Here in Thailand, I spend my nights in the bars of Phuket.
Here, it is my team’s mission to show love to the bar girls whose main job is to be a pretty thing to be ogled at by the men and other tourists while they get drunk.
The women have their bodies out on display and are required to entice customers to come into their bar and buy as many drinks as possible. And if a man wants them for the night, or just a few hours, well…there’s a price for everything.
As you walk down the main road, there are opens bars everywhere you turn. Within those spaces, you see the women, scantily clad, dancing up on the bars and poles.
The women all know how to move their bodies in order to elicit the proper response from the on-lookers. They ooze female prowess, bat their eyes, shakes their hips, play coy, and give that seductive stare that could stop anyone in their tracks. They are well-trained in getting the attention of those around them.
Sitting down at the bar, they come over to you and ask to play a game as an icebreaker (Connect Four and Jenga are two common ones). It is here that you are finally able to catch their gaze, to truly look in their eyes and see them not for the body they try to sell to you, but for the soul and personality that remains within.
Eyes have become a big obsession of mine over the years, fully believing in the saying that “eyes are the windows to the soul”. The look in a person’s eyes can tell an entire story in just one glance. But I didn’t know just how true this was until I first sat down across the table from a Thai bar girl.
It is often uncomfortable for the women to hold eye contact with another person. Their eyes will always be the first to look away, or they avoid your gaze altogether. They are not used to being seen as anything more than a body, an object; and they protect their souls as much as possible by not allowing others to look inside. But as we have loved on them, they have begun to let us in. And this is what I found…
While the women outwardly seem to enjoy themselves, the look in their eyes speaks differently. Most, if not all, generally dislike, if not hate, what they are doing. But they continue to do so out of obligation to financially support their families (as it falls on the women to provide in Thai culture).
The bar girls look so mature and confident up on the poles, but the look in their eyes show just how young and innocent they still are; many of them only being 19- or 20-years-old.
They act nonchalant, as though nothing in the world could possibly bother them, but the look in their eyes shows me a desperately lost little girl inside who are been beaten and broken down. She wants solely to know that she is truly loved and valued for her heart, not the curves of her figure.
And there is one person, greater than all the rest that has more love and holds these girls with more value than all the rest. This person is Jesus. The love He has for these women, He passes on to me, and I do my very best to show this love to them in the most tangible of ways.
It is in the little things that this is accomplished. Spending time with them in the bars, giving them a break from having to entertain drunken men. Trying to get to know them, letting them kick our butts at Connect Four (which happens often)…and my personal favorite, buying a rose for them at the end of the evening. Not only is it something they can hold onto to remind them of the love we showed them, but flowers are a huge deal in Thai culture (and what woman doesn’t love getting flowers?).
The eyes of the bar girls I have loved on this month are seared in my memory. And while I may not be able to physically take them out of the bars, I take them with me in my heart.
