SMASHING STEREOTYPES IN STYLE

Award-winning fakaleiti entertainer and advocate Amanaki Prescott-Faletau tells how she became the role model she never had

- Florence Hartigan

Cabaret performer Amanaki PrescottFaletau has many strings to her boa.

When she's not acting on screen in productions like The Breaker Upperers and The Panthers, the multi-talented Tongan-New Zealander helps run the dance company she co-founded, Fine Fatale. The collective's cabaret film Fever premieres at Auckland's Civic Theatre on 17 September and 24 before they embark on a nationwide live tour.

Fine Fatale's mission is to put queer and MVPFAFF/LGBTQIA voices centre stage - a cause that is a driving force for Amanaki, both in her work and in her personal life.

"MVPFAFF is an acronym covering the brown Pacific third genders - we're everywhere," smiles the 33-year-old, who identifies as fakaleiti, a Tongan gender identity similar to the Western identity of being a trans woman.

Growing up in Auckland's Mt Roskill with her parents and 13 siblings, Amanaki realized early that how she felt inside didn't match the gender she'd been assigned at birth.

"My family never made me feel different - it was other people, especially at church," tells Amanaki, who remembers congregants trying to change the way she would walk or speak to be more "masculine".