Tammy, Anabelle and Me. (part 1)
It's weird. I remembered when Anabelle Chong's feat first made the news in Singapore. That was many years after the 252 recording breaking feat. Strangely, it was during the media cook up that I realised she was actually Grace Quek from my College. The Grace I used to know was a demure, sweet looking girl. Introduced once, but never really spoken to her. She was always hanging out with the Arts and Out people from the Music and Dance company.
Our principal ruled our school with an iron fist. I still remembered the plight of one of my friend. Some nosy singaporean complained to the media when he saw him making out with his girlfriend, on the bus, while they were in their uniforms. The chinese tabloid papers reported it, and he and his girlfriend were shamed in front of the whole school and told to apologise. Thereafter, they were suspended for 2 weeks.
I still remembered how the debate team was made to bow and apologise to the whole school for having defeated by a neighbourhood JC, the underdogs that year. And I will never forget how the principal pressure us that we Must do well, in order to keep our rankings. It was all about image. Yeah, and image only.
That was in early 1990s... and it really felt like a repressive 2 years, in a pressure cooker environment. They ruled hard. The irony was, one of their Sons (also our schoolmate then) was passing porn magazines around like nobody's business.
Some say Grace picked 'Chong' as her star surname, not without reasons.
'Cliches define female porn stars as typically deluded and self-destructive, victimized by the patriarchy that controls the industry and consumes the product. Such stereotyping assumes a state of disempowerment that Annabel Chong, an unrepentant, self-styled feminist, defensively denies. '
and in her own words, she state her claim:
'The gang bang is a joke," she says. "It's a parody of what American men are supposed to be like. I'm not saying they are like that, but the myth that a lot of men are brought up with, is that they should be a stud, and sleep with as many women as possible. And here's a woman doing it. Is she a stud, or is she a slut? There is obviously a double standard there."
Annabel continues:
"[the gang bang] is also a joke on the whole active-passive thing. Are the men active and the woman necessarily passive? What if the woman makes the first move, and initiates the sex? Does that make her active, does that make her aggressive? What I am basically doing is to do this thing, and there's one reading of it. There's the reading that arises from a certain set of assumptions about men and women, it also arises from the way porn is being marketed, it also arises from the way men commonly perceive women. I am [saying] 'Hey, there is this event, let's look at it this other way,' and it makes it less clean-cut." And, as art should do, this film has certainly generated discussion.'
Annabel will be the first to deny that she was ever a victim. But the story I took home from the documentary Sex is that the transformed Grace - who played at being the aggressor - was in fact just a pawn for the executives in a business concerned only with the almighty dollar, a business that blatently disregards the humanity of its own stars.
Last heard, she was working on movies that show safe sex to be fun, and that promote the use of condoms.
I guess people can call her names, judge her for what she has done. I admire her for her courage. I admire her for her cause and purpose.
Do people still look at her with contempt after all these years? I don;t know about you, but she does garner a certain kind of respect from me.
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Our principal ruled our school with an iron fist. I still remembered the plight of one of my friend. Some nosy singaporean complained to the media when he saw him making out with his girlfriend, on the bus, while they were in their uniforms. The chinese tabloid papers reported it, and he and his girlfriend were shamed in front of the whole school and told to apologise. Thereafter, they were suspended for 2 weeks.
I still remembered how the debate team was made to bow and apologise to the whole school for having defeated by a neighbourhood JC, the underdogs that year. And I will never forget how the principal pressure us that we Must do well, in order to keep our rankings. It was all about image. Yeah, and image only.
That was in early 1990s... and it really felt like a repressive 2 years, in a pressure cooker environment. They ruled hard. The irony was, one of their Sons (also our schoolmate then) was passing porn magazines around like nobody's business.
Some say Grace picked 'Chong' as her star surname, not without reasons.
'Cliches define female porn stars as typically deluded and self-destructive, victimized by the patriarchy that controls the industry and consumes the product. Such stereotyping assumes a state of disempowerment that Annabel Chong, an unrepentant, self-styled feminist, defensively denies. '
and in her own words, she state her claim:
'The gang bang is a joke," she says. "It's a parody of what American men are supposed to be like. I'm not saying they are like that, but the myth that a lot of men are brought up with, is that they should be a stud, and sleep with as many women as possible. And here's a woman doing it. Is she a stud, or is she a slut? There is obviously a double standard there."
Annabel continues:
"[the gang bang] is also a joke on the whole active-passive thing. Are the men active and the woman necessarily passive? What if the woman makes the first move, and initiates the sex? Does that make her active, does that make her aggressive? What I am basically doing is to do this thing, and there's one reading of it. There's the reading that arises from a certain set of assumptions about men and women, it also arises from the way porn is being marketed, it also arises from the way men commonly perceive women. I am [saying] 'Hey, there is this event, let's look at it this other way,' and it makes it less clean-cut." And, as art should do, this film has certainly generated discussion.'
Annabel will be the first to deny that she was ever a victim. But the story I took home from the documentary Sex is that the transformed Grace - who played at being the aggressor - was in fact just a pawn for the executives in a business concerned only with the almighty dollar, a business that blatently disregards the humanity of its own stars.
Last heard, she was working on movies that show safe sex to be fun, and that promote the use of condoms.
I guess people can call her names, judge her for what she has done. I admire her for her courage. I admire her for her cause and purpose.
Do people still look at her with contempt after all these years? I don;t know about you, but she does garner a certain kind of respect from me.
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