Pristine Ong's Public Library

If some parts of her character were exaggerated to the point of hyperbole on Project Runway, one major aspect of Zulema never made it into the show: her lesbian identity. While it would be impossible to edit out the overtly gay characteristics of her male castmates (“Where the hell is my chiffon?”), it would be equally difficult to portray Zulema as a lesbian without some sort of explicit personal declaration.

The paradox of male/female gay identity, pervasive in culture at large and represented in microcosm during the show, is that while an attractive, well-groomed appearance often leads to the assumption of homosexuality for men, as Zulema says, “There is nothing about me personally that you would look at and automatically think I am gay. It’s horrible, because it’s believed that if you are well-dressed and well-groomed, that you are not gay as a woman.” Zulema thus understands why her lesbianism did not become a subject (or even passing remark) during the show, but why she was not promoted as a gay designer, especially when she made that request, is still a mystery. When one of the gay magazines profiled “all” the gay designers from Project Runway, she was left out of the feature.