This piece was guided by my value of authenticity and communal responsibility. As stated in my personal frustration, I struggle with the fake façade of tourism professionals. This takes that concept even further. By representing this local Thai girl as a commodity, I am critiquing the tourist. As tourists we expect a two-dimensional representation of people. (The figure in the three-dimensional box is two-dimensional herself). We purchase people as experiences not as humans with problems, lives and relationships. The sex tourism I chose to represent this is just the most extreme case of this. I used packaging similar to Barbie to represent a product that is easy for Western consumers to purchase as it challenges none of their preconceived ideas. I use irony by creating a child friendly product to represent such a terrible side of tourism that often uses children as sex workers. The background drawing was based off Maya Bay, a beach that was closed for environmental protection after its destruction through tourism. On the back I advertise other stereotyped tourism experience providers that I feel can be commodified by tourism. Underneath the other products, I use wording similar to modern product marketing. I use the term exotic intentionally as it ties to the myth of the unrestrained presented academically by Echtner and Pushkala.
I believe that we as tourists have a responsibility for the communities that host us. Relationships, no matter how deep, should not be transactional in nature.
