Queer, Loud and Proud: A Voice for the Voiceless
Miss Yu,
Femme
Fashionista
she/her
August 2, 2025
by Andie Abad Santos
At 19, Miss Yu is styling herself into a future where softness and sharpness coexist. Femme-presenting, bigender, and self-taught in more ways than one, the makeup artist and fashion student is figuring out what it means to take up space, as a young creative, as a lesbian, and as a walking work-in-progress.
People call her Miss Yu. The name stuck. Cutesy, dolly, instantly recognizable. It works. She’s currently taking up Fashion Design and Marketing at SoFA Design Institute after an earlier run in Political Science. Before pursuing anything long-term, she wants to build a business. The industry, she notes, is driven by connections. So she’s not waiting to be discovered. She’s doing the groundwork.
Like many Gen Z artists, Miss Yu’s career began alongside the development of her identity. She grew up bullied for dressing differently or not fitting the mold. It wasn’t until the pandemic that things began to shift. Through makeup and fashion, she began to shape the person she always knew she was. Fashion became a medium for self-recognition, a mirror through which she could begin again.
Now working as a freelance makeup artist, she’s already done runway looks, styled classmates, and painted faces for debutantes. Her first commission launch was unlicensed, a soft test. The response was immediate. Over sixty people were interested from the jump.
Her style blends dolly femininity with gothic edges, religious motifs, and references to metal music. Her last school project was a blood-red top and skirt set with dark silhouettes. Different from how she usually looks, but still entirely hers. Versatility is part of her language. She’s not here to stay in one lane.
Her aesthetic is both resistance and refuge. She takes pride in being visibly lesbian, even when people misread her style. She speaks about being boxed in, likened to manhua characters or mistaken for straight. At one point, she feared dressing more masculine, afraid of disrupting her online identity. But she’s learning to prioritize what feels true, not just what is perceived.
These expressions come with a cost. Miss Yu has lived through all-too-familiar forms of discrimination. Family members quoting Bible verses, unsolicited judgment from boys online, the weight of being asked not to be “too loud.” Though these moments linger, she insists they won’t change her. Disappointing, yes. But she chooses to remain.
“This doesn’t change me. It’s disappointing, but it’s them who have to change their mindset, not me.
“When it’s family, it bothers my mind, but I think positively because I don’t want to be miserable. You can’t change people’s minds, but gradually it’ll get better.” What keeps her grounded is community. Art made her visible. It allowed her to be perceived as who she is. Fashion gave her a way to reassemble herself on her terms. Being human, she says, is an art in itself.
Barriers remain. The fashion world can be expensive, exclusionary, and often indifferent to the struggles of working-class queer creatives. Miss Yu has had to get creative. She makes do with ukay finds, scrap fabric, and secondhand tools. Ideas, she reminds us, are resources too. Not everything has to cost money.
She believes in shared knowledge. Her advice: reach out, ask around, borrow what you need, collaborate. She’s good at business, even if she sometimes doubts her technical skills. But she has vision. And with that, anything is possible.
“Just see art in everything you can, explore the world around you, and think mentally. Ideas aren’t always physical.”
That’s what this movement is about. Queer artists carving out space by being unflinchingly themselves, not waiting for permission. Miss Yu is on TikTok, on commission pages, at school, and even starting a music path with a recent label signing. Every platform she enters is another space claimed.
Her work doesn’t shout queer messaging, but it doesn’t need to. It lives in the embodiment. Queerness is present in the practice, in the choice to make art despite all odds, in the refusal to shrink. Art and identity don’t need to be separated, and in her world, they never are.
To other queer artists, she says this: Be afraid. Let the fear push you forward. Let it tell you there’s something worth chasing. It’s not about being fearless, it’s about being real.
Miss Yu is dolly and decisive, femme and fierce. She uses what she has, shares what she knows, and carries herself like the future is already here. And she’s not asking for space anymore. She’s taking it.
