Get Inspired: What Would You Do?

What would you do if you had all the money in the world? What about power? It’s the basic superhero story – use your power for good or evil. Hopefully, you girls answered that you would use your power for the good of others. I know that I want to do so many things; my passion is animals and always will be animals. That’s why when I find strong women like Daryl Hannah, I feel as if I can do it too.

As I opened up my latest issue of Marie Claire there was a one-page info about Daryl Hannah, a beautiful actress and environmentalist. However, the article wasn’t focused on her open environmental activism, but on her new documentary on Southeast Asia’s sex slavery. Traveling through Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos, she risked dangerous situations and found out how these girls live.

The article was very short and not very descriptive but I remembered watching a news documentary on this very topic. These countries are very poor, hardly any paved roads, dirt flying everywhere, and one of the main ways to make money is to sell young girls (even as young as 5!) for sex. They are usually abandoned girls who get very little to no education. They all sleep in one cramped room. Their lives are filled with terror from their “madams” or pimps. And the sad thing is, it’s mostly Americans who are filling the need for these horribly sad situations.

However, many people, including Daryl Hannah, are doing everything they can do stop this sex traffic. Hannah is part of the Somaly Mam Foundation which is run by Somaly, who escaped the sex slave world. Sure, Cambodia seems far away and the lives of these young girls seem so bizarre to us that the problem seems nonexistent, but it isn’t. So many people are still too scared to do anything about it because of the dangers presiding this. But closing your eyes doesn’t make the problem go away.

Now, what would you do? As Daryl Hannah states, “If you knew there was a little girl next door being raped 40 times a day, would you not run through your neighborhood screaming, ‘Help! We have to get her out of there’?”

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