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Marina Summers Is Rewriting the Narrative of Filipina Drag Excellence
In the eyes of her Filipino fans, Marina Summers was a winner, beginning from the moment she showed up on that runway and made Filipino drag a force to be reckoned with.
Published Apr 6, 2024
Marina Summers has proven that Filipino drag is a force to be reckoned with.
The year Marina Summers discovered drag, through online clips of RuPaul’s Drag Race and a drag competition at Nectar Nightclub, there wasn’t an instant affinity towards persona-making and performance, or a desire to make a name in drag.
It was 2018, almost a decade since the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race had premiered and introduced drag to more mainstream audiences. If she could identify a specific point of inauguration to something like drag identity, the young Marina would have simply recounted cultural touchpoints every queer Filipino kid knew by heart anyway: Beyonce and Lady Gaga, the national obsession with Miss Universe.
“But later on, something shifted in the universe and I started doing drag in my bedroom,” she says, gradually immersing herself in the scene while consistently fine-tuning an identity that would make way for her unmissable turn in the first season of Drag Race Philippines, and, eventually, a spot in RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. The World where she took her beloved island girl persona to new heights, earning her acclaim and adoration from Drag Race viewers from all over the world.
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Alan Segui
Marina Summers for Preview April 2024
But what exactly was it about Marina that inspired many to tout her as the embodiment of Philippine drag excellence? It could have been the fact that, before making her TV debut, she had seemed to figure out better than most the right balance of punning and wordplay, of camp and slapstick and improv, and the wit and intelligence to boot—and how to translate all that in the screen. It could have been her understanding of the dynamics of drag as both craft and brand (“I wasn’t overproducing myself. It’s just, I'm so aware of what was happening lang. I was so aware that I made conscious decisions to make TV without losing the power of Marina as a performer.”).
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It could have been all that plus her constant interrogation of who she was as a drag queen. “When you're in drag, you want to capture everyone's attention. So the go-to is to go big and to do everything all at once, diba? But I had to find deep within myself what makes me stand out. It wasn’t until 2020, when I really had the time to just watch videos and research, that I thought: What is the essence that I want to feel instead of what I want to project?”
Shortly after her standout turn in RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. The World, the Filipina Winnah spoke to Preview about her beginnings in drag, creating her ever-evolving persona while retaining the core of Marina Summers, and the outstanding looks and performances that she brought to RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. The World.
Creating Marina Summers
The persona of Marina Summers is, in many ways, defined by the very distinct and vivid visual language that she has carefully crafted throughout the years. Though you could probably say that about most drag artists, Marina’s take on the young Filipina, which draws quite heavily from nature, in particular the elements that define the natural sceneries of the Philippines as a tropical (quasi-) paradise, is unique in its departure from the usual markers of Filipino-ness found in Filipino drag. More generally, even from drag’s explicit—though sometimes inadvertent—commodification of subversion.
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Alan Segui
ON MARINA: White Slit Dress with Applied Heat Manipulation Details with Silk Lining, AE.RI
“In my first year of performing, it was just like what I thought Marina was. It was during the pandemic that I really had the time to just really watch videos, research, do a lot of Pinterest, and just really try out things that I haven't done before,” she recalled. “So in the middle of the pandemic, I posted this swimsuit photo that I took of myself. I was wearing a two-piece. I was like, you know what?
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“Honestly, Marina Summers is still Marina Summers even without the ruffles, even without the collars. Parang bombshell nga ako. I exude that sex appeal. I exude that extreme feminine energy, and I wanted to translate that into my drag. Not that I don't like being campy, not that I don't like being grand and like being colorful. It's just that that specific type of drag just gives me something else.”
Alan Segui
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Marina Summers, as we know her now, is a culmination of years’ worth of trying out different interpretations of a lifelong “love for the islands and its people” and learning to translate those interpretations in various formats, be it on TV or through music. In Drag Race Philippines, she was focused on creating this image of a tropical goddess and Filipina bombshell; in RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. The World, she had to take a different approach and think more about the depth of her drag. “I feel like I was too concerned of how I appear, how I sound like during that first season and it played well on my part. But this time around, I wanted to have a deeper meaning. I wanted my comeback to have a different meaning.”
But before all that, Marina was a kid, who, before drag had become an institution, had briefly struggled with making her drag identity public. She was lucky in that she never really had to come out to her family, who turned out to be supportive of her queerness anyway, but struggled with how performing as a drag queen could affect her loved ones.
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Alan Segui
ON MARINA: Nymph Wet Long Top, P10,500, DI SAIS. Nymph Distressed Pants, P6,000, DI SAIS
“Marina Summers is still Marina Summers even without the ruffles, even without the collars. Parang bombshell nga ako. I exude that sex appeal. I exude that extreme feminine energy, and I wanted to translate that into my drag.”
Alan Segui
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It’s a story she’s told many times before: Once, she had dressed as a girl while hosting a school event (where her siblings also went), and upon coming home was told by her mom not to dress up as a girl again. “My mom said, ‘Okay lang maging bakla, pero wag ka magdamit ng pambabae, kasi inaasar 'yung mga kapatid mo.’ I had that in the back of my mind growing up. I don't want to dress up feminine. I don't want to dress up not according to what's acceptable. Or like, I just don't want to put my loved ones to harm. So even nung nakapanood ako ng drag for the first time in 2018, sabi ko sa sarili ko, ay hindi ko gagawin yan. That's not for me.”
Alan Segui
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ON MARINA: Red Silk Top and Skirt, MARTIN BAUTISTA
Eventually, though, through conscious efforts to make the persona of Marina Summers more public, she gained the confidence that we can’t imagine the drag queen without. Again, it was posting photos that changed things. “I wanted my family to know na I'm doing drag. They started liking and putting heart reacts on my pictures, ganyan. So parang, oh my God! There's nothing wrong with it pala.
“Ako na lang 'yung may internal dialogue na [kasi] parang for them, it was just situational. That moment [school event] lang nila naisip 'yun na, ‘Uy, wag mo nga gawin yun kasi baka maasar yung mga kapatid mo.’ It's not, ‘O, ‘wag mo nga gawin 'to ever.’ And with that support, even though it was not verbal, sobrang na-boost 'yung confidence ko into just, fine-tuning my craft. No matter what happens outside your home or outside your family, it doesn't matter, eh, you know?”
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Alan Segui
The Lone Warrior from Asia
When it was announced that Marina Summers would be competing in RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. The World, it wasn’t really much of a surprise given her track record: the sophisticated looks that never really seemed to repeat themselves, the witty one-liners, the punchy statements underpinned by a refreshing intellect and a charming pop culture fluency that drew audiences to root for her.
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Marina, meanwhile, thought hard about what bringing her drag to an international production would entail. “Being the first Filipina to ever compete in an international season from the Philippines and have that Philippine sash across her chest, I felt like I needed a different approach this time. Not to please the country, but to show them that I'm proud of the drag that I'm presenting to the world.”
Alan Segui
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“Being the only Filipina queen [in RuPaul's Drag Race: UK vs. The World], I had this vision of being this lone warrior from Asia. I wanted to rewrite the narrative of us being a third-world country, a colonized country of these foreign countries.”
Alan Segui
“Being the only Filipina queen there, I had this vision of being this lone warrior from Asia. I wanted to rewrite the narrative of us being a third-world country, a colonized country of these foreign countries. That has been our story for a very, very long time. And I wanted to poke fun at that. I wanted to stay true to one of the essences of Marina, which is being intelligent, being very punchy with my statements. Especially for entrance lines. I feel like that is one of the most important moments that you have to ace when it comes to Drag Race.”
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Alan Segui
ON MARINA: Lamat Acrylic Dress, P53,600, PATRICIA NAOMI STUDIO. Gusi Pot, P450, POT SUPPLIER MANILA
Marina’s first look—a new take on the traditional terno via a Filipina warrior look, complete with a bolo—was a punchy statement indeed, setting the scene for the kind of reinvention of classic Philippine motifs that Marina would effortlessly pull off throughout her stint in the show. She and her team partnered with designer Jude Macasinag, who helped her translate her vision of a Filipina warrior, a Katipunera. “I had a very Raya-ish image in mind, someone who just came from a battle, which is Drag Race Philippines. I am fresh off a battle. So I wanted to be very rugged, distressed, and not perfect. And I think Jude Macasinag did a pretty good job of portraying that imagery.
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“With that whole storyline of being the Filipina warrior, I wanted to bring in Filipina heritage, and culture. It was that I was proud of—a story that I could tell confidently and authentically on an international level, being surrounded by international queens. I wanted to stick to that Filipina image. For this look, I really wanted to reverse colonialism.”
Alan Segui
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“I feel like being Asian and being Filipina was my biggest weapon. It didn't add pressure on me to represent the country or like Asia in general. If there is a little pressure, I just wanted to represent it properly. Because this is one of the first times na may representative ang Philippines, diba? So I really wanted to intelligently and respectfully represent that.”
In an international production, surrounded by international queens, Marina Summers gave the colonizers the chop. A sophisticated, clever ensemble that was aware of the tacit burden of representation, but was ironic and self-aware enough to render all that ultimately unimportant. At Drag Race UK, Marina was at the top of her game, winning three challenges, three Golden RuPeter badges (the most for any contestant in the season), and showed in every episode what Philippine drag excellence was.
Alan Segui
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“I wanted to bring in Filipina heritage and culture. [...] It was a story that I could tell confidently and authentically on an international level, being surrounded by international queens.”
Alan Segui
On Gay Anthems and the Unique Case of Philippine Drag
Marina would go on to stage several iconic performances, among them her rendition of MayMay Entrata’s AMAKABOGERA. With Kumare Harvey, Marina co-wrote the lyrics to AMAFILIPINA, a sort of anthem that, much like the original material it is based from, is a declaration and assertion of identity. It’s a testament to not just Marina’s various talents—as a songwriter, a producer, and a performer—but more interestingly to her ability to translate ideas as complex as identity into something familiar and relatable, with contexts specific to Pinoy expressions of queerness, into universal themes of finding and accepting one’s true self.
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Alan Segui
“It [AMAKABOGERA] spoke to me on a different level because parang bakla 'yung nagsasalita 'dun sa kanta, diba? It was in our own language. It also spoke to our struggle of just owning our own beauty and owning our own kabogera self. And of course, [this was] kabogera gay lingo so parang talagang sa atin siya. Para sa atin siya sinulat. I consider it a gay anthem. It just makes me so gay whenever I hear this song. I wanted to add my own twist to it: How would Marina write it? How would Marina perform it?”
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“I wanted it to translate to something na maiintindihan pa rin ng global market. Going back to my roots and my main package this season as a Filipina goddess, doon nabuo 'yung AMAFILIPINA title. And it just works so well kasi tahing-tahi siya doon sa entrance line ko to my talent show, which is Ama Filipina.”
Alan Segui
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ON MARINA: Shell Dress, Price available upon order, KARINE BASILIO-RESULTAY
Perhaps more than any other Filipina drag queen, Marina Summers, even before being named the Philippine representative for RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. The World, has always thought deeply about her Philippine identity, and has kept that identity at the core of her drag. The innate, constant reverence for her roots, and being at home with what Filipino author Glenn Diaz calls “a sense of humor that was so bakla” (“which is to say, often clever but sometimes wala lang”) was what Marina has always had, even before she even truly understood what drag was. Besides the smarts and her natural abilities as a performer, she’s always known that her drag would not be possible without always turning to her roots.
Marina Summers didn’t need to win the crown in RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. The World. In the eyes of her Filipino fans, she won it the moment she showed up on that runway and made Filipino drag a force to be reckoned with.
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Alan Segui
Produced and Styled by The Preview Team
Photographer: Alan Segui, assisted by Jeo Jingco and Miles Wency
Creative Director: Bacs Arcebal
Editor-in-Chief: Marj Ramos-Clemente
Production: Isha Fojas and Reg Rodriguez
Fashion: Reg Rodriguez, Isha Fojas, and Paulina Singh
Makeup: Iowani Unpingco, assisted by Holly Dey
Hairstyling: Rocky Star
Story: Catherine Orda
Videos: Jana Jodloman
Videographers: Richford Unciano and Greeko Junio
Social Media: Jamie Lou Briones
Shoot Location: Batlag Falls, Tanay, Rizal
Special thanks to Leon Gallery and Janey Culla, Ace Tumambing, and Baus Rufo of Camp Marina Summers
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