the third sex

Beautiful Boxer, a film based on transsexual kickboxer Nong Toom, has been a huge success in its native Thailand and is now being released in the United Kingdom on 2 September, with release in Europe and the USA around the same time.

Nong Toom, the nickname (all Thais have a nickname) of Parinya Charoenphol, was born into a poor family and spent his early life in Chiang Mai.

Developing a talent for muay Thai, the highest form of the art of kickboxing, he saw an opportunity like so many young Thais of fighting his way out of poverty. He became one of Thailand’s best known boxers, and certainly the most controversial, wearing makeup in the ring and expressing a desire to become female.

Nong Toom had gender reassignment surgery, paid for by prize money, in 1999 at the young age of 17. Forbidden to return to the ring, for Thai women are not allowed in professional boxing rings, she now lives as an actress and model in Bangkok.

During his time as a boxer, many people despised Nong Toom because they felt he tarnished the noble and very traditional art of muay Thai. But subsequently the story has achieved a moral quality. If you want something badly enough, you will fight for it. And Nong Toom has become one of the most famous Thais in the world.

When film producer and director Ekachai Uekrongtham was looking for an actor to play the part of Nong Toom, he held nation-wide auditions across Thailand over several months. More than 300 people from 40 provinces were short-listed. Eventually, it was Asanee Suwan (nicknamed Art), a 22-year-old professional kickboxer from Chiang Mai who clinched the role.

One of the country’s top kickboxers, Art has fought in more than 180 matches in Thailand and Denmark, and has won in most of them. Ranked No 5 by the World Muay Thai Council in the 118-pound category, he was also named the Best Boxer by the Association of Muay Thai for the Northern Region in 2001.

Art spent more than a year preparing for the role. He attended acting classes conducted by Ekachai, learnt ballet, studied the intricate likay (traditional Thai street opera) movements under the tutelage of Thailand’s National Artist Boonlert Najpanich, and went through a personality enhancement course designed to groom beauty queens. He was also required to adhere to strict skin and body care regimes, and had to lose a substantial amount of weight and muscles before filming commenced.

Oddly enough, Nong Toom and Art have similar backgrounds. Both grew up in Chiang Mai, and both started boxing at the age of 12 to help earn money for their family. They were also born just about a year apart under the same Gemini sign.

Thai-born Ekachai is an award-winning theatre director and founding artistic director of Action Theatre, a Singapore-based professional theatre company. Best known for conceptualising, directing and producing Chang & Eng, the stage musical based upon the true story of the original Siamese Twins, Ekachai has directed and produced numerous productions of plays and musicals in Singapore, China, America, Malaysia and Thailand. Beautiful Boxer is however his feature film debut.

Beautiful Boxer was named winner of the Grand Prix 2004 in Brussels late last year. It won Thailand’s Academy Awards early this year for best actor (Asanee Suwan) and best makeup. Best feature film awards have come from international film festivals in Torino and Milan. A few months ago, the film won the Jury Prize at the Skieve Filmer International Film Festival in Norway.

Distributors worldwide have seized upon the film. Earlier it broke box office records in Singapore and gathered rave reviews in Malaysia. It is now scheduled to hit more than 200 cities in Europe, Asia, Australia and the US during the autumn months.

Beautiful Boxer was made at GMM Pictures, the film arm of Thailand’s largest entertainment conglomerate GMM Grammy Public Company Limited. Arclight Films handle the worldwide sales and have sold the film to nearly 20 countries.

After all these years, I still cannot tell how it is that at some point a boy ceases to be a boy and becomes a ladyboy. Believe me, I get as close up as it is possible to get. When you are photographing a nude person, you really get to know them. A boy, even though he may be effeminate, is undeniably a boy. Yet a ladyboy loses the masculine aura. Somehow, the maleness slips away.

I treat ladyboys in exactly the same way I treat genetic girls: opening doors, pulling out chairs, a peck on the cheek, a kiss on the hand. I do all this automatically, without any self-consciousness about it. I regard them as female, or to be more accurate, a species of female. The Thais, in polite conversation, refer to ladyboys as “sau praphet song”, second type of woman, and this is I feel a very profound expression.

In addition to ladyboys, I have also photographed boys and girls. Whenever I photograph a boy, as I’m not attracted to masculinity I regard it as simply a photographic session. Enjoyable, interesting, but not particularly erotic. Cross that boundary to ladyboy, and there is a tremendous eroticism about a photoshoot. Proceed further along the sexual spectrum to the photographing of a GG, and the transition from ladyboy to girl is scarcely noticeable.

In fact, to be honest, as you have something more tangible with a ladyboy shoot, and you have this paradox of the female and male in one body, photographing a ladyboy is actually more exciting; something I would not have thought possible when I was an adolescent.

All this came into my mind yesterday evening. I was sitting at the restaurant of a beach bungalow resort in Phuket. One of the staff was a young ladyboy, very attractive, while another was a very effeminate boy of about 20. The boy was actually very trim and handsome, but he was undeniably male. I couldn’t take my eyes off the ladyboy, but the boy was simply a gay guy.

Is it the taking of female hormones that sets off certain signals? Probably, but not all ladyboys take hormones. Is it the clothing, makeup, mannerisms? Again, yes, it must all be part of the illusion. But this spiriting away of the masculine is something else, and it is uncanny.