How a Houston-area grandmother became a TikTok sensation
It’s getting harder for
Trisha “Gigi” Marroquin to go outside and shop — and it’s not just because of the delta variant.
The silver-haired Montgomery County resident and mother of four and grandmother of six has been getting recognized more these days. It’s gotten to the point where a day of clothes-hunting at the Galleria can be interrupted by fans asking her for photo ops. “I’ve never experienced not being able to do what I went to go do,” says Marroquin, 51, over drinks at a Midtown bar. “Today was the first time. I was stopped seven times — ‘Can we take a picture?’ And I’m like, ‘I can’t shop.’ ”
“She got recognized crossing the street right here,” adds Roland Marroquin, 52, her husband of 26 years.
This is what happens when you become one of the most popular figures on TikTok. Yes, this middle-aged woman (better known as @tiktokmomma7 on the app) has become a social-media star on that same place where kids film videos of themselves doing dance challenges. But just how popular? Well, she has a little over 2 million followers and her videos have amassed nearly 29 million likes.
If it weren’t for her nephew, whom she visited at college a year and a half ago, she would’ve never posted anything on the app. “He showed me this dance move (for) Roddy Ricch’s ‘The Box’ and, so, I did it,” she remembers. “Mind you, I don’t have the app downloaded at this point. This is January of 2020. So, he put it on his TikTok and it did pretty well.”
She downloaded TikTok a couple months later, basically as a way to keep herself occupied during the pandemic. Showing off her dancing skills is something she’s been doing for decades. A hoofer since the age of 5, she trained in various dance genres — ballet, tap, jazz — before eventually becoming a dance instructor, primarily teaching young children. Before the pandemic, she was teaching kids as an instructor for mobile dance school Kinderdance.
But Marroquin enjoys dancing the most whenever hiphop or R&B is playing. Ever since her days growing up in the Greenspoint area, those were the genres that moved her the most.
“That’s what resonated with my soul,” she says. “Like, that’s what spoke to my spirit, if you will. That’s what moved me and, where I grew up, I was highly influenced by the culture. And I loved it. I appreciated it.”
But she doesn’t just dance on the app; she also does videos that display her persona as a hard-drinking, hardpartying, all-around hot mess. “What you see on TikTok — that’s me,” she says. “Like, that’s me on my day-today. I’m just crazy.”
Fellow TikToker and distant relative Theresa Pratt
(aka @tiktokstexan) knew her girl could grow a following. “I think what makes her popular is her authenticity,” says Pratt, who occasionally collaborates with Marroquin. “This is who she is, she’s always been a dancer, it’s her passion.”
Her moves have even gotten her work. Not too long ago, was called on to appear in the video for Odillia’s “Break It Down Remix,” featuring Snoop Dogg and Erica Banks. “The director follows me on Instagram,” she says. “(My management) was like, ‘You’re their perfect fit for this. You have two days’ notice to be on set in downtown Houston.’ So, that’s how that happened — just that quick.”
And it looks like she’s going to appear in an upcoming movie called “The Chase.”
Dropping videos, where she drops it like it’s hot, have gotten her both fans and detractors, the latter of which usually complain about Marroquin, who’s white, trying to dance like Black folks. “Some of those I will clap back at, if you will,” she says. “And some of those I just let go. Some of them I will go, ‘Hey friend, I challenge you to look at it this way: This is me celebrating your culture.’ If they really knew who I was as a person — that is me.”
She admits that doing videos now is starting to become hard work, especially when companies hit her up about promoting their products and she has to follow their guidelines to the letter. “It’s turning into a job,” she says. “It used to just be fun. Now, I have contractual obligations.”
Not to mention that she occasionally gets in trouble with the app for her raucous content. She recently couldn’t post any videos for a week after dropping one where she was smoking a CBD vape pen (or, at least, that’s what she thinks put her in TikTok jail).
“I violate community guidelines quite often, probably once a week,” she says. “I don’t really remember why I was banned for seven days, but it broke my heart. I hated it.”
Nevertheless, Marroquin is continuing to see how many opportunities come her way. Later this month, she’ll be in Dallas to attend a meetup with TikTok creators from all over the country. And she’ll be in New York next month, as one of the hosts for a local children’s hospital benefit.
“I’m riding this from the seat of my pants, in my opinion,” she says. “To me, it’s fleeting. It could leave me as quick as it came. Like, I could become irrelevant real quick. So, all I’m doing is just trying to monetize this while it lasts.”
“I’m riding this from the seat of my pants, in my opinion. To me, it’s fleeting. It could leave me as quick as it came.”
Trisha Marroquin, aka @titktokmomma7