BANGKOK, Thursday, Dec. 28 (AP) Even in a country where scantily clad dancers are something of a national symbol, there is such a thing as crossing the line.
A comment by s revered royal family has set off a campaign against one particular type of dancer, known here as Coyote Girls, after Coyote Ugly, a film made in 2000 about a group of women who dance seductively on a New York bar.
The movie inspired mainstream Bangkok nightclubs to feature their own brand of Coyote Girls. Soon they were dancing at auto shows. Shopping malls and businesses hired them to promote new products, and their sexy dancing became a regular feature of outdoor festivals.
A troupe even entertained soldiers in their tanks in Bangkok on a September afternoon after the military staged a coup.
But Queen Sirikit intervened after a recent performance near a Buddhist temple on a Buddhist holy day, prompting a crackdown that has turned Coyote Girls into a subject of national debate and official disapproval.
Coyote Girls have to be in the right place, like an animal has to be in the zoo, said Ladda Thungsupachai, director of the Culture Watch Center, a division of the Culture Ministry, which wants to restrict the dancing to nightclubs and bars.
The problem started in mid-October when a temple in the northeastern province of Nong Khai held a festival marking the end of a three-month period when Buddhists try to refrain from indulgence. TV news reports showed videotape from a nearby motorcycle shop that had hired Coyote Girls to promote its wares.
The queen saw the broadcast and was not pleased.
Her private secretary wrote to the Culture Ministry to convey her feeling that such performances on holy days, in a country where the majority of people are Buddhists, were inappropriate.
The Culture Ministry began a moral crusade, the latest effort to balance the country s look-the-other-way tolerance with Buddhist values of modesty and manners.
Coyote Girls are now banned from dancing in public places, particularly near Buddhist temples, and more measures are in the works.
By and large, the dancers wear enough clothing to avoid being X-rated, and Parichart Niyomthai, a 24-year-old Coyote Girl, does not see her job as a moral quandary.
Ms. Parichart, who also calls herself Natalie, is a college student by day, pursuing a double major in law and English with a minor in hotel management.
On evenings and weekends, she slips into stilettos, hot pants and midriff-baring tops for a few hours of dancing, which brings in a hefty $2,000 a month.
I pay my tuition, my car and my room, said Ms. Parichart, who has danced at auto shows and to introduce new products like computer printers and coffee creamers.
She spends most nights dancing on the bar top at Forte, a Bangkok nightclub where most of the employees are female students.
She agrees that Coyote Girls should not appear at Buddhist temples, but does not support the wider crackdown. Coyote dancing is not prostitution, she said.
But Ms. Ladda said she feared the young women were making themselves vulnerable to sex crimes, and she highlighted an Education Ministry initiative to offer them more respectable jobs.
In the meantime, the government wants to ensure that children are not exposed to the racy dancing, so the ministry called a meeting of managers of major shopping malls, department stores and the organizers of big events, like auto shows.
All agreed to stop employing Coyote dancers and to assure that women hired for promotional purposes were properly dressed, Ms. Ladda said.
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