Thai skin colour obsessions

What a strange world. We foreigners come here to bask in the sun and tan ourselves to a leathery brown, but in Thailand all girls want to be as white as possible! The TV ads are always selling skin whitening cream and even on the hottest of days girls here will cover themselves completely in the sun to avoid browning their skin.

Any girl who wants her beauty to be taken seriously will keep herself as white are she can. It’s a paltry unhealthy white, and in a tropical country where the sun beats down with plenty of vitamin E they will virtual confine themselves to a perpetual indoor exisitence to avoid any sun. Even when crossing a street from one building to another they will shade their face for protection.

Why is this so? Well, for a start beauty is highly treasured here and goes hand in hand with the Hi-So dreams many girls have. All the role models are fair skinned, so are the actresses and TV models. All the rich and famous that you see in the hi-so pages of the paper have white skin. How do they get it? They apply large dollops of expensive skin whitening cream to themselves every morning before ever stepping out of their bathrooms. All this cream does really is break down the top layer of skin to reveal a whiter, newer layer below, not exactly healthy but it works.

The fact is, white skin means status which means everything to a Thai girl. Thai men find white more beautiful, in much the same way as tanned and olive skin is considered beautiful in the west. Most southeast Asian’s are born with a naturally tanned skin. After millenia of living in a tropical environment its not surprising that it’s in their genes. Some are browner than others, especially the further south you go towards the Malay ethnic groups.

But the real reason is that peasants are traditionally brown from long days in the fields harvesting rice while the wealthy women are fair from long days lounging around in their aircon homes watching soap operas and gossiping on their mobile phones. Many of Bangkoks wealthy are of Chinese descent and they are naturally whiter.

I’ve met plenty of lovely girls with olive skin and the most beautiful features yet they have a complex about their looks. “I’m not beautiful, skin very black” they coyly say, as if it has been drummed into them from birth by society. And I’ve seen some really unattractive by wealthy girls who wear an enormous amount of confidence because of their white skin.

And then, along comes a steady flow of foreign men who are attracted by darker skin and all of a sudden these girls find themselves receiving undreamed of attention. Most of the tourist bar girls in Bangkok are dark skinned girls from Isaan in the poor farming region of the northeast and it’s not by accident. These girls do much better in the bars than others. Meanwhile, in the Thai brothels all the girls are fair skinned hill tribe girls from the cool North.

Often girls ask me with bewilderment; “Why do Farangs like dark skin better”, and to that I reply “because they are more down to earth and less full of themselves than the rich white skinned girls”.

Bangkok for women.