Chotiros AMY Suriyawong’s Black Dress
Feb 24th, 2007 | By andy | Category: Asian Celebrity News
Wearing a revealing dress may guarantee an actress column inches, but in Thailand it can also leave her sentenced to community service and with her career in ruins.
Chotiros Suriyawong, a 22-year-old actress better known by her stage name of Amy, has been publicly vilified after she dared to turn up to Thailand’s version of the Oscars ceremony in a dress modeled on Elizabeth Hurley’s well-known safety-pin number.
She has been sacked from the cast of a film in which she was due to appear and ordered by her university to make a public apology and to do 15 days of community service by reading to the blind.
It’s a far cry from Thailand’s more usual image of freewheeling sexuality, with its nightclubs and “massage parlors”. But this is Thailand under the rule of the generals, who seized power in September. Ms Suriyawong has found herself on the receiving end of a morality drive launched by the authorities.
The dress she wore to the Golden Swan awards had a three-inch wide slit from the hips to the cleavage. It was conservative compared to the outfits that young Thai women wear in the tourist bars of Phuket or Bangkok’s Khaosan district. But it was too much for Suraphol Nitikraipot, rector of Bangkok’s Thammasat University, where Ms Suriyawong is a student. “Society feels this is a disgrace and that her actions have affected the reputation of this university,” he said.
Rest of the story and more pics after the jump.
Ms Suriyawong was reportedly forced to demonstrate to the university that the dress had specially sewn-in underwear.
The university was not acting in isolation. It was prodded by the military junta. The Culture Ministry weighed in, describing the dress as “inappropriate”.
One of Thailand’s leading studios sacked Ms Suriyawong from the cast of Suai Samurai. She sobbed at a press conference where she was forced to apologize. “If I’d known it would have been so controversial, I wouldn’t have done it,” she said, adding that she had worn the dress to get media attention but got more than she had bargained for.
Thailand is in the middle of a morality crackdown. Police in Bangkok enforced a 10pm curfew for teenagers on Valentine’s Day and were under orders to prevent under-18s from kissing in public.
It all sits oddly with the anything-goes attitudes in the tourist resorts, but analysts say a crackdown will appeal to the conservative middle classes.
In the meantime, with its preponderance of lady-boy bars catering to tourists, Thailand may be the only country in the world where only men are allowed to wear split skirts and cleavage-revealing tops.
Rest of the pics are located Chotiros Amy Suriyawong
*credit - sorry I can’t remember where I got the story from…
she’s hot and thailand government is stupid
she’s beautiful ad dress is hot thai gov is dumb
If you think about it you can see both sides, she is beautiful and wants the attention and does not see anything wrong with the outfit. With instant communication and the ability to see what other stars are wearing the younger generations are wanting to be in fashion, not necessarily disrespectful. Its hard when you are in your middle age to accept the skimpy clothes that are worn today and what they seem to be suggesting. I’m in my 60’s and remember when my parents thought Elvis was the devil when he started singing and moving his hips. Funny how it seems to go from one generation to another.
This is an interesting article, but I must take issue with this statement:
‘It’s a far cry from Thailand’s more usual image of freewheeling sexuality, with its nightclubs and “massage parlors”. But this is Thailand under the rule of the generals…’
Thailand is mainly perceived this way by outsiders and visitors. The vast majority of Thais are very conservative when it comes to appearance and behaviour. Whilst there are a raft of sexual services aimed at locals, most are offered behind closed doors. They are not approved of by most, but are tolerated. Those offered to tourists are much more obvious tend to offend the values of everyday people much more readily. (It is also easier to blame the foreign customers for this blight, too!)
There have been regualar conservative backlashes for years, not only under the junta. I suspect that it is the result of a developing nation, full of inherent conservatism, dealing with the liberalisation of social values that comes with modern, global, capitalist, consumerism.
Whilst the response of the ministry and the university may seem an over-reaction to outside observers, naive Amy should have seen it coming!