue to diss her for being fake and shallow, well, she can jolly well give them the Goldfinger. She’s Miss UNIVERSE, not Mother Theresa (though the latter was quoted in Lynn’s QnA). Little girls don’t look up to Ms Universes as role models anymore. They adore female vampires, archers, Pussy Riot and that submissive lust-stricken protagonist of Fifty Shades of Grey. Having an angmor boyfriend is nothing, though some ex-Ms Universes do tend to think the world of them.

I think Lynn stands a decent chance at the Grand Finals, though she’d have to do more than spout cliches from religious figures to win the hearts of judges. Swooning over a generous millionaire boyfriend is a strict no-no because judges tend to favour ‘strong, independent’ women, and so are cheesy jokes like what 2011′s contestant Valerie spewed for the whole world to see. And PRAY hard that the national costume doesn’t turn out a sick joke; a polymer gown with prints of SG 100-dollar notes and the face of Yusof Ishak all over it.

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Filed under: 2012, Beauty pageants, Money, Ms Singapore Universe, Transsexuals | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Orchard streetwalkers soliciting expats

Posted on September 16, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Streetwalkers: Stores vigilant’, 16 Sept 2012, article by Nathaniel Fetalvero and Nicholas Yeam, and ‘Streetwalkers getting more blatant at Orchard Road’, 10 Sept 2012, TNP

Foreign women touting sex services are no longer just operating around Orchard Towers. They are now covering areas as far as Far East Shopping Mall. The minute they spot a potential customer, usually a male tourist, they would approach them with offers of ‘massage’. Said one expat: “It’s like running a gauntlet. If you make the mistake of looking at them, they’ll be all over you in seconds.”

…ON WEDNESDAY, two days after The New Paper reported on foreign women soliciting expatriates on Orchard Road, it appears that not much has changed. At the stretch between Orchard Parade Hotel and Orchard Towers, we spotted one or two women standing around, but after an hour, more emerged, loitering on the sidewalks.

Businesses, like Modesto’s Singapore, said the women do not pose a problem. A spokesman for Modesto’s Singapore told TNP that “if some ladies enter and ask for a table, they will be seated and served because we cannot judge who they are. “However, if they are seen to be then going to single men and hassling them, they will be immediately asked to leave our restaurant.”

Orchard Towers, also known to foreigners as the ‘Four Floors of Whores’, wasn’t always the dark seedy underbelly of our country’s premier shopping district. In 1974, it was hyped as a ‘new-idea in office home development’, boasting a state-of-the-art theatrette on the 3rd floor, as well as ‘medical, scientific or technical’ offices on the 4th and 5th floors of the front block facing Orchard Road. It was also home to ‘fine art’ exhibitions, and its Premier Theatre screened selections of the ASEAN film festival in 1980. From Gallery of Fine Arts to Bongo Bar and Top Ten Disco; what the hell happened that turned a centre for art appreciation into the girly-bar hotbed of sleaze and sex that we know today?

In April 1980, Johnny Teo (a name as pimp as it can get) was fined $3000 for managing a brothel from his Orchard Towers apartment, housing mostly Thai prostitutes. Things started to heat up once Premier cinema shut down operations in 1983, with Top Ten Disco taking over after a brief conversion of the auditorium to a ‘live show theatre’.  By 1988, Orchard Towers was an entertainment hub and yuppie den with bars, pubs and ‘social escort agencies’ making their foray into the premises. Some recognisable names in the entertainment business also cut their teeth in Orchard Towers, including singers Wendi Koh (Celebrities bar), Cantopop sensation William Scorpion (Utopia) and DJ Brian Richmond (Peyton Place). Before there were ‘streetwalkers’, pubs like Utopia had ‘public relations officers’ to provide ‘companionship’ and ‘conversation’. By then it would also have its fair share of transvestites and transsexuals, who found acceptance and metaphorical ‘beginnings’ within the building’s four walls, only to be rounded up by the police, who were also on a rampage against homosexuals.

By 1991, Orchard Towers began to be ‘plagued’ by fly-by-night foreign hookers, with the police cracking down on the trade in Dec the same year (Orchard Towers cleared of fly-by-night prostitutes, 28 Dec 1991, ST). In 1992, Singapore’s ‘largest KTV’ opened at the basement of the building (Orchard KTV). In 2002, Orchard Towers was the scene of a high-profile murder, after bodies were found in an abandoned vehicle in the car park. 4 years later, Top 10 rebranded itself as Top 5, its evolution over the years in sync with the gradual moral decline of the entire complex. Today the disco houses private rooms named ‘Desire, Passion, Seduction, Temptation, Obsession’, named after ‘ladies’ emotions, which also describes perfectly the naughty shebang happening on the streets outside. Cross-dresser comedian Kumar also performs there at 3 Monkeys bar these days, and being risque in Orchard Towers is like baring it all in a nude colony.

Sex, rock n roll, transgender performers, has-been celebrities, even murder. This building has seen it all, and should be curated for being a seething well of all imaginable contradictions, an antithesis to the safe, sterile Singapore brand. If the National Stadium is the Grand Dame, this place is the Wretched Slut. Orchard Towers remains the ‘original’ sex destination for rich foreigners on exotic dirty pilgrimages, despite the vice and sleaze leapfrogging over to the other end of Orchard Road at Orchard Plaza and Concorde Hotel shopping centre. Unlike the sleek, squeaky clean, ultramodern behemoths like Ion and 313, the one and only ‘Four Floors’ remains unabashed about its sordid associations and services, one of the last buildings in town with a hint of CHARACTER and history. A stubborn stain on the gleaming tourist showcase that is Orchard Road, it still has many stories to tell, even if they’re not ones you really want your children to hear.

Filed under: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2012, Clubs, Gay stuff, Nightspots, Orchard Road, Sex, Shopping malls, Transsexuals | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Transsexuals in Miss Universe Singapore

Posted on April 28, 2012 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Beauty contests’, 28 April 2012, ST Forum

(MR ACE KINDRED CHEONG): ‘Transgender participants should not be allowed to participate in beauty pageants meant for women (‘Miss Universe Singapore: Could the next one be originally male?’; Wednesday). They will have an advantage over biological women as some, if not all, will have undergone cosmetic surgery. Instead, why not have beauty pageants meant solely for transgender participants?

Transsexualism has been discussed rather openly in Singapore since the early 80′s, where attempts have been made to distinguish the terms ‘transvestite’ from ‘transsexual’, as well as define the colloquial ‘ah kuas’, the latter often used interchangeably between a transsexual, an ‘effeminate’ man or  ‘sissy’ or a ‘male prostitute’, yet SBC deemed it ‘appropriate‘ for use in drama serials.’Transgender’ was coined as recently as the 1990′s, as in LGBT, a term that may be preferred when addressing the community as a whole as it seems to take the ‘surgical knife’ undertones off ‘transsexual’, though both are still commonly used in the media today. ‘Ladyboy’ and ‘bapok’, however, have become derogatory, though ‘bapok’ in Malay literally means ‘effeminate’ (like the equally offensive catch-all that is ‘ah kua’), while ‘Tranny’ and ‘shemale’ are reserved for porn genres. When it comes to transsexualism, even quotation marks can be highly offensive, as in ‘woman’, ‘sister’ or ‘queen’ to describe transwomen (men who became women).  The Malaysian press has even hidden the full word behind an acronym, TS.

Even the same act of ‘going under the knife’ has been euphemised over the years. Today it’s called SRS or ‘sex reassignment surgery ‘, when we used to call it a ‘sex change operation’. The Miss Canada Universe who started it all, Jenna Talackova, herself underwent ‘GENDER reassignment surgery’, the term ‘assignment’ making the procedure as innocuous as amending one’s birth certificate. Like most behavioral deviations, transsexualism has also become medicalised;  if you’re born a man and feel like a woman you have a ‘gender identity disorder (GID)’, which implies that ‘feeling like a woman’ when you’re a man is a form of ‘sickness’. The term ‘intersex’ has been proposed as the ‘third gender’ for official purposes, though being ‘intersexed’ could also refer to a sex development disorder in which one was born with ‘ambiguous’ genitalia i.e hermaphrodites, a term used to describe flowers and worms other than human beings.  Hermaphrodites, other than getting embroiled in sporting arena controversies, also have their own problems dealing with transsexual beauty contestants who were born 100% male.

Allowing transsexuals in pageants puts judges in a spot, even if it may well boost up ratings. You don’t want to appear to cast a sympathy vote nor do you want the LGBT community to complain about discrimination if their representative fails to even make the top 15. Cosmetic surgery also may not give that desired edge over female participants (unless the writer was thinking of shocking beauties like Thailand’s Nong Poy below). But perhaps this is more a victory for ‘medical science’ than anything else. Or rather medical science AND make-up. But wait a minute, since when was Miss Universe JUST about LOOKS (or femininity for that matter) anyway? Didn’t ‘masculine’ Tania Lim take the crown in 2010?

For every Nong Poy...

...There's this.

There are already transgender Miss Universe-ish pageants as we speak, such as the Miss International Queen pageant (which allows transvestites as well), not to be confused with Miss Tourism Queen, Miss Global Beauty Queen and Miss QUEEN OF THE WORLD. Still, this is a vast improvement from our stigmatisation of transsexuals in the 80′s, when they were barred from such contests because it was seen as an ‘embarrassment’ and  a ‘big joke to organisers’. It would be a while before we see transsexuals or transvestites in high-flying positions such as doctors, lawyers or politicians (though some may be closest cross-dressers…there’s a difference!), but pitting them in competition against natural-born females could be symbolic of this social ‘inclusiveness’ that the PAP has been bragging about, even if the platform is as superficial as a beauty contest, or in the promotion of ‘cabaret’ shows (Does that mean our pageants need to be R18 as well?)

Audiences are suckers for underdogs, and since the Miss Universe franchise here needs saving, a transgender Miss Universe Singapore hopeful could very well be a Beautiful Boxer in the making. But first, we’ll have to lift the bar on transsexuals into certain clubs, and that includes Ladies’ Night, to show that we really mean it. Still, it’s hard not to be hypocritical when advocating equality for transsexuals as a heterosexual man. Some would rather be seen in public with an openly gay man than a transsexual, and I for one have reservations about getting a hot oil massage from either.

Filed under: 1980s, 2012, Beauty pageants, Cross dressing, Ms Singapore Universe, Names, Sex, Transsexuals | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

LKY’s Haram Truths

Posted on December 10, 2011 by gdy2shoez

From ‘M’sia religious body still studying Hard Truths’, 10 Dec 2011, article in Today

Malaysia’s government has said that a book on Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew is “still being studied” despite federal Islamic authorities earlier confirming that it has been placed on a list of books declared “haram”, or forbidden to Muslims.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Mr Jamil Khir Baharom, said the book, Lee Kuan Yew: Hard Truths To Keep Singapore Going (picture), was being “examined”. “It is under the Home Ministry … it is not haram,” he told The Malaysian Insider.

When told that the book was one of 15 listed by the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (Jakim) as haram, the senator replied that “this just means it is being examined by the censorship committee”.

In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a ‘fatwa’, technically a death sentence and manhunt, against Salman Rushdie for ‘The Satanic Verses’, declaring it ‘against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran’.  LKY’s Hard Truths, as its title suggests,  isn’t a work of fiction (though probably no less entertaining) like Rushdie’s Verses. If it weren’t written by a powerful politician, Hard Truths might have been regarded as more blasphemous than it really is and incite Muslim extremists to call for the old man’s head as well.

Our own authorities have a habit of putting authors in prison for exposing the criminal justice system (Alan Shadrake’s Once a Jolly Hangman, for example), so it would be indeed ironic if certain religious councils in our neighbouring countries call for more than just a ban on Hard Truths the book, but issue ‘fatwas’ on its prolific and outspoken author as well. Incidentally, Hard Truths speaks of Muslims marginalising themselves from society by being too ‘strict’ with their beliefs.

Memoirs aside, here’s a terrifying list of non-food things classified as ‘haram’ by Islamic authorities around the world.

  • Yoga: A fatwa was issued against yoga in 2008 by Sarawak authorities, and Muslims were advised to do other forms of physical activity to keep healthy, because yoga originated from ‘Hindu spiritual teachings’.
  • Aerobics: According to the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), aerobic moves ‘tended to spark sexual desire and therefore were contrary to Islamic mores’. Practitioners of this erotic exercise should also refrain from wearing ‘transparent clothing’.
  • Valentine’s Day: The JB state Religious Department issued a fatwa for V-Day in 2005, stating that such celebrations ‘involved elements of vice’.
  • Poco-poco: Though not eventually banned, this dance routine was frowned upon by the Perak Fatwa Committee, not because it was overtly erotic, but because the steps involved making a cross with your feet. Heck, some states even ban public SINGING and dancing altogether (No public singing and dancing, decrees Kelantan government, 7 Oct 1995, ST). Yet there’s a Malaysian Idol?
  • Sperm banks: The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI)  declared that the presence of sperm bank in the country was haram or prohibited. “Sperm donor is haram, so is sperm bank”, so says a spokesman. One can only speculate why the generous life-giving  act of donating sperm is forbidden.
  • Taking part in SMS contests: Jakim says this tantamounts to betting, and betting is a form of gambling, which is forbidden in Islam. I guess carnival ‘games of chance’ should be banned as well.
  • Tomboys, or ‘pengkid’: The fatwa reads ‘Pengkid, that is, women who have the appearance, mannerisms and sexual orientation similar to men, is haram in Islam’. It was supposed to ‘save these women from lesbianism’.
  • Marrying a transgender: In 1982, the national Fatwa committee in Malaysia ruled that it is haram for a man to marry another man who has undergone a sex change to be a woman (Sex change marriage is haram, 17 April 1982, ST)
  • Buying a cucumber: Not surprisingly this comes from Al Qaeda in Iraq. What about bananas then?
  • Elton John:   Josephine Teo would surely approve.
  • Wearing wigs: Especially those made of human hair
  • Body building contests: Banned by the Sarawak Religious Affairs Dept (Jais) for over-exposing bodies (Sarawak bans bodybuilding contests for Muslims, 24 Aug 1997, ST). I suppose Abercrombie and Fitch is haram too.
  • Delivering a buffalo head to appease a sea demon: Don’t ask why.

Filed under: 1950s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2011, Fun and games, Gay stuff, Marriage, Nudity, Politicians, Religion, Sex | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

No transgenders allowed

Posted on May 6, 2010 by gdy2shoez

From ‘Right to ban trangenders from clubs?’ 6 May 2010, article in My Paper

Lawrence (manager of China One, who refused to allow transgender customer back into club): “You have to realise the problems (of letting transgenders in). For example, are they supposed to use the male or female toilets?”

Mr Bendini (victim): “If clubs don’t welcome us, they should put a sign on the door. It should not be on a case-by-case basis.”

Mr Bendini’s experience led to at least 500 transgender people coming together to rally against discrimination.

Hey sista soul sistas

By the same argument club managers should ban girls who dress like boys, in fear of traumatising patrons in their toilets. Looking at Ms/Mr Bendini above (what a name, Bendini), what are the chances you’ll see her/him pissing at a urinal next to other men and confusing the shit out of them? Another club, Butter factory, was reported to ban entry to an amputee in fear of crutches posing a safety hazard in 2009.  Which led one to wonder what a man with one leg is doing at a dance party. But that’s another story altogether. Funny how no action is taken (yet) against transsexual people coming together and yet the authorities clamp down on gay conferences and straight politicians. Still, try explaining sex change to the kids.  More  Ah Kua discrimination here.

Filed under: 2000s, 2010, Cross dressing, Nightspots, Sex, Toilets, Transsexuals | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Ah Kua

Posted on February 15, 2010 by gdy2shoez

From Good show but it had one flaw 22 April 1988 ST Forum

I am referring to the use of the words “Ah Kua” to tease one of the actors for losing in the gymnastics competition.

The problem lies in the choice of the phrase. The English subtitles used the word “sissy”. The question is is Ah Kua the same as sissy? I understand that Ah Kua is used to describe male prostitutes.

Filed under: 1980s, Gay stuff, It Should Have Been.., Local TV shows, Sex, Singlish/Broken english, Transsexuals | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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