People - Be A Man

Three Singaporean men tell us how they have grappled with differing ideals of masculinity through their lives — and how they are reinventing the concept for themselves and for future generations to come.

- Hillary Kang

WILLIE TAY

Coming out of the closet is always a daunting experience. The risk of backlash in one’s personal and professional lives means that many members of the LGBTQ community never reveal the truth about their sexual identities. It is a struggle familiar to 32-year-old singer Willie Tay, who had known he was gay since he was an adolescent, but had hidden his sexuality from his old record label for fear of the consequences.

Works produced under his Wiltay imprimatur were often heteronormative in nature. Music videos for his songs, like “Nothing Can Stop Us” and “Hola,” featured female love interests who Tay serenaded, romanced, and pined over.

“I remember being in this dark moment where I just couldn’t write anything because I felt like I was living a lie being in the closet,” said Tay of his past works. “I felt like I was singing about things that didn’t relate to my heart — like having a canvas that was painted for me.”

When Tay came out to his label, his earlier fears were not unfounded — his managers swiftly dropped him from their roster, but not before deleting all of his painstakingly cultivated social media accounts.

“They were concerned for the image of the label, the image of me as an artist — I think they reacted out of fear,” says Tay ruefully. “They said: ‘You shouldn’t let people know about your sexuality — it’s just not going to work in Asia’.”