As a child, she recalls, she would often steal her mother’s makeup and put on her clothes — antics that didn’t go down well with her parents. Even as a monk, she says, she didn’t stop trying to look feminine. Using cheap powder to whiten her face and lip balm to shine her lips, she says, she stood out in a sea of monks.

“Other monks used to call me ‘ani’ (the Tibetan word for nun),” says Mariko. “I didn’t care. I loved makeup, and I used to come up with all sorts of silly excuses to justify wearing it.”

She gave up monkhood in 2014 shortly after her video scandal. Although her family initially disapproved of her choice to transition, they eventually came around.

“My father used to tell me, ‘You were born a boy, so you need to act like one,’” says Mariko. “But I would tell him, ‘I don’t want to live like a boy anymore. I want to be a girl.’”

“It feels good to be known as the first Tibetan transgender,” she adds. “Not because it has turned me into some sort of celebrity amongst the Tibetan people, but because I have, in a small way, made it easier for other trans people to come forward.”

Today, thousands of young Tibetans follow Mariko on social media— 22,000 in all across Facebook and Instagram. But it’s not only socially liberal youths who have embraced her.

Prominent Tibetan organisations, including the Tibetan Women’s Association and the Tibetan Youth Congress, have invited her to speak at their programs. She’s a regular fixture at Tibetan events and has performed all across India, where elderly Tibetans usually make up half her audience.

“I really admire her courage,” says Tsewang Dolma, information secretary at the Dharamsala-based Tibetan Youth Congress, which campaigns for Tibet’s independence from China and has over 30,000 members worldwide. “She’s an inspiration, not only to the trans people in the community, but to all Tibetans.”