Ricky Reyes

Mother Ricky.

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Ricardo Enriquez Reyes Jr. (April 12, 1950–), commonly known as Ricky Reyes or Mother Ricky, is a Filipino hairdresser, television personality and entrepreneur. He gained popularity for his chain of beauty salons in his native Philippines as well as the host of the television program Gandang Ricky Reyes.

Background

Reyes grew up to a poor family in Manila as the eldest of seven siblings. After a stint as a floor sweeper at a salon, he opened his first shop in San Juan in 1973, a rather modest affair consisting of a wall mirror, a shampoo chair, a bowl, and a dryer. Within two years he set up shop in various locales around Metro Manila and rose through the ranks to the point of rubbing elbows with prominent businessmen such as SM Supermalls founder Henry Sy. Reyes gained further fame as a television personality and philantrophist, where he leveraged his experience in hairdressing in various television programmes and charitable initiatives, also earning him prominence within the Filipino LGBTQ+ community.

Controversies

I thought you were gay, Ricky.

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Bizarrely, despite his iconic status within the "bakla" of the Philippines, Reyes has had his own share of gaffes at the expense of those within the community, though in the Philippines this comes as no surprise given the ambivalent-at-best if not outright contemptuous attitudes the Filipino mainstream has with sexual and gender minorities, even within members of the LGBTQ+ community in the country, going so far as to parroting the usual canards against the LGBTQ+ spectrum like supposed stifling of family values and conflation of homosexuality with paedophilia.

In 2019, Reyes attracted controversy in a YouTube interview where he made a series of homophobic and transphobic statements regarding the SOGIE Equality Bill, a series of House and Senate proposals aiming to guarantee protection against economic and public accommodation-related acts of discrimination towards people based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression in the Philippines, which is historically socially and religiously conservative.

In the interview, Reyes asserted that transgender women are still "bakla" from within even if they have undergone gender affirmation surgery, and has also criticised calls by the LGBTQ+ community for inclusivity in public toilets and protection against discrimination, stating "If you have a penis, use the men’s [room]. If you have a vagina, use the women’s [room]. I respect you as a person, I respect your homosexuality, but we should know our place." He also advocated against public cross-dressing out of fears of humiliation and hate from outsiders (never mind the fact that he himself has dressed rather effeminately if not outright cross-dressed) and expressed objections towards same-sex marriage as consistent with Catholic teaching, in spite of his long-time relationship with his life partner of fifty years.

While he maintains a public image as a prominent member of the community, Reyes's conservative Catholic upbringing still lingered on with his subservience to religious authority, insisting that "bakla" should remain "bakla" and should just keep their shit to themselves instead of speaking up against injustices, case in point Eat Bulaga host Allan K. remaining reticient in spite of flagrantly transphobic acts carried out in the parody pageant segment "Suffer Sireyna", despite Allan himself being in a position to speak out against it. Telling a vulnerable group to "stay in your place" and be just content with the ghetto or social enclave the community is in as well as scoffing them off as whiny, overly demanding reactionaries clearly amounts to shutting down legitimate discourse about concerns by them, as if matters such as hate crimes and civil partnerships are a non-issue to be swept under the proverbial rug. Reyes's bigotry and internalised discrimination against members of a community whom he (supposedly) belongs to is a symptom of an epidemic of insensitivity and sociopolitical myopia in post-colonial Philippines, where they may have declared independence from colonial rule but are still prisoners of their own insensitivity and blind hate – even those who are supposedly the ostracised group.

Reyes's sociopolitical opinions, as well as those from pop singer Jake Zyrus (who came out as a trans man after initially gaining fame in the American campus musical show Glee under his birth name Charice Pempengco) who made similarly dismissive if not insensitive statements urging trans people to just use the bathroom based on their biological sex assignment are a clear betrayal of the progressivism they ought to uphold, i.e. five steps forward and ten steps back at their own expense. It is also noted that Reyes and Zyrus's opposition towards the SOGIE bill stems from the fact that they are in a position of prominence and privilege in society, affording them the perks of getting away with who they are and how they live without being discriminated upon for their gender identity and/or sexual preference: Mother Ricky has chains of salons under his name and Jake is an acclaimed pop singer both in his native Philippines and internationally, thereby giving them something of a safety net against those who may sic on them; meanwhile, those at the lower rungs of the LGBTQ+ spectrum in the Philippines, e.g. hairdressers, seamstresses and in other fields stereotypically associated with the bakla, are instead looked down upon and are told to be content in the ghettos that they are living in.

Get him out of here! He’s got AAAIIIIDDSS!!

In 2015, a former Reyes employee named Renato "Rene" Nocos filed a discrimination suit against his employer after Reyes found out that Nocos tested positive for HIV, assigning him to an ailing branch and depriving him of a job assignment once the branch closed. Reyes's camp denied the claim, but in February 2016, the National Labor Relations Commission found Reyes guilty on the said case, and was ordered to reinstate Nocos in his job and pay ₱600,000 (roughly $12,500 in 2016) worth of back wages and benefits. Nocos still remained positive towards his former employer: "Deep in my heart, I’m praying for NLRC to dismiss any appeal. And I’m praying for enlightenment for my boss Mother Ricky." He has also since dedicated his life towards advocating civil rights for HIV-positive people.