Thailand’s ASEAN Day: From the Mascot’s Eyes

The Mascot Gets Fitted

Like any good mascot, I needed a costume. The floor of the English office was barely even visible underneath the piles of clothes new and old, personal and rented. I can’t even decide what to wear to the grocery store; I was terrified by the prospect of selecting an outfit. This is where my two new friends come in. All of the rented clothes belonged to these entrepreneurial businessmen, and they were busy doing someone’s hair and makeup when my co-teacher called them over to me. Seeing as I taught in an extremely rural area, they had less English than Mr. Bean.

First up was fitting my new clothing. One of the two men, the one who looked like a man in every single way except for the oversized breast implants hanging underneath his loose-fitting deep v-neck shirt, began putting together my ensemble. My co-teacher translated that he wanted me to take off my pants.

It’s worth noting that there’s a weird dichotomy in Thailand about extreme modesty amidst an overly sexualized culture. No one in the room was on my…“team.” All were either female or shared the same attraction to men as their female counterparts. Though I was twice the size of everyone in the room in height and weight, I took off my pants and shrunk in stature to the approximate size of my confidence at that moment.

Ryan Farley / Own Work

Costume man number one began wrapping a bright purple sequined sheet in a complicated pattern through my legs and around my waist. With the addition of a suit coat buttoned to the neck and a sash to match the pants, I was transformed in to a real life incarnation of Aladdin.

I sat down and reflected on how things as unorganized and unplanned as this…nope. No time for reflection. Costume man number two, the one with cheek implants (I can’t stress enough how much I stand by that assumption, regardless of its lack of believability), snuck up on me from behind and began blow-drying and moussing my hair like we were five minutes from a curtain call. I had no say in any of this. With my puffy purple pants and hair moussed so intensely you could see my scalp, I was ready for the show.