I was so embarrassed about this advertisement, going to the cybercafe to scan the picture (my own scanner was on the blink), I felt like an adolescent asking a shop in the lowest of whispers, to please scan a dirty picture.

But why was I embarrassed?

The bar-top thing! Here’s the part of the ad’s copy that will fill you in

But all we’re going to show the world is how uncritical our civil servants are, and what a bunch of sycophants too!

On a global scale, what’s so unique about bar-top dancing? In most other countries, there has never been a rule against stepping up on a table or counter and moving to the beat. Only nanny-state Singapore had a rule like that and only frogs-living-in-a-well Singaporeans think it’s a big deal that by the grace of Goh, it is now allowed.

A world-wide tourism ad campaign with the main picture featuring bar-top dancing only shows how parochial we are.

As Goh Eck Kheng, a book publisher, said to Business Traveller magazine, "It’s no big deal ­ bar-top dancing, reverse bungee jumping. If you take it seriously, it’s laughable." [see the article Oh Behave, Singapore]

Next, did you notice the model in the picture was fully clothed? We must as well feature a model in a chador. Would somebody in STB please find out what expectations are associated with counter-top dancing in other countries? 

This is what I wrote in an earlier article, When bar-top dancing turns into a morality tale

In Singapore, bar-top dancing won't be real bar-top dancing...

... even if they dance on bar tops.

In most truly "fun" cities, bar-top dancing connotes a lot more than standing atop a counter. Bar-top dancers typically wear a bikini, or something equally skimpy, with high heels. They may even be topless. They hold on to a pole and gyrate suggestively, with their hips and groins just inches from the faces of customers seated at the bar.

Customers are encouraged to tip the dancers by stuffing notes into their bikinis.

Many such places have a "private table" option, where customer and dancer adjourn to a more private corner, and the dancer does a few numbers for a fee. It will not be unusual in these instances for the dancer to be all nude.

Clearly, this degree of "fun" is not on the cards in Singapore. Which means our bar-top dancing will be fake, and the liberalisation it is supposed to represent will be fake too. But we knew that, didn't we?

 
Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps some of us didn’t know that. Our tourism board, for one?

It’s as if a strictly Islamic country decided to try a little harder for tourist dollars, and relaxed its regulations about women having to wear a tent at all times. They go on a world-wide campaign boasting that on certain licensed beaches in their country, women may now wear T-shirts and shorts.

© Yawning Bread