The Emancipation Of Ataska
Why Did I Join Vivamax?
WHEN I MADE THE DECISION TO VENTURE INTO MATURE ROLES AND DEBUT MY PERFORMANCE ON THE PHILIPPINES’ HOTTEST STREAMING PLATFORM, I GOT A LOT OF QUESTIONS FROM THE PRESS…
some of them sounded familiar.
most of them were absurd.
“are you a virgin?”
“how far are you willing to go?”
“does filming those scenes ever turn you on?”
“what did your parents say?”
but the question i heard the most was simple:
“why?”
why did i do it?
what made me decide to take that path?
three years later, my answer remains the same:
i wanted to evolve as an artist.
growing up in the entertainment industry is complicated, especially as a young woman. i’ve been in this industry since i was five years old. from a very young age, people start creating versions of you in their heads. they decide who you are, who you should be, and what they think you’re allowed to become.
sometimes they meet you once and think they know you forever.
sometimes they know one chapter of your life and mistake it for the whole story.
as someone who genuinely loves film, i saw the opportunity to take on more challenging roles and push myself outside of my comfort zone. i wanted to explore stories that were messy, complicated, human, and sometimes uncomfortable.
i wanted to be challenged.
i wanted to grow.
i wanted to see what i was capable of.
but looking back now, i’ve realized there was something deeper happening beneath the surface.
it wasn’t just about acting.
it was about freedom.
i’m an aquarius. whether you believe in astrology or not, people always describe aquarians as independent, rebellious, impossible to box in. i’ve always related to that. whenever someone tells me who i’m supposed to be, a part of me immediately wants to question it.
some people assumed my decision was a publicity stunt.
others thought management had convinced me to do it.
but the truth is far less dramatic.
it was entirely my choice.
for most of my life, i had been carrying the pressure of being “good.”
the good daughter.
the good girl.
the girl-next-door.
the wholesome artist.
the version of myself that wouldn’t upset anyone.
and while there’s nothing wrong with any of those things, there comes a point where performing other people’s expectations becomes exhausting.
what many people don’t know is that long before vivamax, i had already experienced what it felt like to have my image weaponized against me.
when i was a teenager, an ex-boyfriend spread false stories about me. he claimed i was a bad girl. a cheater. he implied the existence of nude photos that never actually existed.
i never sent them.
that story was completely fabricated.
at the time, i felt humiliated. violated. ashamed. i felt so betrayed because he was my first love.
but once a rumor enters the public sphere, it develops a life of its own.
suddenly, people aren’t reacting to who you are.
they’re reacting to a character someone else invented.
and that’s what was so frustrating.
here i was, carefully protecting an image, trying to be responsible, trying to do everything “right,” and yet people were still projecting fantasies, assumptions, and narratives onto me.
that’s when i started asking myself:
if people are going to make up stories about me regardless, why am i spending so much energy trying to control how everyone sees me?
why am i giving strangers that much power?
why should i give a fuck?
for a while, i thought the solution was to prove people wrong.
to be even more careful.
but eventually i realized i was still allowing other people’s perceptions to control me.
i was still living in reaction to them.
years later, i came across an interview with rose mcgowan about the infamous sheer dress she wore to the 1998 mtv video music awards.
people treated it like a publicity stunt or a shocking fashion moment. but she later explained that it represented reclaiming ownership of herself after someone else had tried to take that away from her. it was her silent protest.
that resonated with me.
our experiences were obviously very different.
but i understood the feeling she was describing.
when someone spends enough time trying to define you, shame you, control the way people see you, or rewrite your story, there comes a moment where you stop asking for permission.
you stop organizing your life around disproving their narrative.
you stop performing innocence.
you stop shrinking yourself to make other people comfortable.
you simply reclaim yourself.
looking back, that’s what vivamax represented for me.
it wasn’t rebellion for the sake of rebellion.
it wasn’t a cry for attention.
it wasn’t me becoming someone new.
it was me refusing to let fear make my decisions anymore.
growing up, i was obsessed with hannah montana. like every other kid, i wanted to be her.
she was the biggest star in the world.
later, when miley cyrus began shedding that image and stepping into adulthood, a lot of people were shocked.
some were disappointed.
some were angry.
i wasn’t.
i saw someone refusing to remain trapped inside a version of herself that had become too small.
i admired the fearlessness of it.
not because she became provocative, but because she became unapologetic.
she gave herself permission to change publicly.
that’s something people claim to support until a woman actually does it.
there was something unexpectedly cathartic about my own experience, too.
for years, i had been terrified of making the wrong move.
terrified of disappointing people.
terrified of becoming the subject of criticism.
then i did the unexpected.
the thing that was supposedly going to ruin my image.
and something surprising happened.
nothing broke.
my family still loved me.
my true friends stayed.
my career continued.
i still woke up every morning as myself.
the world didn’t end.
it was one of the most liberating realizations of my life.
because once you’ve survived being judged, you stop fearing judgment quite as much.
once you’ve survived being misunderstood, you stop obsessing over being understood by everyone.
once you’ve faced the thing you were most afraid of, fear loses its leverage.
and yet, even years later, i still see comments that make me laugh.
“sayang.”
“sana nag-focus na lang siya sa music.”
“sana nag singer na lang siya.”
as if doing one thing automatically disqualifies me from doing another.
as if people can only exist inside a single category.
i’ve never understood that.
why is it so difficult for people to accept that artists can contain multitudes?
i can be a singer and an actress.
i can write songs and act in films.
i can host a show and release music.
i can play complicated characters while still being myself.
i can be soft and strong.
wholesome and sexy.
creative people were never meant to fit neatly into one box.
somehow, we celebrate reinvention until it actually happens.
we love the idea of artists being multidimensional, but the moment they step outside the role we’ve assigned them, people become uncomfortable.
i think that’s because categories make people feel safe.
they want to know where to place you.
they want a simple answer to the question:
“what is she?”
but i’ve spent my entire life resisting simple answers.
i don’t want to be reduced to a single headline, a single project, or a single chapter of my career.
vivamax was something i did.
it is not all that i am.
just like music is something i do.
acting is something i do.
hosting is something i do.
none of them individually define me.
together, they tell the story of someone who refuses to stop growing.
that’s what vivamax gave me.
it taught me that my career doesn’t belong to public opinion.
it belongs to me.
it also changed the way i approach my work as an artist.
after taking on roles that demanded vulnerability, courage, and a willingness to be judged, every other challenge started to feel possible.
because the fear was never really about acting.
the fear was about perception.
it was about what people would say.
what they would assume.
what they would think of me afterward.
and once i walked through that fear, i realized how much of my life had been shaped by it.
how many decisions had been filtered through a single question:
“what will people think?”
the answer, i eventually learned, is simple.
people will think whatever they want.
some people will misunderstand you no matter how clearly you explain yourself.
some people will project their own fears onto you.
some people will only see the version of you that confirms what they already believe.
and that’s okay.
because freedom begins the moment you stop making your choices in anticipation of someone else’s reaction.
that’s what felt so cathartic.
for years, i felt like i was carrying a version of myself that existed primarily for public approval.
a version that was careful.
predictable.
easy to understand.
vivamax forced me to confront that.
it forced me to ask whether i was building a career or merely maintaining a reputation.
and i realized i wanted more than a reputation.
i wanted a life.
a creative life.
a complicated life.
a fully expressed life.
one where i could continue surprising people—
including myself.
if i could survive that chapter, what couldn’t i do?
i could release an album.
be part of a girl group.
host a talk show.
play a villain.
play a hero.
start a business.
reinvent myself again.
and again.
and again.
because that’s the thing about evolution:
it never really ends.
the truth is, vivamax didn’t change who i was.
it revealed who i already was.
curious.
creative.
independent.
a little rebellious.
and yes, sexy.
someone who wanted the freedom to make her own decisions, even when those decisions made other people uncomfortable.
for me, that chapter was never really about sexuality.
it was about autonomy.
ownership of my career.
ownership of my image.
ownership of my choices.
ownership of my story.
people will always have opinions.
they’ll always create narratives.
they’ll always try to reduce women into categories that make them easier to understand.
good girl.
bad girl.
wholesome girl.
sexy girl.
i’m not interested in being just one of those things.
i’m interested in being a person.
complex.
contradictory.
constantly evolving.
THE EMANCIPATION OF ATASKA wasn’t the moment i stepped into mature roles— it was the moment i stopped asking for permission to become whoever the fuck i wanted to be.