Under the blue fluorescent lighting of 711 I rustle through my wallet and hand the cashier 200 baht. I say, “Kob koon ka,” stuffing the remaining 300 baht and phone cards back into my wallet. As I push open the glass door, I exit the clean air-con convenience store and step onto the dingy uneven sidewalk. I take one step forward, without looking, almost stepping on a young girl sitting Indian style on the tilted surface. “Sa wa dee ka” I say, to no response. I follow the girls bold brown eyes towards the glimmering flat screen television in the bar next door, the American film, Coyote Ugly, is playing while the Thai bar girls flirt with the farang men in the background.
For those who have not seen Coyote Ugly, the film is set in New York’s very own Coyote Ugly bar. Girls in barely there skirts and cutoff tees dance along the bar tops, offering themselves up for body shots, and spraying the drooling men with beer. Famous for a rowdy good time, that you won’t remember the next morning, Coyote Ugly is most guys’ fantasy…well, according to the movie it is.
Thailand is quickly emerging into the modern western world. The sounds of The Eagles, Akon, and Brittany Spears flood the bars and restaurants. The shopping mall is blazon with advertisements to be lighter skinned, thinner, and smell delicious.
From the time Thai children can walk and hold objects in hand they are out on the streets selling flowers, to help make money for their families. This puts them at an extremely high risk for being sexually exploited. This girl sitting in front of the bar is trying to make roughly10-20 baht per flower (about 50 cents). What happens when a farang man comes along and offers her 500 baht (about $15) to come with him for an hour? Put yourself in her shoes, your family is the most important thing to you and they are barely scrapping by, this man is offering you more money for 1 hour than you would make in a night. What would you do as someone who is only 4-10 years old?
As this girl watches Coyote Ugly she begins to see these women almost as role models…they are beautiful. I’m not going to lie back in middle school I wanted to look just like them. The difference is this young girl doesn’t see the act. The girls in the movie are acting; the women in the bars are acting. While make up and high heels appear to be glamorous, their lives are far from it.
As I looked into this young girls’ eyes I could see her life laid out right in front of her.
It’s a short distance to travel from selling flowers to selling your body.
totes depressing
ReplyDelete