although hicks never fully attained her stardom goals, and although she later distanced herself from her goals on the matter, singaporeans broadly took note of the nature of her early attempts at becoming famous. few people found themselves able to respond to hicks with a mere shrug, a fact that fueled not only her popularity among her supporters but the controversy that so doggedly followed her among her critics. while tasting the intense and transitory flavor of fame, hicks' limited life experience could not have led her to anticipate the intensity of the negative reactions that would accompany her attempts under the spotlight, could not have allowed her to surmise the toll that the negative words and societal shunning would take upon her psyche over time. in many ways, her move to indonesia, which coincided with her plea for greater public understanding as released in her second book, "discuss disgust", was an attempt to escape the intense controversy she had experienced in singapore over her first book, "excuse me, are you a model?" whether her departure was something of a victory for traditionalists, a mere admission to herself of her limited constitution to withstand societal disapprobation, an outcome of simply her own maturation, or some combination of the three, cannot be known with certainty. what is clear, however, is that her hope through her move was to find a reprieve from the societal shunning she had been experiencing from traditionalists in singapore; to move to a place where she could deepen and further redefine herself and perhaps undertake a larger and much wiser relaunching of herself in singapore. it was never to be due to her untimely death.