It’s hard to imagine, but Singapore in the 1990s was even more conservative than the Singapore we know today.
Despite this, there was one woman we couldn’t get enough of towards the end of the decade: Annabel Chong.
The story of a Raffles Girls’ School alumni becoming notorious for having sex with 251 men was too juicy for even the mainstream media to ignore.
In 1997, a headline in The New Paper screamed,
What would drive a bright young woman like Annabel Chong to become a porn star?
It was during her time in the United States that Annabel turned to modelling to support herself.
This eventually led her to porn films and in 1999, she starred in The World’s Biggest Gang Bang. That film became one of the highest grossing pornos ever and caught the attention of Singapore.
The fact that a Singaporean girl had been filmed having sex with 251 men was too much for most conservatives to handle.
She laughed the hate all off in true Annabel Chong fashion, claiming that the porno was a way of empowering women, much like Madonna did with her book Sex earlier in the 1990s.
Annabel’s experience was crystallised in a documentary, Sex: The Annabel Chong Story.
Years after the scandal broke, Singaporeans were still divided on the issue. In 2005, ST columnist Ignatius Low reopened the discussion when he asked if Annabel Chong was a national hero.
Reactions were swift, with readers writing in almost immediately. Said one,
Don’t glorify Annabel Chong
Another couldn’t contain his anger.
I read the article with much dismay and anger. Mr Ignatius Low seems to put Ms Annabel Chong on a pedestal for all to admire, and for what? For having sex with 251 men in 10 hours
Despite anger back home, it appears that Annabel Chong has moved on from her blue film days rather admirably.
For one, she’s dropped the Annabel Chong brand once and for all (it was a porno stage name after all).
She now goes by her given name, Grace Quek, and is a successful software developer in California. She builds websites, manages digital products and creates apps.
But if you think the cheeky girl in this interview is a thing of the past, think again.
The woman who put Singapore on the pornography map knows still has a laugh about it and every now and then.
She tweeted on Saturday (Nov 11),
I am digging myself from a deep hole in terms of my ability to be a
#hardcore athlete and a software engineer at a high level – I am not there yet. I am working on it. And I will make it because being#hardcore is fun – and I like fun.
If there’s one thing that we can expect Annabel Chong to never stop being, it’s hardcore.
Featured image from Hoover and Amazon.
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