What Happened to Filipino Political Impersonator Ate Glow?

Filipinos will remember Ate Glow, a humorous impersonation of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and her famous tagline, “Ang saya-saya, no (Isn’t it fun)?” The woman behind the character—under the wig, prosthetics, and signature mole—is Renee Hampshire, who has since shed the famous persona imitating an infamous figure to focus on finding her own identity in private. Years later, from her home in London, she looks back on her days as Ate Glow as a changed woman, with wisdom, understanding, and of course, humor.

Ate Glow first appeared at a student variety show at the University of the Philippines in 2001. This was around the time of the ouster of then-President Joseph Estrada. Eyes were on Arroyo, his vice president, who would assume his post. At the show, however, eyes were on Hampshire, who impersonated Arroyo with wit and verve. 

A star, as they say, was born. Prominent directors and producers who attended the event invited Hampshire, then a 19-year-old student, to TV shows. Her act was an instant hit, earning her a niche in show business. Hampshire played Ate Glow for around 13 years, turning the character into a household name for Filipinos in the Philippines as well as overseas. She hosted talk shows, appeared in movies and TV commercials, and performed in live events. 

Hampshire said she had previously entertained the thought of becoming an actor, but, as someone who identified as a gay man at the time, she did not want to be boxed into a trope.

“I didn’t want to be stereotyped as just a funny person,” Hampshire told VICE. 

Gay men are prominent in Philippine media but many of them are typecast as the comic relief or the sassy sidekick. With Ate Glow, Hampshire could pursue entertainment not as a gay man, but as someone else entirely. She took the biggest political figure in the country and made her funny. Unlike the “monotonous” Arroyo, Ate Glow was candid, personable, and charming. She would talk about her beauty secrets and love life on one show, then her exercise routine on another.

“I made her human, more likable,” Hampshire said. “Ate” means older sister in Filipino, and is a respectful way to refer to older women. In this sense, it made the president more relatable, too.

When Arroyo ran for a second term in 2004, Hampshire was right there on the campaign trail. She said she never formally promoted the president but in between rally cries and speeches, Hampshire performed as Ate Glow. People enjoyed her act, she said, because humor provided a break from the doom and gloom of life. But Hampshire said humanizing a controversial political figure came with a moral dilemma. At the time, she was riddled with the tension between her role as an entertainer and her role as a citizen. 

“Where do I draw the line?” she remembered asking herself about her two personas, admitting that her political beliefs didn’t always align with the demands of the job. In these instances, she didn’t want to play the role.

“Society has the right to question things, humor has a way of doing that,” she said. 

She said she critiqued Arroyo in some university events, where she had more creative freedom, but on TV shows, some of the more forthright elements of her act were toned down, if not completely edited out. 

Still, the act went on, and as long as Arroyo was president, Hampshire was Ate Glow. Hampshire said the point came when it was almost no longer a role she was playing. 

“There were times I couldn’t tell if I was thinking as Renee or Ate Glow. It was like I became her,” she said.

The demands of playing Ate Glow—the busy schedule, the political beliefs that did not always align, and the blurring lines between the identities of the character and the actor—caught up with Hampshire.

“It was just too much,” Hampshire said, before hazily recalling a time, while jetting between shows, she just broke down and cried.

“I didn’t know that can happen, that your body will just cry. Not because you’re lonely, or sad, or something happened. It was my body’s way of telling me that ‘you need to stop,’” she said. 

Hampshire kept playing Ate Glow for years after that incident. It was not until the death of her father in 2011 that she finally took a break.

“When something so shifting, something so strong happens, like the death of [a] parent, it will help you recalibrate life,” she said. “Life is not just about work.” 

Years of living life as a character, at a time and in a country that did not yet understand the LGBTQ community, left the student-turned-celebrity with very little time to discover her own identity. Everybody knew Ate Glow, but the person who played her did not know herself.

This changed when Hampshire started traveling to Europe where she performed as Ate Glow for Filipino communities. There, she saw a different way to live, one that had less to do with proving her worth through Ate Glow, and more with being herself.

“I realized that part of working hard was because there was a massive need for me to prove my existence.” In the Philippines, she said, there tended to be an attitude of “Hey, you’re already gay. You can’t be dumb, too.” According to her, that became an unconscious driving force to work hard and try to outperform everyone else.

These reflections brought Hampshire to face her identity, at age 30, as a trans woman—something she said she always questioned, but couldn’t find answers to in the Philippines. 

“I knew that I was gay, but my brain was saying that was not really who I was,” she said. “It was only [in] the U.K. that I was able to articulate what I had been feeling for so long.”

Hampshire said she didn’t learn anything about LGBTQ identities while growing up in the Philippines, which is why she hopes to see sexual orientation and gender identity education in the country now. 

“LGBTQ-inclusive education can change lives,” she said.

She now volunteers at a trans-led gender organization in the United Kingdom, which hopes to educate people on gender sensitivity and intelligence. She has also trained as a mental health first-aider and continues to practice this from time to time. She said that she’s still learning about all this herself. 

At 40 years old, she’s now a full-time stock trader, a skill she was surprised to learn during the pandemic, through free online courses. She’s also been married to her husband for five years.

Since choosing Renee over Ate Glow, Hampshire has finally begun to understand what her famous tagline “Ang saya-saya, no (Isn’t it fun)?” really means.

She used to say it as a coping mechanism, as something she had to say to share happiness with people, because she was Ate Glow. 

“I didn’t really know the meaning behind it,” Hampshire said. 

She still wants to spread happiness and help people realize that life is fun, but now, she does it as Renee.

“I have to choose myself now.”

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