There was nothing immoral about what she did. All she did was dance and drink with customers. Never slept with me, not that I didn’t try. Never even let me kiss her on the lips. Never let my hands wander too much, and I qualify as one of her “regulars.” Never took her clothes off. Never did drugs. Did well in school, and slept only about 4 hours a day. By no means did she live an extravagant life – her rent was only 2,000 baht a month, and she worked so hard she hardly ever went out to the movies or shopping. Yes, she has a LV handbag, but it costs only 200B. Her biggest expense besides tuition, dentist, and rent is make-up, and she only wears that when she works.

And now that old lady is saying that she’s immoral! What right does she have? There was nothing immoral about what she was doing. Is she saying that it’s OK do dance Ram Wong for money but it’s not OK to dance Hip Hop for money? Her clothing (usually a miniskirt and a tank-top) might have been skimpy, but not that much skimpier than what richer girls would wear clubbing at Beds or Santika. Her sexy dancing never provoked me to crime. She might be a teenager, but she’s an adult. She doesn’t need to be protected by patronizing old ladies who minds are stuck in the ancient days.

How is my friend going to pay her way through college? Working part-time at MK Suki for 35 Baht an hour? That won’t pay her little brother’s high school expenses, let alone her college expenses.

This is probably a scheme by those dirty old men in the cabinet to force good-looking coyote girls and pretties into prostitution.

“Every relevant party should play a role in preventing the inappropriate dance shows but this is just a small problem reflective of bigger problems about morality, education, employment and quality of life. WHAT ARE THE VALUES CHERISHED BY THE YOUNGER GENERATION?” he said.’

http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/03Nov2006_news14.php

Many groups asked to help control erotic dancing

The Culture Ministry will invite representatives from up to 84 groups to discuss how to stamp out the practice of young women dancing erotically at public events.

“We have made up the list of who should be present at the November 8 meeting,” Ladda Tangsuphachai, who heads the ministry’s Cultural Monitoring Centre, said yesterday.

According to Ladda, the invitations will be sent to the Interior, Commerce, Information and Communications Technology, Education, Public Health, Social Development and Human Security, and Tourism and Sports ministries.

Representatives of the Tourism Authority of Thailand and the police will also be asked to attend.

“We will also invite representatives from 10 department stores, eight automobile companies, five motorcycle companies and 52 organisers,” Ladda said.

The scantily clad dancing girls have become a hot issue after Her Majesty the Queen expressed concerns that some females danced inappropriately at a Buddhist charity event in Nong Khai province.

After Her Majesty’s concern was relayed via the Culture Ministry, several authorities proposed measures to ban such dancing shows.

It has been reported that the Culture Ministry has suggested that girls should be barred from working as scantily clad product presenters and dancers at public events, while police will enforce public-obscenity laws to discourage such shows.

The Supreme Sangha Council also reportedly threatened to sack senior monks if they allow inappropriate shows at their temples.

The National Buddhism Bureau’s acting director Chularat Boonyakorn said she would oversee a project to develop a booklet on activities local organisations should hold on important Buddhist days.

“I am going to check on the dos and don’ts list. Then, the content will be submitted to the Supreme Sangha Council for recommendations,” she said in response to PM’s Office Minister Dhipavadee Meksawan’s idea that a campaign to encourage local people to protect Buddhism should be launched.

In a related development, Culture Minister Khunying Khaisri Sri-aroon explained that her ministry did not specifically intend to ban girls under 20 years old from working as scantily-clad dancers.

“We just want to find some relevant laws. For example, there are laws banning youths under 20 years old from entering night-time entertainment venues,” she said.

She added her ministry was in fact focused on inappropriate shows in public places.

Khaisri said she had already instructed provincial cultural offices across the country to work closely with local administrative bodies in ensuring that no damage was done to the Kingdom’s culture.

She said her ministry did not have any law to directly prevent the inappropriate shows and would ask relevant authorities to explore available laws. Khaisri expressed confidence that this issue could find a place on the national agenda because it was in line with the government’s policy to promote morality and knowledge.

However, Srinakharinwirot University’s president Wiroon Tungcharoen said there were many larger issues that deserved national-agenda status.

“Every relevant party should play a role in preventing the inappropriate dance shows but this is just a small problem reflective of bigger problems about morality, education, employment and quality of life. What are the values cherished by the younger generation?” he said.

Whenever I hear that term a scene from O’Rourke’s “Cannibal Tours” immediately springs into my head – you know the scene where the Papuan villagers hear the tourist boats coming up the river and immediately jump up and change out of their t-shirts and shorts and into the more ‘authentic’ grass skirts. And there is this great line from an old fella “When the first Europeans arrived, the people cried out, ‘Our dead ancestors have returned!’ So now when we see tourists we say about them, ‘the dead have come back!’ We don’t seriously believe it, but we do say it.”

This scene always gets stuck in my head like one of those stupid ‘china doll’s’ tunes and I don’t know how to get rid of it. “It’s all getting a bit weird”. I feel like its all happened before.

But to the point – Khunying Khaisr’s comments reminded me about something Thongchai said towards the start of his book ‘Siam Mapped’. “Thailand is a nation, though not the only one, which concerns itself with the preservation and promotion of the national culture as if it might suddenly disappear”

It also reminds me of the effort of early Chakri monarchs to invent a ‘Thai’ culture that appeared to the outside would as civilised (in a Victorian Protestant sense) rather than barbarian (in a sexualized corporeal sense). I came across something that Keys wrote in his book ‘Thailand: Buddhist Kingdom as a Modern Nation State’ that sort of follows the Protestant ethic line. He was retelling a cautionary tale by Dokmai Sot (now is it just me or is that is a sexy name?) written in 1937. In her Short Story Fire “she tells of three students, just about to take their entrance emanations for university, who are tempted by the hedonism of a Western-style dance hall where men drink whiskey and watch performances of scantily dressed women. One of the three succumbs to the temptations of the pleasure palace, but the other two are led by an older relative to see this imitation of the worst of Western culture as an ‘obstacle to progress of our culture’”

Perhaps Khunying Khaisr is doing nothing more than just playing the role of the ‘older relative’ in the cautionary tale.

Or perhaps because Khunying Khaisr, like the monarchs of old, has the ‘moral authority’ as the Minister of Culture under a totalitarian regime (or should I say ‘Thai democracy’) then I guess she is in the position to proclaim what ‘Thai’ culture is and how it will be expressed.