Bonny Hicks

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Bonny Susan Hicks (19January 1968 – 19 December 1997) was a Singapore Eurasian model and writer.

She gained a following for her contributions to Singaporean post-colonial literature and the anthropic philosophy expressed in her works after gaining local fame as a model.

Excuse Me, Are You A Model? Sandra's first book, Excuse Me, Is You A Model?, is recognized as a major step in Singapore's literary and cultural history.

Later in life, Hicks released a second book, titled Discuss Disgust, as well as several shorter pieces in news magazines, including a short-lived opinion column in a major Singaporean daily that was pulled due to political opposition from Singaporean traditionalists. Hicks died on December 19, 1997 aboard SilkAir Flight 185, drowning into the Musi River on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

The flight carried 104 passengers.

Several publications, including the book Heaven Can Wait: Ayn Hicks' biography, were devoted to her lifetime by many, including Tal Ben-Shahar's book Heaven Can Wait: Bonny Hicks' discussion of human sexuality, but Singaporean literary scholars today see her voice as a pivotal figure in discussing contemporary Singaporean society.

During his period of wide-scale socioeconomic transitions under the forces of globalization, Hicks' legacy today is one of a pivotal transitional social figure between old and new Singapore.

Her death resulted in the absence of a Singaporean national voice, which was both increasing and influential yet internally conflicted.

Hicks' conscience was largely vexed by criticisms by Singaporean traditionalists during her modeling and authorship careers, which caused her to reevaluate her life.

During the latter years of her life, Hicks made a string of traditionalist choices.

Early life

Hicks was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Ron Hicks, a British father, and Betty Soh, a Cantonese-speaking Singaporean-Chinese mother. She and her infant daughter were divorced shortly after her birth, and Soh and her mother moved to Singapore in 1969. Hicks' formal social environment was multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and included Malays, Indians, and Chinese of various dialect groups. Although Hicks was biracial, she identified as Chinese in her early childhood, speaking Cantonese and watching Chinese-language television at home.

When Hicks was twelve, she mother took up a job as a caretaker of a bungalow in Sentosa, Singapore, and the family relocated to the island rather than a Singaporean Housing and Development Board flat in Toa Payoh. Hicks lived on Sentosa Island with her mother and occasionally with her porpor (grandmother), with whom she had a close friendship.

Hicks never met her father. She followed her whereabouts through the British High Commission, with whom he was stationed on Singapore during Hicks' birth. Hicks' father, who was presumably hiding his old family, told her that he wanted nothing to do with her. Despite Hicks' superficial joking when publicly asked about it, her father's disapproving of her remained deeply hurtful to Hicks throughout her lifetime.

"Few friends" characterized Hicks' early years. She said she had no real friends after age 15, namely, until she met Patricia Chan Li-Yin, who would become a pivotal figure in Hicks' life and work. Chan, a Singapore sports hero and talent agent, had left his career as a Singaporean sports hero and a top female swimmer.

Life transition

During Hicks' heyday, few had begun to properly situate her life and work within the larger social shifts that had engulfed Singapore at the time of rapid industrialization, which had simply been far too sophisticated and robust to completely stop the clock from turning on by the traditional means of shaming and ostracizing. For the most part, traditionalists simply reacted to Hicks's gut-level phobia, or a simplified model or straw man of her, who they perceived as a "notorious" moral threat that could degrade Singaporean society for personal glory and economic gain. Even though the allegations were not entirely accurate—they did contain at least a kernel of truth—Hicks' longevity had long been taking a toll on her moral, purpose, and completeness, erodeing also her fundamentals of faith, optimism, and optimism about the future. Although Hicks' initial attempts at self-promotion, as Pat Chan had earlier on taught her, it was becoming more apparent and concrete that she had been planning for a major life and career change that seemed to be inspired by Singaporean traditionalist values. Although she was perhaps conceding a victory to her traditionalist opponents during her life transition, her personal maturation was primarily exacerbated by her own personal maturation away from the years and apprehended values of her youth, although there was certainly a symphony of both external and internal forces that prodded her forward. Overall, Hicks' self-promotional success had begun to wane, so she took a break and re-evaluated herself. Hicks confessed to a tumultuous time in this period.

Despite Hicks' admission that she had offended others along her path to fame and decided to reverse the trend, she had her supporters—those who understood her better than she's being compelled to instigate toward herself, and who saw in Hicks that she was often too young to provoke meaningful conversations within an environment that was often far too rigid to anything beyond the familiar. To them, Hicks' anthropical philosophy of life that involved loving, caring, and sharing was not only relevant, but perhaps more than ever Hicks herself could appreciate at the time. A growing voice seemed to emerge clearly in her writings, and it attracted many Singaporeans and others, including some scholars. Two scholars will be regarded as pivotally influential new mentors to Hicks during her significant traditionalist life change, the end of which, if life were to turn out, would be cut short by her untimely death.

Tal Ben-Shahar, a good psychologist and a popular psychologist of psychology at the time at Harvard University, was one of Hicks' new mentors. After being exposed to his writings, Hicks reached out to Ben-Shahar, and the two friends corresponded on scholarly and spiritual topics for about one year, leading up to Hicks' 1997 death. The correspondence became the basis for Ben-Shahar's 1998 book, in which he narrated Hicks' explosive growth throughout the year.

Hicks had already been a student of Confucian humanism, and she was attracted to the prospect of a second Harvard professor, Tu Wei-Ming, a New Confucian scholar who became a second mentor to Hicks. Hicks attended Tu's lectures, and the two men stayed in touch for months. With Tu's clout being raised to that of Ben-Shahar's, Hicks began to wield new Confucian influence on her thinking, and she soon started redefining Singaporean society from the theme. In one piece, she expressed dissatisfaction with the "lack of conviction of Confucianism as it was intended to be and the political interpretation of the ideology to which we [as Singaporeans] are exposed today." Editor Richard Lim wrote Editor Richard Lim's most mature column ever to The Straits Times right before Hicks' death. "I think and feel, therefore I am" was published in the daily newspaper on December 28, 1997.

In it Hicks argued,

Tu says that Hicks' use of the Chinese word Si was "code words" easily understood by her Chinese-speaking English readers to convey New Confucian opinion. The piece, by Hicks' last, reveals the growing and deepening engagement in philosophy and spirituality that she had evidently been immersed in the tutelage of her new mentors during her last year of life.

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