Tila Tequila is an American model and television personality. She was born in Singapore, where her family emigrated from Vietnam after the Vietnam War.
Tila Tequila’s career began at the age of 18 when she was discovered at the Sharpstown Mall by a Playboy scout and was offered a chance to model nude for the magazine. She did a test shoot, then eventually moved to Southern California and was featured as Playboy’s Cyber Girl of the week on April 22, 2002, and soon thereafter she became the first Asian Cyber Girl of the Month.
In May 2007, Tila Tequila began filming for a reality show which first aired on MTV on October 2007, as A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. The program is a bisexual-themed dating show where 16 straight men and 16 lesbian women compete for Nguyen’s affections, the twist being that the contestants were not aware of her bisexuality until the end of the first episode out of ten episodes.
The show led to a heated online debate between Tila Tequila and conservative Christians after an article appeared on The Christian Post on September 13, 2007. After seeing the article, Nguyen wrote an impassioned response in her blog on September 28, 2007, criticizing churches for “bashing” the gay community while thanking God for saving her life.
