“, I didn’t want to have a sexual relationship, I didn’t want to talk about it. “At one point, I was really ashamed of being HIV-positive,” Palao admits. “Especially being associated with RuPaul’s Drag Race, it’s such a huge, huge, huge community… and a lot of the fans are also the new and younger generation,” which is exactly the demographic the campaign is hoping to reach. is a bigger voice, and people really tend to listen,” he says. “We can get away with so much shit being in drag, versus if I was just Ryan, because of that fascination with the drag culture,” explains Palao. And he firmly believes that he can deliver those messages more effectively in “a pair of really large eyelashes and four inches of makeup.”
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In continuing this commitment, the host of Logo’s 2010 talk show, HIV+Me, recently teamed up with the Foundation for AIDS Research to spread messages of awareness, hope, and positivity about HIV through an online video series called Epic Voices. But beneath the glitz and glamour is a courageous and caring heart, which has transformed the petite diva into a powerful advocate and activist.
One can still see the club kid influence in Ongina’s edgy yet sophisticated style - preferring a bald head and coquettish hats to wigs, and having been known to sport black pleather eyebrows. “I started out very, like, club kid,” Palao recalls of his early days in drag.
Ongina takes glam to the streets at amfAR’s Countdown to the Cure event.Īnd then came drag: Palao first dressed in drag on his 21st birthday, but didn’t start performing until several years later. Despite his isolating environment, Palao came out during his junior year in high school because “hiding who I’ve always been allowed to be growing up in the Philippines, and then not becoming that person growing up in your teenage life, was really hard.” My family really supported my individuality and… who I am as a person.”īut Palao says all that changed when his family relocated to a small town in the U.S., where “being gay was something I obviously had to hold back on - being feminine was something I had to change,” he recalls. Palao says, “I was never told I couldn’t act the way that I did. “I knew at a young age that I was different,” he says of growing up in the Philippines, one of the most gay and trans tolerant countries in Southeast Asia.
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