Mimi Miyagi (born July 3, 1973, in Davao City, Philippines) is a retired Filipina former porn star and adult model. Her real name is Melody Damayo.
Mimi was the second of four children to immigrant parents Mike Ariesgado and Luz Damayo, who were both conservative Christians. As a child, Damayo was something of a prodigy. She spent her childhood studying piano and dreaming of becoming an Olympic gymnast. At the age of six, she moved to the US with her parents, and grew up in California.
She was sent her back to Mindanao for high school by her parents, who enrolled her in a conservative Seventh Day Adventist academy in remote Bukidnon province, hoping she would acquire Filipino values.
Damayo made it through high school and enrolled in an Adventist college in the same area, but dropped out after two years. After being a disc jockey on the college radio station, she wanted a career in show business.
She returned to LA just before her 18th birthday with a little over $1,000 to her name. Damayo obtained a scholarship to the American College for Fashion Merchandising, Westwood, Los Angeles, but college was cut short in 1992, when she’d run out of money and began looking for jobs.
When she reached the age of consent, and pursued an adult career, starting with Ed Powers.
Damayo came across an ad looking for nude models and answered it, thus beginning her rise in the adult film industry. She took the name “Mimi” which was her childhood nickname, given her by her grandmother. “Miyagi” was derived from the character Mr. Miyagi from the film The Karate Kid. She cloaked her Philippine nationality in Asian mysticism. Even though she was always the least paid actress on the set, she continued knocking on studio producers doors. By this time she was becoming quite popular for her abilities to take well-endowed men during vaginal and anal scenes, as well as for her exceptionally long tongue and enthusiastic fellatio scenes. She was also building a fan base due to her lesbian scenes. Damayo also underwent surgery several times to increase her natural “B” cup breasts to “DD” size.
Over the next two years, Damayo became one of the most recognized Asian porn stars in the industry, not only because of the size of her breasts but also for her very long tongue. Despite her fame, Damayo had difficulty getting paid on time by some fly-by-night producers. This led her to come to the conclusion that she had to look out for her own business affairs.
Then she quit, got married, had a child, started publishing magazines and running Web sites – all sex oriented. She started publishing her own men’s magazine, Oriental Dolls, (now known as Asian Hotties), which soon became one of the top Asian-themed lines in the country.
The rise of the internet led Damayo to create a website (which she codes and runs on her own) which went “live” in January 2000. (A previous website, launched before 1996, had been purloined by her hired Webmaster, so she created a new one, doing the coding herself. When “Mimi” first went online, she performed live nude chat daily and had scheduled events. Now, the business is served by a stable of 12 multi-ethnic women performing chat in rotating shifts, freeing her from filling shifts herself. The run for governor helped propel her web enterprise. Indeed, she says that after an appearance on an MSNBC talk show in the US to discuss her candidacy with conservative host Tucker Carlson, the response was so overwhelming that her Web server crashed for several hours. Now with access to a global public audience, she continued to expand the market for Asian adult films. In 1999, Damayo began doing movie production and talent scouting for Metro Home Video and produced the series she entitled FantAsiany, of which there are now Series #1,2,3,4.
Nearly bankrupted by her divorce, in September 2003, “Mimi” came out of retirement, and appeared in the adult film Happy Ending (not to be confused with Happy Endings later released by Lions Gate Films).
In May 2005, Damayo began work in her first bit role in a mainstream comedy, Come Again.
In December 2006, “Mimi” returned to adult films with great fanfare after her failed run on the Republican ticket for Governor of the State of Nevada.
She attributed her politicization to a nasty divorce, and a year long custody battle for her seven-year-old daughter.
On May 12, 2006, she filed as a Republican gubernatorial candidate in the state of Nevada, under her birth name, Melody Damayo. “I have nothing left to hide, everybody has seen all of me already.” she said. One of her slogan was “I’m bare and honest at all times.” On May 16, 2006, her campaign was endorsed by Wonkette.
She was criticized for running for such a position, given her past profession. However, she claimed that she was entirely out of the business and no longer received royalties from her work. She faced four other Republican candidates in the primary held on August 15, 2006, and was defeated by a wide margin by Jim Gibbons. After her loss in the primaries, she joined the Libertarian Party
