Sunday, September 09, 2007

The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side…



The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side…


It all started on the beach. We were watching the jade sea splashing just beyond our comfy perch at a waters edge restaurant and I noticed a tall, good looking Thai girl a few tables over. She was talking in her sing song native tounge into her hand phone, which was completely normal, but what struck me as odd was that she was, in contrast to everyone else, fabulously dressed in bright blue long pants, a high collar blouse, dressy looking pumps, and was wearing what looked like a lime green full-length wool sweater. In all it was a very stylish, contemporary looking outfit, and as she passed me on her way out I got an even closer peep at her.

She was a real cutie all right, and had a gauzy silk scarf around her neck, and wore a big Jackie O hat and cool looking oversized blinged out designer shades. The only thing truly odd about this was the simple fact that she was so completely over dressed for the beach. And here we were, as close to being legally naked as possible in our surfer style swim shorts, rubber brazillian beach sandals, and oversized cotton tank-top tee shirts.

I was still uncomfortably hot, even sitting directly under a whirling fan that hummed and wobbled as it churned through the sultry afternoon air. It was by any reasonable measure a damn hot day, mad dogs and Englishmen nutty hot, and here was this gal wearing a long sleeve wool sweater.

Before long it was time for us to take off, and on the way out I crossed paths with another Thai person, this one wearing a nylon windbreaker jacket over their long-sleeved shirt, and sporting long pants and hard shoes. I started to wonder how on earth these locals could endure being fully dressed in this relentlessly torrid heat. It seemed to me no less than a mild form of tropical torture.

On the drive home I decided to stop off and do a little shopping. As I walked down busy aisles crammed with shampoos and soaps I noticed a curious thing. There were entire shelves lined with products designed to whiten your skin. Face creams, four step skin treatments, powders, lotions, sun-blockers, and pocket sized compacts of make up, all created specifically with a single purpose in mind, and advertised on a single premise; that using them would turn your skin alabaster white.

A lot of the labels were in Thai language or a mixture of English, Chinese, and Thai, and were packaged or promoted with a similar image; someone with a face so white that you could barely make out their perfect pearly teeth as they smiled from the picture on the label or some promotional sign.

Ironically, at the end of the skin-whitening aisle was a free standing display full of sun tanning products, with all of the labels written in either English or French. There were tubes and bottles of gels, creams, and oils blended specifically to turn your skin a dark bronze, all topped with a huge brightly colored die cut photo display of a well built blond model bursting out of her yellow bikini top while reclined on a bright orange beach chair, broiling under some photo studio stand in for some searingly hot tropic locale.

This photo left little doubt what these products were designed for. I recognized many of the brands, like Bain de Soleil and Hawaiian Tropic; products that conjure up thirty years worth of happy memories and visions of languid days spent lying on sun-baked beaches around the world.

Observing the passing shoppers in this crowded mega store was an interesting study in the significant cultural differences between the locals and the visitors. The skin whitening section was a busy location, with a constantly rotating crowd consisting at any given moment of no less than ten young Thai girls, who with studious concentration were diligently inspecting the’ turns you white’ merchandise.

Outside of two curious teenage dudes who stopped for a second to giggle over the picture of the Pam Anderson look-alike on the orange beach chair no Thai people passing the suntan section ever even gave a sideways glance at all these bronzing potions. Finally, a middle aged British couple with freshly toasted bone white skin stopped by to look for some serious waterproof sunblock to smear on their strawberry pink shoulders and noses.

The next day at the beach I noticed that it was only the white folks who ventured out into the sun. Nearly all the Thai people who made it to the beach spent their entire time not stretched out on the sand but intentionally lingering in the shadiest spot they could find. What time they actually spent at the beach was usually a very short period at that. Unless it was their office, and they were selling roasted chickens or massages, or some sort of fishing was involved, the beach during the daylight hours was to be avoided.

I’ve now realized that the girl in the lime green sweater wasn’t cold(how could she have been?) but that she was doing everything possible to stay out of the sun, and if being insanely overheated was the price of having completely white skin then that was a price she’d pay. I later discovered that Thailand is the home of a major “skin whitening’ industry, and that Thai people are so are obsessed with being as white as possible that it qualifies is a nation of wannabe Michael Jacksons.

You can check out the Thai TV shows and commercials and plainly see that those with the whitest skin rule. This strikes me as bizarre because as a unique race the Siamese certainly have the most beautiful skin in the world. Thai women have skin that not only feels like silk, but looks like it. True Thais ( i.e. those without Chinese heritage) have the most amazing natural bronze color, and skin that almost radiates. It’s the ideal of every westerner who ever tried to get a tan; it's the perfect tone, the richest sun bronzed hue possible.

All the Thais need to do to have this color is to wake up in the morning. And yet almost all of them want skin that looks like the Scots or the Russians. And then it’s the white folks, say for instance the Swedes and the Irish, who you will see smearing on the suntan lotion and lingering on the beach for hours on end, all in hopes of eventually looking like a Brazilian, or, like...a Thai!

The body whitening cream and the sun tan lotion sections in the store were only a few meters apart but they might as well been on separate planets.

One culture’s idea of beauty is the other culture’s image of all things unattractive.
It’s a crazy world, and nobody can explain or make sense of it. Personally, I’m voting for the culture that requires the least amount of clothes being worn in the warmest climate money can buy. If that means getting a suntan, well, so be it.

I feel sorry for the girl in the lime green sweater, and the cultural attitude that tells her that her golden skin is anything but beautiful. Yes, the grass is always greener on the other side...of our minds.

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