The month of June marks the season for self-expression, acceptance, and solidarity with the celebration of Pride Month. We’re proud to say that our teams have once again knocked it out of the park during the Pride Month huddle while paying homage to queer culture and history and continuing the Pride Month tradition of celebration!
With the theme of Queertopia, we imagined a utopia free from discrimination and fear. Where the LGBTQIA+ community is free to express gender however they may please. Of course, we understood that the first step towards this is through an everyday place such as the office.
Meet Our Vibrant Winners!
Before everything else, we want to reveal the very first winners of our Viva La Vibrant Vibes Design-Your-Bay contest! It was definitely tough judging, but ultimately we had to hand it to our top three, who enthusiastically brought the waves to the office.
In third place, we’ve got the tourism homage from the “It’s a Shore Thing” team from The Curve. Following in second place, we had to hand it to our Flores de Mayo and Masskara dancers from the Twenty-Five Seven 10th Floor.
And, of course, the winner of the first-ever Viva La Vibrant Vibes contest…Twenty-Five Seven 9th Floor! They transformed the entire floor into a gorgeous and vibrant fiesta filled with nostalgic memories. Congratulations, guys!
Pride Month Huddle at HGS
We’re proud to say that we have fostered teams diverse and open to the LGBTQIA+ community. This paves the way towards creativity unmatched, with input from all walks of life. This also makes for a lively and dedicated Pride month celebration. Now, Pride month itself has a lengthy history. It’s typically celebrated in June to honor the catalyst of Pride: the movement at Stonewall Inn.
Since then, Pride has been a march towards community and allyship around the world. We recently joined the Pride march in Quezon City alongside HGS – you can check out the photos on the HGS Facebook page here! There, we marched alongside the queer community in what became Southeast Asia’s largest LGBTQIA+ event with over 110,000 attendees!
The Drag Queens of HGS
Drag is an art form celebrating queer culture and the history of performance. As a company that supports diversity and encourages creativity, it was therefore our honor to host a drag pageant in our very own offices. The “Love is Love” pageant had four of HGS’s loveliest drag queens compete for that #1 spot during our Pride huddle.
Starting off, our performing queens Arlee and Jerty lip-synced to Born This Way by queer icon, Lady Gaga, hyping up the crowd. Nothing like a classic anthem to get us on our feet! But, we can’t let the first performance be the last. Our next excellent drag queen, Era came in ready with a rainbow overcoat revealing a black and white gown adorned with spikes. Let’s just say Era’s performance gave us a masterclass in mixing drinks.
As previously mentioned, we had four fabulous queens bless our Pride huddle stage for June. We were mesmerized by Janella Kargador’s lip sync prowess in a number that won our hearts (and the Best in Talent Award!). With an opposite atmosphere to Janella, candidates two and three, Ivana-Ivana followed by Maria Cristina Dee Alparo, gave us a more somber ballad. An almost operatic and melodious performance against the rainbow decorations. It was wholesome and sweet, yet filled with pride.
Lastly, Pauline-Paulinario Mabini (a play on one of the Philippines’ national heroes) gave a testament to traditional special effects. To the stylings of Let It Go by Idina Menzel, Pauline lip-synced to the song while her partner gave gusts of powder to her gestures, giving a snow-power type of effect. It was a creatively amazing performance that earned this queen the title of Love is Love Queen for 2023! Congrats, Pauline!
Slaying the Pride Huddle Mini Challenges
What’s a HGS huddle without a challenge to our teams? Over the rainbow and towards the Curve and our Virtual Pride Huddle, where our teams were challenged to a game of Bek-sionary! The queer community in the Philippines has developed a unique lingo based on pop culture. We’ve got words like Haggardo Versoza (a play on actor Gardo Versoza and the word “haggard”) and tsaa (or tea, meaning gossip). We tested our teams on their knowledge of this expansive language, and they did not disappoint. There was also the twist of posing before you answer, giving us some truly fierce moments.
Next up: our teams at Twenty-Five Seven were seen applying lipstick…blindfolded! Oddly enough, our folks ended up looking fantastic with ruby-red lips, even if the make-up artist had a slight challenge. Lastly, our teams at Twenty-Five Seven had a fairly difficult task of finding their partner while also blindfolded. Their only clue? Their game partner holds a piece of fruit on them and once they find each other, they have to take a bite!
At the End of the Day…It’s All About Love!
The best way to end this recap is with the wise words from our drag pageant host, Mons. “To my fellow LGBTQIA+ community members. Be yourself. I know how hard it is once you accept yourself, but it’s a release. A self-release.” In truth, that’s what Pride month at HGS is all about. We know that there are spaces outside of our company that are safe for the queer community to thrive in. But acceptance in the workplace is invaluable. Being yourself, having that self-release in a place where you find yourself every day, with the people you interact with every day, is special.
We want our spaces in HGS to not only be safe, but welcoming. A space that supports self-discovery and expression. This Pride huddles in June are truly a testament to the diversity and allyship in HGS, and the creativity and love that comes with it.
Citations:
HGS Offshore Staffing Solutions. “Small Gestures Toward an LGBTQIA+ Friendly Workplace.” HGS Offshore Staffing Solutions, 9 June 2023.
Manila Bulletin. “Love is here to stay.” Manila Bulletin, 27 June 2023.
Wallenfeldt, Jeff. “Why Is Pride Month Celebrated in June?” Brittanica.
