MALL FASHION SHOW

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

WHILE waiting for a friend in a mall in Quezon City, I spent my spare time watching a fashion show, which featured the latest women's wear. It was a mid-afternoon fashion show, where a dozen women walked on the ramp to showcase the latest craze in women's dresses.

It was my first time to watch a fashion show. I hardly know anything about shows, where men and women parade the latest fads on clothes. I am not a fastidious dresser; I hardly know much about clothes.

But I felt I was tolerant enough to open a new vista to see and understand how people dress up for whatever occasion. I felt the challenge, or urge, to learn something about women's dresses. I felt I could learn something new, while I waited for my friend, who got embroiled in a wicked traffic jam in some parts unknown.

The fashion show was held on the second floor of medium-sized Fisher Mall, which nestles on the old Pantranco bus station at the corner of Quezon and Roosevelt Avenues in Quezon City. It was probably the management's idea to hold a fashion show on a Monday to attract a bigger number of habitues there. Monday is regarded a lean day in mall business.

The T-shaped stage was surrounded by monobloc chairs that enabled about three dozens of denizens, mostly women, to take a good view of the models and the latest dresses they paraded. Some bouncy music accompanied the fashion show, where models, mostly unsmiling, took turns one by one to walk on the ramp and showcase the dresses.

After the initial salvo, which took about fifteen minutes for the flat-chested models to showcase a line of business dresses, they returned but with a different kind of dresses - the summer wear. I could see a pair of middle-aged men, who ogled at those models like hungry hyenas about to predate on some prey.

The audience appeared polite, but basically disinterested to those clothes lines. They hardly clapped to show some semblance of appreciation. One could get the impression the hoi polloi did not seem properly appreciative or prepared for fashion shows. A fashion show could be too middle class for them. Or it could be only for the parvenus.

Somehow, my interest in fashion modelling was fueled by those little antics of a model, who, from a distance, appeared different from the rest. The model was equally flat chested, but she was tall and dark from the rest. She had a pair of legs that looked different from the rest of womanhood. Also, she seemed to exaggerate every step of the way on the ramp.

I went a little nearer to the ramp to confirm my initial suspicion that she was not the fair lady I would like to believe. I hardly blinked as I took a deep look at the model's neck to confirm my suspicion that she has an Adam's apple of a man. Lo and behold, she has. It was not as big and protruding like a regular man's, but it was visible.

Yes, she looked like a "tranny," a colloquial term for transvestites, or cross dressing gays. I have nothing against gays or cross-dressers, but I feel some element of deceit, when there was no full disclosure about the presence and participation of gays in the fashion shows.

All the while I thought that gays are the designers of those dresses, but not the models. It was new for me to know that they have become models too. But I feel the tranny was there to earn a living.

If this incident had happened in the past, say two or three decades ago, I am sure that I would sing a different tune. Mostly likely, I would say "natanso ako" (I was fooled). But in this age of permissiveness, when we have learned the presence of the so-called LGBT (lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders) community, we learn to tolerate and even appreciate their uniqueness.

I am not inclined to bash the tranny in the crowd. I prefer to exercise the values of respect and tolerance. I am not appreciative of the oppressive ways of the old.