ABSTRACT
In most international print, television, and film depictions, Thailand exists as an exotic, erotic destination where beautiful women eagerly await to serve and satisfy western men.3 According to media circulating beyond Thailand’s borders, including portrayals manufactured in surrounding Asian nations, Thai women fall easily into one of two categories: exotic, young, alluring, yet potentially HIV-positive “hookers” eager to please western (and sometimes Japanese) clients; or dutiful, devoted wives of western men who dismiss the tenets of western feminism and appreciate the financial and emotional generosity of their husbands. In both articulations, Thai women are happily subservient, ideal companions for men, but not Thai men – who are depicted as sexless, abusive, old, or gay. Since the Vietnam War, these images have overshadowed all others in international and transnational media; coverage of Thailand is limited to Thai prostitution and mail-order brides,
Thailand as a tourist destination, or Thailand as a gay paradise. Ryan Bishop and Lillian Robinson write: “Perhaps the matter is one not of quantity but of focus. Thailand is, in fact, conspicuous by its presence in the popular media. So Thailand is a story, but audiences always receive the same story” (Bishop and Robinson 1998, 53). Thailand, “the land of smiles,” is repeatedly rendered as a tropical nation inhabited by welcoming, pliable, eager sources of cheap, service-oriented labor, and Thai women, in particular, constitute an abundant source of sympathetic, acquiescent companionship.4 Even after decades, Thai women receive, by far, the most attention concerning Thailand in non-Thai television and print media, and almost every story projects them as occupying one of these two positions.5
