Thais and skin colour?

[Khundon1975]

The wife and baby have been in Thailand on a visit for a few weeks now and this keeps cropping up in my conversations with her.

When she takes the child out to a shopping mall or restaurant, or just pushing the buggy along the street, many Hi So ladies stop her to comment on the pale, light colored skin of our kid. Taking pictures on their mobiles etc, questioning her on the nationality of the father and generally making her feel uncomfortable.

One even went so far as to say she did not believe her to be the child's mother! whilst another, dragged her child over and said "that is the colour you were supposed to be".

Why is it, that many Thais seem to want to only have light skinned children?

[Terry]

One of my pet subjects Khundon

Quite simply (With enormous encouragement of the pharmaceutical companies), Thai women are obsessed with whiter than white skin.

Thai womens magazines are 50% plus full of adverts for cosmetic skin whiteners, skin bleaching clinics and skin whitening pills.

Look at the vast majority of adverts on TV - most of the women have 'white' skins.

The peer pressure is enormous

So when a farang / Thai marriage / partnership produces 50/50 kids - they become instant objects of attention.

Why Thai women can't be happy with what they've got beggars belief.

As I've often said to my missus - 'Most European or Caucasian women would 'die' for your tan' whilst most Thai women spend a fortune trying to look Caucasian'

[Aussie Mark]

I think its quite funny, people with white skin always trying to get a suntan and dark skinned people aways trying to make themselves lighter.We are never satified

[Khundon1975]

Yes Terry you cant miss all the TV adds! or the women who can only go out during the day under an umbrella.

Personally I don't care what colour our son is, but they do seem to go OTT when a child is almost white. I would put our son in the 90% white bracket and that, it seems, gives them carte blanch to be obnoxious.

It's almost as if they (Hi So's) are ashamed of their ethnicity and are trying to breed dark skinned kids out of their culture.

[Terry]

Don't forget that 'True' Thais do not have 'whiter' skins

The Thais with the 'whiter' skins are normally 2nd, 3rd generation Southern Chinese who fled to Thailand in the late 40's, changed their Chinese names to Thai names and became 'Thai'

The real Thai do not have the fairer complexions and narrower eyes.

[Khundon1975]

Well I can categorically say, that the wife's heritage is pure Thai, maybe that is what pisses off the Hi So's?

[richard]

AND we're into Thai culture and their class system now

If you are a dark Thai you are a peasant and therefore way down the class chain.

My wife and son feel inferior when they come to HH as they are darker because they lead a peasant life and are out and about in the sun everyday.

Give me a natural Thai any day rather than a pasty faced BK version

IMO skin colour and for that matter social background counts for nothing. A genuine person is not ashamed of their colour or background but try telling a Thai that.

The same applies to language. Thais assess status by the quality of their spoken Thai. Much the same as it was in the UK 50 years ago. BBC presenters were never allowed to have an accent be it Jordie, brummie, scouser, Yorkshire et al

[sandman67]

there is also a big slice of class predjudice in there....a bit like we had in the west in the 1800s post industrialisation period up until the 1940s when Hollywood popularised the suntanned adonis:

brown skin = work outside in the fields as a poor farmer or labourer
white skin = work in an office / dont have to work (landed gentry)

it pisses me off as even a cursory glance at ads on TV and in magazines shows how much computer adulteration of images takes place, fed by evil swine at Unilever and Garnier selling their whitener products. Unfortunately here it seems their audience isnt that smart or sophisticated enough to see through their scams and snake oil tactics. Add a lack of any form of regulatory environment in terms of advertising and products and its laughing time all the way to the bank.

I just keep emphasisng to Mrs S that brown is beautiful, and when I see bleach skinned Thais ask her if they are ill or have blood diseases, or point out they are wearing too much makeup and look stupid. Ive been quite abrupt with lasses in the past about that....I dont care. Make yourself look like a kabuki actor and Ill rip on you for it. Sometimes society needs poking in the ribs to make it wake up.

Ive noticed over the years that Mrs S doenst wear nearly as much of the cack and waste money on whiteface slap as she used to...so it does have some positive effects.

[migrant]

If you are a dark Thai you are a peasant and therefore way down the class chain.

My ex was Korean, and the same feelings were strong there

[Spitfire]

Agree SM67, just beat me to it man by a couple of minutes!

All to do with vanity and class level. If you're a pasty faced light skinned girl then you work in an office or don't work at all, and if you are dark skinned then you work outside and therefore have less money, or perceived as so, even if untrue regarding occasional individual cases. That's the general perception and, however wrong, stereotypes die hard everywhere.

Just the snooty fashion victims on a countrywide scale that have read too many magazines and watched too much TV that get miffed when it doesn't fall down how they like it or how they beleive it should be so.

Sad and shallow IMO, one of the 'cons' of LOS really is their hopeless belief in such shallow things as this in an attempt to feel better about themselves when really they all live in denial.

Not much different than a western bird thinking that because she's got a tan from the Med holiday that she appears desirable and rich as she has the cash to travel as opposed to staying in the UK and being white as a sheet.

Same thing but different way round really. Women in the west pay thousands of pounds to have the same skin colour/look of your average Asian.

[richard]

SM

BUT convincing a Thai that natural skin colour and native language is good is an ongoing battle

We're farangs so we don't know what we are talking about

I suffered as a lad at school. Round face and squishy nose therefore labelled as a 'chinkie'. Kept out of school prayers because my surname was Jewish like. So I was a Yorkshire leper. Began to get to me that maybe I was an adopted immigrant (might be useful now in the the UK in terms of benefits!!)

My Bhudda, how things change. I am now deemed to not be true farang as I may have Asian ancestry. I capitalise on that but still trying to figure out how to capitalise on my Jewish sounding surname Any ideas????

[chopsticks]

Not just Thais but the same throughout most of SE Asia.

In HK just observe a typical business area at lunchtime when all the office workers waiting to cross a road junction will put up their umbrellas (as parasols) or retreat to the shade offered by doorways to avoid being in the sun for an extra 2 minutes.

So a pale skin and a bit of stomach fat (=good eating = wealthy) are their ideals.

[Khundon1975]

"If you are a dark Thai you are a peasant and therefore way down the class chain".

I can relate to that Richard

When we had the coffee shop on Naebkehardt, we had loads of TV actors and film girls using the place, together with the Hi So BKK set.
My wife, being of a shy nature, was always in the background, making the cakes ETC, so did not mix with the clientele very much.
However, when she did, on the odd occasion, venture out out of the house into the garden to sit on the sea wall, she would be given some awful looks, as if to say who are you? how can you wander around where we are eating and drinking!

It was fun to watch the pale Hi So's question our waitresses, only for them to be told the place belonged to her.
The look of bemusement on their faces made me chuckle. Their whole demeanor changed within seconds and they were all over the wife like a rash. After all, this place was the place to be seen in and they were not going to risk being barred, or be unable to get a table.

On one occasion there was a Hi So family in, spoilt kids running wild and hooking fish out of the ponds. My wife happened to serve them and was spoken to as if she was muck. They asked me (assuming I was the owner) if they could book a table for the next day and I said "I will ask the owner". My wife walked over and told them, no, we do not accept bookings. Which was true, we didn't. It was a real treat to watch.

Word soon got round, especially after the BKK post did an article on the place and the wife appeared on TV.
After that, she was called auntie or sister by many customers, despite her being medium dark in complexion and they were almost white!

Many customers begging my wife to teach them how to bake cakes. A task my wife took to with vigour, charging exorbitant fees for the privilege.

As for the wife, well, she was more than happy to smile and take their Hi So money and laugh all the way to the bank.

SM67 I'm with you. Any shade of brown is beautiful. After all that is why many of us married Thai girls.

[Jaime]

An interesting topic and an interesting social phenomenon to observe but I don't understand why some posters seem to get hot under the collar about this issue.

Not sure I agree with Terry about light skinned Thais only being of Chinese immigrant stock. My wife's family are Northern rice farmers going back generations and the main factor that seems to affect the colour of their skin is not their ethnicity but their line of work. Those who work in the fields - and especially those who worked outside from an early age - are those with the darker skin. The family has come good over the last couple of generations and the current crop of teenagers, who have never had to work outside, are lily white! And I don't just mean from the neck up as a result of plastering themselves in make up but also the rest of their body including tell tale areas such as the legs and inside of the upper arms and forearms. They are obsessive about staying out of the sun at all times and that seems to be the determining factor.

My understanding is that most Chinese immigrants were traders and shopkeepers, rather than rural peasants and so would also be lighter skinned - not because they are Chinese but because they worked indoors. There are plenty (millions and milions!) of dark skinned rural workers in China, just as there are all over the world.

As for my own boy, in winter he is very pale skinned with rosy cheeks and in summer he goes brown as a berry in no time at all!

[STEVE G]

I have seen some small changes in attitude over the last few years which is also perhaps connected with the political scene in Thailand but there is now the start of a sort of 'Issan pride' movement which has some people from that region becoming more aware of their origins and less ashamed of their dark skin tones.