Memoir from Las Vegas
December 23, 2005
LAS VEGAS –– Lost in the crowd on the Strip among the replicas of world monuments, I never imagined I would also be on display –– for my resemblance to an Asian import for prostitution.
Somewhere between the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower I was stopped twice on a recent afternoon, each time by Anglo-looking men who asked similar questions. They wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing there, how long I was staying. They stared at me like a plump, glistening prime rib roast centerpiece at a nearby buffet.
There was nothing out of the ordinary about me. I was like all the others milling around, dressed down in a baseball cap and T-shirt, except that I was an Asian woman. When the second guy shoved his business card at me and insisted I call him if I needed anything, I finally got it. I was standing beside a row of newspaper boxes, each window filled with glossy pictures of barely clad women in various “come hither” expressions. There were several portraits of Asian women, and the ads said they came direct from Korea, Vietnam, China. I stormed off, realizing that these men must have thought I was one of these women.
Asian women are the latest hot byproduct of globalization. They are imported from places like Shanghai, Ho Chi Minh City and Seoul and packaged to sell sex. They are distributed not just in places like Las Vegas Boulevard or Hollywood Boulevard, but Main Street, U.S.A., in massage parlors and hidden brothels in cities such as Atlanta, Detroit and New Haven. It is the McDonald’s-ization of la femme Asian. In many communities with small Asian populations, these women become unsavory ambassadors for the rest of us.
Further fanning the flames are popular portrayals of Asian women as passive, sexual objects such as in the new film Memoirs of a Geisha. It is a favorite telescopic view in the West of women from Asia.
I grew up in the Midwest and the South, and people often stopped me at checkout counters or the library and naively asked, “Are you Chinese or Japanese?” If Las Vegas –– a microcosm of America that attracts visitors nationwide –– is any indication, the questions based on my ethnicity have changed dramatically in the last two decades. Recently, darker assumptions are being made.
My parents always tried to protect me from racy images –– whether on trips back to my native Thailand as a teenager, or even now as I’m walking down the Las Vegas Strip.
But despite my parents’ insistence on discretion, they did not foresee the already ingrained popular view in this country of Asian women as exotic, sensual creatures. Long before Geisha, Suzie Wong was the name of a Chinese prostitute from popular film. She was one of the original Asian women archetypes in the West. But what might’ve been a rumor, a whisper about Asian women, thanks to the mass importation of them for sex, has become a public announcement.
The U.S. government estimates 14,500 to 17,500 persons are trafficked into America each year –– the majority are women and girls from Asia smuggled for the sole purpose of prostitution. Trafficking is the fastest-growing crime in this country. And there seems no end in sight.
In the boom cities of Asia, red light districts spring up as fast as newly erected economic zones. Both areas teem with life, constantly churning and producing their products to keep up with the increasing local and global demand.
For me, the lines begin to blur between the cities of Asia and the cityscapes represented in Las Vegas, where Asian women are hot commodities. I left the Strip and headed into the red hills of the desert, away from both worlds and anxious to find my way.
Pueng Vongs is an editor with New America Media, a collaboration of ethnic media in the United States.
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