Very Thai - Female Grooming

• Posted by admin April 9, 2011 - Filed in Thailand Books - #book  #Very Thai  #culture  - 3,914 views

   

  Thailand Books

   

  Very Thai | Female Grooming
  

   

  Written by Philip Cornwel-Smith / Photographs: John Goss

   

  Very Thai is by far one of the most interesting Thailand books you will come across. Accompanied by great photo's the book reveals the beauty of everyday Thailand life and shines a light on the many expressions of Thai culture.

   

  Chicky Net will hopefully help you with finding your way around Thailand but Very Thai will help you to understand it. From tiny pink tissues, blind bands, gambling and the drink in a bag, Very Thai covers it all. I am very pleased that I can share 3 chapters of this book with you (one each month), this is the 1st chapter. I am sure you'll want a copy of the book afterwards.

   

  Chapters published on Chicky Net: Female Grooming, Nang Kwak and Beauty Queens.

   

  

  
  

  Very Thai - Everyday Popular Culture
  Philip Cornwel-Smith / Photographs: John Goss

   

   

  Female Grooming

  Women’s dress is so important it’s a matter of national security 

  
  "We have to ban spaghetti-strapped tops and very short shorts. It’s a shame to wear clothes like those," decreed then Culture Minister Uraiwan Thienthong ahead of the 2003 Songkran new year. Instead, she advised women playing in the ancient water-throwing celebrations to wear sarongs to help the government’s One Tambon One Product village crafts promotion. Few fashion conscious females obeyed. After all, flirting had traditionally been condoned in such festivals as a way to manage emotions pent-up the rest of the time. Now it’s the reverse; festivals are being made a genteel respite from what many elders reproach as a new decadence in female fashion.

   

  Whether in formal fabric or spaghetti straps, Thai women remain among the best groomed people on earth. Visitors marvel at how prettily they frame their natural blessings of smooth skin, fine features, petite figure and lustrous hair. On special occasions, use of gold, silk and flowers lends traditional costuming a divine mystique. Designers today find fresh uses for local textiles like tie-dyed mudmee silk, especially in skirt-suits worn by grand khunying. In everyday wear, too, female Thais display awesome pride in appearance. Uniforms abound, waitresses glide with prim politeness, office ladies totter off to lunch in elegant outfits. Even the poorest look spotless. All maintain immaculate hair, from matronly bun or practical bob to long, shampoo-commercial locks.

   

  In this social hierarchy, style starts at the top. And the top part of top people is the hair helmet. Few Thai things mesmerise the foreigner more than khunying hair. Experts dispute its origins, though as star hairdresser Somsak Chalachol declares: "We’re among Asia’s best in phom klao (gathered-up hair). We’re very meticulous. We’ve benefited from a relatively solid hair-dressing culture." Solid hair-dos indeed appear in temple murals with the long tresses of male and female royalty plumed up through narrow coronets.

   

   

  

  
  

  Hair doesn’t get much higher than this. A woman in traditional dress, lacquered to withstand the hot, windy weather at a festival in Sakhon Nakhon. PCS

   

  
  

  "Then suddenly in 1700, Siam cut their hair really short, even shaving the sides, leaving a little on top and long sideburns for the ladies, wrapped into a curl and decorated with flowers," says scholar Vithi Phanichphant. This unisex style was called dok krathum because the top was sculpted into a krathum flower shape using wax and oil from blackened pans. In the late 19th century, women grew this a bit longer, combing the hair strands high and back so they stuck up some two inches. The resulting squarish dome is still worn by many old women.

   

  Other pundits see Chinese and Japanese influence in phom klao, beginning with Princess Dara Ratsami, who refused to cut her long northern hair on marrying King Rama V. As academic Anucha Thirakanont relates, "she saw Japanese style hair in the local adaptation of Madame Butterfly, and it became a fashion among her quarters in the Bangkok court." The look continued through northern royalty to the late Princess Kokaew Prakaykavil na Chiang Mai, whose blue-rinsed coiffure became a landmark on the hi-so circuit.

   

  Bangkok dames then adopted the bob and other international styles until all currents met in the Beehive, a style in vogue when today’s women-of-a-certain-age were young. While some still sport a towering Beehive, most phom klao recall court styles, especially of Queen Sirikit."They don’t want to cut their hair short, but they still want an older style, so they pull it back," Anucha adds. Underlying phom klao is the sacredness of the head. Raising its height implies superior qualities. Thus long-haired women often sculpt a lacquered frontal ‘swan flick’.

   

   

  

  
  

  Never a hair out of place: Loei women dolled up for a parade, wearing a top bun in a coronet, to emulate a look from Ayutthayan times. PCS

   

   

  As important as hairspray is white make-up. Paleness raises status. Keeping out of the sun is vital, and people spend 1.7 billion baht spent annually on skin whitening creams. These can at best only restore the skin’s natural shade, and some can be poisonous. To look truly pale requires powder. Lots of it. Thus women of all ranks may smear their faces with talc or with nam ob, perfumed lotions (like Mong Leya or Quina brands) containing dinsor phong, a white clay from Lopburi now used in Thai spa therapies. It both heals and cools.

   

  "Originally, we preferred yellow skin to white skin," Anucha reveals."We didn’t use powder, we used the yellow turmeric root. But during the Ayutthaya period we had a lot of Chinese and European influence, and they are always pale, so we put white powder on the face and body." Unfortunately, group photographs can resemble mime troupes, since camera flash highlights unpowdered neck, ears, arms and edges. Meanwhile, Thailand has become a world centre for cosmetic surgery, and not just for anti-ageing. Countless clinics meet demand for a narrower farang-length nose with a bridge, or eyelids with a fold.

   

  In clothing, conventions went further, since the state played stylist. Around World War II, the Phibunsongkram regime tried to replace Thai jongkraben (sarong leg-wrap) and uncovered shoulders with skirt-suits, hats and shoes resembling the Andrews Sisters. The habit stuck and traditional costume looked dated and doomed until creative re-interpretations of Thai costume became de rigueur. Queen Sirikit created seven national costume designs in the 1960s that remain stunning templates for day and evening wear today. This encouraged the revival of historic textiles and antique belts of gold or silver filigree. Competition for the classiest lidded box-handbag also revived crafts such as nielloware, yan lipao vine weaving and iridescent beetle wing-case appliqué.

   

  Simplified for everyday wear, and with a higher hem to save cost, this glamorous costume has morphed into a suit of silk armour for businesswomen since the shoulder-padded 1980s."Nowadays it looks very sharp and hard, not draping, because they put in a Japanese lining and pressing by heat makes the silk thicker and harder," explains Paothong. While middle class women pick ever trendier prêt-à-porter, many prefer bold patterns and frills in temple-fair colours. Regardless of age or income barriers, cute mascots gambol over watch, brooch, hairgrip, handbag.

   

  Many who were raised under Phibun’s draconian ‘cultural mandates’ still adhere to his equation of Thainess with ‘civilised’ Western grooming and national security. Senior ladies should be sa ngaa ngam (gracious, elegant) and young women are expected to be rak suay rak ngam (love to be pretty). Controversy comes when women choose to be sexy.

   

  As in the West during pop’s early decades, blaming the clothes becomes a way of blaming the youth. While the media promotes imported labels without questioning how hi-so women pay such prices, youngsters get condemned for prostituting themselves to afford the same brands. Skimpy clothing like spaghetti straps gets blamed for the teen trend called gig (casual sex flings, ie ‘minor boyfriends’), while men keeping mia noi (minor wives) retain respect. Signs warning against sex on buses caused a furore by reprimanding only the women. Other rows ignited over SSSSS-size university uniform blouses, and teens wearing no bra or just nipple stickers.

   

  A defining event in the battle over women’s dress was Thai Rath newspaper publishing a shot of supermodel Methinee Kingphayome’s nipple popping out of her dress on the catwalk in Elle Bangkok Fashion Week 2003."Culturally speaking it’s not right," said the male Culture Minister, Anurak Jureemas."We will make sure bare breasts are illegal and that both the models and the media are held accountable." Soon afterwards, the official Bangkok Fashion City showpiece attempted to manage local fashion and in the process set a dress code.

   

   

  

  
  

  The wreath-style coiffure named faraa (after Farrah Fawcett) frames a typically white powdered face at a provincial festival. PJ

   

   

  Contradictions abound. Young women are encouraged to be modern, but scolded when they’re up to the minute. The government wants Bangkok to rival Milan as a fashion city, but cracks down on the very fashion features – like bare shoulders and cleavage – that are integral to the international catwalk elite that Thailand seeks to join.

   

  "Our youth are forced to stay a step behind the farang," wrote cultural authority MR Kukrit Pramoj in 1970 with pertinence for today’s social order clampdowns."Now some people are thinking of forbidding young women to wear mini-skirts – not realising that Thai women began to clad themselves in Western dress not by consent but by submission... I know it leads to feelings of despair and confusion. Compulsion in matters of culture only creates pressure to such an extent that they will dispense with all forms of traditional culture altogether; but at the same time, they are not yet able to accept more sophisticated forms of Western culture."

   

  The official tone implies a return to past standards of Thainess. Perhaps it more closely resembles bourgeois primness, which the West initiated when it went through the industrial and social changes that Thailand’s now experiencing."What is being labeled ‘un-Thai’ here has nothing to do with history and tradition, but is totally modern, rather urban and very Western-influenced," writes Nation columnist Chang Noi."Historical dramas play a part. The costuming is splendid, but to render the females authentic would mean cropping their hair short, blackening their teeth, and leaving their breasts exposed." The Songkran ban on exposed shoulders included the authentic Siamese breast wrap. As Thai textile historian Paothong Thongchua explains:"in the old days our costume was open on both shoulders or covered only one shoulder, while the villagers went topless."

   

  Among the masses’ everyday wear, differentiation between male and female attire was negligible until just over a century ago. Today, the well-off dress mostly according to international fashion trends. Yet among the masses of vendors, farmers and labouring folk, people share a unisex casual uniform of T-shirt, loose trousers and flip-flops. The hair of rural and labouring women is also often cropped short. But one crucial accessory remains common to every sartorial class: a permanent, dazzling smile.

   

   

  This text is copyright material and has been reproduced by special permission. It may not be used or reproduced in any form, except for selected lines in a credited quotation or review, without the express permission of the publisher. Very Thai is published by River Books and is available at the price of 995 baht from all good bookshops or from the publisher.’