KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 26 — It is impossible not to stare at Ladybeard when he walks up to you, with his heavily-muscled body clad in kawaii — Japanese for “cute” — feminine costumes, complete with twintails crowning his bearded face.
Originally from Australia, Ladybeard started getting attention with his cross-dressing as a pro wrestler in Hong Kong, and then found explosive fame in Japan where he started dabbling with cosplaying — costumed role-playing — and pin-up modelling.
He is now a sought-after Internet sensation, and the heavy metal vocalist has even started a new J-pop metal band called Ladybaby with two teenage girls: Rie Kaneko, 17, and Rei Kuromiya, 14. (If you ask Ladybeard, he would say he is five years old.)
Malaysian fans had the chance to get up close and personal with Ladybeard recently, where he was a special guest of the inaugural Visual Arts Expo (VAX) 2015.
In his own words, during his VAX 2015 stage performance, on Sunday:
- When I was 14 years old, one day my friend had a school uniform party… I said, “It’ll be really, really funny if I go wearing my big sister’s school dress.” It was this super fun night and everyone had a really great time. This was where my cross-dressing career began.
- I wasn’t buff when I was young, but I was a work in progress. You have to start somewhere.
- I currently wrestle for a company called Union Pro Wrestling, which is part of the Dramatic Dream Team Pro Wrestling group. I also wrestle for Makai Pro Wrestling. Makai is the greatest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. It is a new company, which is like a crossover of pro-wrestling, and theatre, and “live” music and “live” dance… It’s this story set in the Japanese hell realm where samurai fights demons, it’s amazing.
- What happened was, I started wrestling, then I wanted to do my kawaiicore (music genre) show. At that time I was in Hong Kong. My favourite music ever is a combination of pop music and heavy metal. Particularly, I like heavy metal covers of pop songs. In Hong Kong, I started learning Cantonese, and I started listening to Cantopop. I heard all these catchy pop songs, and I wanted to hear metal covers of them, and no one had done them. So I said, I found my mission. From wanting to do that, when the show started it was a really metal show and it just evolved into an idol show.
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- I have a team that I work with, who tailors my stuff and make sure it accentuates my famous features. Everything is tailor-made. We kind of just decide what we want to do and figure out if we can do it. If we can’t do it, we figure out how to do it … We figure out what costumes we need, and we go to the tailor and we say, “Can you make this?” And hope they say yes.
- When I first started, I buy things off the rack, it didn’t work out. In Hong Kong I wanted to wear all this kawaii fashion, but they were all made for size 6 Chinese girls.
- I like dim sum very much. I like char siew bao… I used to take the boat to work (in Hong Kong), and I would pass by the char siew bao man, and I would buy 12 char siew baos from him for my breakfast. Then I became Fattybeard, so I had to cut down.
- I’m very, very lucky because my family is super supportive. They’ve supported me in everything I’ve ever done. I really am so lucky to have an awesome mom and dad. But that’s my mom and dad, my big brother and big sister just hate everything I ever did. So mom and dad? Awesome. Siblings? Nah.
- The only thing my mom and dad disapproved of was when I was wearing a (American horror punk band) Murderdolls T-shirt, with the back saying “People hate me”. This (crossdressing) is ok, but “people hate me” is not. It was an anti-self esteem T-shirt, and actually I was wrong to wear it. Thank you, mom.
- [What brings me up when I am really down are] kawaiiness and metal. The two most powerful forces in the world. Should somehow those things not work: beards. Kawaiiness, metal, and BEARDS!
