By Julienne Loreto
The homophobia in GMA’s Born To Shine has gone from disappointing to downright disgusting.
The P-pop-themed series premiered in March this year. Despite a schlocky start — opening with classic kabitan nonsense — Born To Shine had the potential to breathe new life into teleseryes, especially in its earlier episodes.
Its lead star, Zephanie Dimaranan, is a morena beauty with distinctly Filipina features, and other morena women have been uplifted in the show such as series regular Nigerian-Filipina actress Muriel Lomadilla. However clumsily, Born To Shine paid sincere attention to its gay male characters such as Basha (Miggs Cuaderno). Its cinematography and color grading were vibrant and crisp. The casting was perfect. For instance, Vina Morales and Olive May play mother and daughter here, and May — who is a Cebuana, like Morales and her family — bears a striking resemblance to Morales’s real-life sister Shaina Magdayao.
The greatest promise of progress lay in the beautiful way that Born To Shine enmeshed Visayan heritage into the narrative. Dimaranan’s character Jennifer “Jeni” Sicat has a Cebuana mother, Minchie; Manilyn Reynes, a real-life Cebuana, portrays her. Although Reynes has been the butt of countless jokes about her chubby frame, Born To Shine avoided taking cheap shots at her weight.
In fact, Charice (Tina Paner) told Minchie that the latter was prettier than herself and Dara (Vina Morales) — no ifs, no buts, even though Charice and Dara were visibly much thinner women. Reynes’s past teleserye roles have not been so kind. In 2007, for example, Marimar (also by GMA)made her wear brownface to play a Cebuana stereotype. ABS-CBN’s Got to Believe, which aired from 2013 to 2014, showed Jaime (Ian Veneracion) jokingly insulting Reynes’s Betchay for her weight in the supposedly feel-good finale, despite the deep love and respect he previously held for her. Everyone in the room laughed.
In Born To Shine, Minchie was a fully-fledged character, not a brownface caricature. She peppered the Cebuano language into her dialogue, and nobody made fun of her for it. She was plus-sized, middle-aged, and a mother, and she was attractive. She had a complex and loving relationship with her husband Perry. Her culture mattered: in some of the episodes, Elvis (Nyoy Volante) hired her to perform at Sinulog, explicitly because of her Cebuano roots.
Although raised in Manila by a Tagalog adoptive father, Jeni’s Cebuana side was never erased too. In fact, her love interest Nate Lim (Michael Sager) repeatedly expressed his love for Jeni in Cebuano and Hiligaynon before he was killed off.
I am not writing from a place of hatred. Especially because I’m Visayan myself, waiting for a new episode of Born To Shine six days a week used to be a comforting habit. I loved seeing empowered women, especially morena and Visayan women, on my screen.
Perhaps it was always doomed by its afternoon soap format. Some of Born To Shine was filmed in late 2025, months ahead of its March 2026 premiere, adhering to the healthier, less stressful production model you often see abroad. However, when the show turned out to be a smash hit, Born To Shine was extended — not with preparation or care, but in the same way your average teleserye is: episodes are rushed and the team just keeps on churning out new material incessantly until the ratings dry up. In just nine months, Born To Shine has aired more than 190 episodes. For comparison, American sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine ran for eight years and only racked up 153 episodes in total.
Born To Shine steadily lost its kinang. That was disappointing. When a show disappoints you, no tears are shed. You sigh and lament its squandered potential, and you move on. Maybe you revisit the better episodes. But ever since Born To Shine’s disgustingly homophobic portrayal of Vic (Karenina Haniel), a butch lesbian character, the show leaves nothing but bitterness in my mouth.
Vic was introduced as P-pop singer Megan (Olive May)’s personal assistant in Episode 144, “Good Intentions.” This was on September 9. Like Megan’s previous PA Chichi (Charm Aranton), Vic was an obsequious, stalkerish sulsulera, encouraging Megan to embrace her antagonistic tendencies towards Jeni. For whatever reason, Vic was written as a butch lesbian, unlike Chichi, who was traditionally feminine and not overtly queer-coded.
Although Chichi and Vic are both obsessed fangirls, the former’s admiration was not treated as creepy. More than anything, Chichi was a pain in the neck to our heroine Jeni. On the other hand, Vic’s sexuality was almost immediately presented as a danger to Megan. While the straight, feminine Chichi can be as obsessed as she wants without becoming a sexual threat to Megan, Born to Shine wasted little time in painting a butch lesbian fangirl as a sexual predator.
Within just a week of Vic’s introduction, Megan’s boyfriend JC (Kobie Brown) grew suspicious of Vic. Whenever Vic appeared onscreen, the camera lingered on her hands caressing Megan’s arms to soothe her anxieties. Creepy background music played during these scenes, as if a canonically lesbian woman making physical contact with another woman is inherently horrifying and weird — even though at this point, Megan fully consented to it and stated multiple times that she trusted Vic. Megan even argued with JC over this a few times, cutting him off for being too controlling and attempting to intimidate and harass Vic.
Although the creepy music and weird lingering shots were already pretty lesbophobic, Born To Shine had every chance to course-correct. On September 18, I even reached out to GMA Network via Instagram expressing my concerns over the lesbophobic implications of the storyline. I only received an automated response.
In Episode 184 (October 26), Megan once again dismissed JC’s suspicions towards Vic as paranoia. Then Vic was shown secretly spiking Megan’s water with drugs at a Halloween party. When Megan began acting loopy while high, Vic invited her to dance, indicating that she planned to take advantage of her, maybe rape her. Cis, heterosexual knight in shining armor JC saved the day.
There’s no way a woman like Megan can exercise her autonomy and rightfully call out her boyfriend for being possessive and paranoid, right? Of course not. In Born To Shine’s world, any red flag behavior exhibited by a straight man is valid because he gets proven right. Simply put: lesbian evil, lesbian bad. Straight guy good!
I hoped that was the end of it. I hoped that the pain of a TV show I used to like deciding to portray a lesbian as a sexual predator would finally cease. However, Born To Shine kept Vic around. In their November 6 episode, she drugs yet another woman, this time the protagonist Jeni.
Why is this plotline of an evil lesbian who loves to drug vulnerable (straight) women being prolonged? Is this blatantly lesbophobic atrocity what the audience wants to see? When I check the comments from regular viewers — and there’s a lot, considering that Born To Shine is a ratings powerhouse and garners at least 1 million views online per episode — it’s a mixed bag.
Lots of viewers have expressed sympathy for Vic after JC and a few other characters bullied her at her own birthday party. Some are enjoying Haniel’s performance. Many others just want Vic to be written out, saying that they’re sick of her. But others are bloodthirsty — to quote one viewer, “sana makidlatan ang tomboy.” They could’ve given Vic positive character development, but why did they go down this route?
What audience are they courting? They’re doing everything to make Vic an irredeemable predator, so it can’t be the ones who are starting to find the character amusing and likable. Instead, the writing caters to the viewers who fantasize about lesbians being humiliated and brutalized. That is the audience they’re validating here.
In Philippine entertainment, lesbian representation is usually relegated to indie films and digital series. As much as we love them, it’s undeniable that mainstream films and TV are the ones with a huge influence on people. For every What Lies Beneath (2025–2026), a rare teleserye that treats its lesbian characters with dignity, there’s a lot more mainstream Pinoy media like Born To Shine and A Very Good Girl (2023). In the latter, lesbian villain Molly (Dolly de Leon) sexually assaults the heroine Philo (Kathryn Bernardo) to the delight of her much younger girlfriend Rigel (Kaori Oinuma).
In reality, lesbians everywhere are much more likely to be the victims rather than the assailants. In the 2000s, the term “corrective rape” was coined after numerous South African lesbians were viciously raped and murdered. In one case from 2007, a lesbian couple was gang-raped and both women were shot in the head several times on their way home.
Corrective rape is founded upon the belief that lesbians are unnatural and need to be “fixed.” For example, LGBTQ+ advocate Bandy Kiki was once told by a film producer that he would “rape the spirit of lesbianism out of [her].” In our neighboring country Indonesia, corrective rape cases have also been documented.
One woman, July, was raped by her uncle when she was 18. She explained, “I was raped by my uncle because he considered lesbians as a disgrace to the family, I had to be corrected into a real woman. […] My uncle said, ‘Lesbians must be raped in order to heal!’” she explained. Her father, who shared the same negative view towards lesbianism, later raped her as well. Another Indonesian lesbian, Dewi, was forced by her mother to have sex with a man in her presence to “cure [her] from lesbian disease.”
Similar incidents happen in the Philippines. In December 2025, Outright International published a paper in which a lesbian respondent named Anj shared that her boss threatened to hire other guys to rape her to “turn [her] straight.” The boss was a member of the LGBTQ+ community himself, a bisexual man.
But as Anj pointed out, lesbians occupy a uniquely vulnerable position: not only are we affected by homophobia, we are also harmed by misogyny. In a patriarchal society, the most fearsome thing you can be is a woman who has no sexual and romantic desire for men.
We don’t have to look too far from Born To Shine’s home network to find another case of a Filipina lesbian being harassed with corrective rape rhetoric. Klea Pineda, one of GMA’s prized homegrown talents and an out-and-proud lesbian, received the following message earlier this 2026: “Dapat sa ‘yo ni-re-rape eh, kaso pati rapist aayaw, asim mo e.” In May, GMA Sparkle said that they stand with Pineda.
Yet their hit show Born To Shine is contributing to the very culture that endangers lesbians. Writing for joinarcc.org, Nicole Wood explained, “When marginalized communities are portrayed through a limited lens, whether as side characters, villains, or reduced to cultural clichés, it reinforces dangerous stereotypes [and] influence[s] […] how policies are formed, and even how people treat one another in everyday life.”
With millions of daily viewers in the Philippines and beyond, Born To Shine has a huge platform and reach. The writers’ decision to introduce Vic, a lesbian — a butch one at that, an extremely underrepresented demographic — and make her repeatedly drug and violate heterosexual women is not just mindless soap opera entertainment. It does not exist in a vacuum. It will have ripple effects.
Vic’s character will reinforce or mold their viewers’ ignorant beliefs towards lesbians. Filipino lesbian kids are watching, and growing up, they will internalize the message that the world perceives them as monsters. Their families and peers are watching, laughing and cheering every time the tomboy is depicted as repulsive and immoral.
Ironically, in real life, P-pop is one of the Filipina lesbian community’s only mainstream safe havens. For example, the Nation’s Girl Group BINI has shown their support for women-loving women (WLW) countless times. In October 2025, their stunning “First Luv” music video explicitly depicted a sweet sapphic romance between singer Klarisse De Guzman, who is openly bisexual, and her girlfriend Trina Rey.
In September, BINI’s Stacey discussed her fictional school “Tomblooms University” (a portmanteau of tomboy + Blooms, aka BINI fans) on her livestream. Although it was lighthearted, many lesbian Blooms felt sincerely affirmed and comforted by “TBU,” especially because Stacey respectfully used proper lesbian terminology. For example, she assured viewers that both butch and femme lesbians were welcome in TBU, not shying away from the word “lesbian.” With her co-member Gwen later joining in the fun, the P-pop stars were clearly laughing with their lesbian fans, not at their expense.
Across groups, several P-pop girls have been open about their enjoyment of WLW media too. For example, VVINK’s Jean has revealed that she’s a fan of ClaireBell, a Thai girls’ love (GL) series with some lesbian characters. “Kailan Ka Aamin,” a dreamy and romantic single by VVINK, was even inspired by MilkLove, another GL ship.
For her birthday in 2024, KAIA’s Sophia released a joyful cover of “Red Wine Supernova” by lesbian singer Chappell Roan. Instead of removing all references to lesbian romance in the lyrics, as other Filipina singers have been criticized for doing, Sophia retained every single one.
It’s not just the girl groups either. In 2024, Jao of ALAMAT replied to a (now-deleted) fan post declaring that the boy band’s hit song “Maharani” is a lesbian anthem, saying, “We luv sir @thyroalfaro and lesbians”.
In a realistic representation of the P-pop industry and fandoms, lesbians would be respected, appreciated, and plentiful. However, Born To Shine presents a straightwashed version of P-pop where the only lesbian around is a sexual predator from whom the “good” women must be vigilantly protected.
Lesbians are human beings too. There was truly no reason to go down this route. In real life, Karenina Haniel isn’t even a butch lesbian. But Born To Shine’s team sat down and decided to write a lesbian character whose sole purpose is to be a creep who drugs women. They decided to play scary music whenever Vic comforted Megan and do scary close-up shots of her hands on another woman’s skin.
These were all decisions consciously made by multiple people, to paint lesbians as scary and unnatural. In the show’s opening song, Jeni and Megan sing with their bandmates, “Di ka nag-iisa, just stay by our side, no limits.” Well, no limits unless you’re a lesbian. Everyone gets the chance to be uplifted unless tomboy ka, in which case your safety does not matter at all, and the show will perpetuate homophobic tropes that could literally endanger your life to its millions of viewers.
