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<A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V2.41/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times
- Volume 2 Issue 41</A>
The Laissez Faire City Times
December 7, 1998 - Volume 2, Issue 41
Editor & Chief: Emile Zola
-----
Long-Neck Women
by Richard S. Ehrlich
Asia Correspondent
NA SOI, Thailand -- Tribal "long-neck women" suffer a lifetime shackled
in a heavy neck brace of coiled brass, which deforms bones so severely
that their throat appears stretched.
Now, as if touched by an alchemist, the burdensome brass which gives
them an exotic, elongated image is turning into valuable gold.
Known also as "giraffe-neck women," these Padaung tribe females have
been put on display for tourists to gawk at, alongside kitsch long-neck
souvenirs including dolls, keychains, T-shirts, pen sets, portraits and
postcards.
Ironically, now that they have become a money-making attraction,
long-neck mothers and their unmanacled husbands have a new financial
reason to cast their daughters into suffering this stilted existence.
The tradition of encasing a female's neck in metal reportedly began
years ago to stop rivals from kidnapping them.
By making Padaung tribe females too freakish to be desired by others,
the coils also allowed them to be easily identified if they were
captured.
Some outsiders, however, suspect the neck braces were invented by
Padaung men simply to subjugate their womenfolk.
Whatever the origin, a glistening long-neck wife has since become a sign
of status and wealth.
Thanks to slick marketing, the long-neck females' worth has recently
increased.
The Padaung tribe is eagerly working alongside Thailand's tourism
industry, the military, local businessmen, ethnic Karenni tribal
insurgents, and international tour groups from North America, Europe and
elsewhere.
Critics denounce the display of females as a "human zoo."
Some officials, investors and guides, however, praise the displays as a
way for an impoverished tribe of refugees to sustain itself through
handicrafts and other tourism-related businesses.
Parents perpetuate the neck braces onto their daughters, while insisting
they want to maintain "tradition" and create an elegant, feminine look.
Ringing a Daughter's Neck
When a family voluntarily chooses to conform to the Padaung tribe's
custom, an experienced village woman will ring their daughter's neck.
"We begin putting coils on our daughters when the girl is five years
old," long-necked Mah Nang told The City Times. "I'm the best person in
the village to put the coils on a girl.
"A five-year-old wears one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of coiled brass. Then,
when she is about seven years old, she'll wear one-and-a-half kilograms
(3.3 pounds). This will slowly be increased over the years to five
kilograms (11 pounds)."
The rising spiral of brass is borne by a female's collarbone and
shoulders.
One coil is long enough to encircle her throat several times with a
polished, industrial-strength solid brass rod, about one-third-inch in
diameter.
The girl will remain coiled for the rest of her life, looking somewhat
like a traffic accident victim wearing a brace at an insurance trial --
albeit a brace of attractive, glistening, yellow metal.
Sealed in the neck brace, the females appear to have their heads
perpetually craning over the uppermost ring.
They are also limited in how far they look down or sideways, because
their jaw bone is kept upturned, rigid and extended.
To alleviate the metal's eternal, painful rubbing against their skin and
bones, most Padaung females insert a thick, handkerchief-sized cloth
under their chin's jaw bone.
But endlessly irritated skin rubs raw, producing scabs and darkened,
chaffed rings on the throat and shoulders.
A mature woman sports a brass rod spiraling 20 times around her throat
and collarbone.
Despite the appearance of possessing a long neck, X-rays from Burma's
General Hospital in Rangoon show the shoulder bones have been forced
down by the weight of the coils.
The collarbone and upper ribs have also been pushed diagonally downward.
The bone crunching ultimately forces their previously horizontal
shoulders into a slanting A-frame. By wrapping it all in brass, part of
the shoulder bones appear as a lengthened lower neck.
Polishing the Coils
Polishing the coils, while wearing them, requires as much effort as
polishing chrome on a car.
"To make the coils shiny, we use this brown fruit from the trees here,"
an eight-month pregnant Padaung woman told The City Times, while she
squeezed dark brown tamarind in her fingers until it became paste.
"We rub it on the coils, and then use straw to polish it off," she
added, squishing the tamarind paste into the coils and vigorously
rubbing the brass.
Eventually she bent over, splashed some water from a plastic pail onto
her coils and upper torso, and picked up a handful of straw to wipe away
tamarind residue.
Cleaning her entire neck brace took about 20 minutes, including time out
to gossip with Mah Nang and other long-neck women nearby who were trying
to sell souvenirs to some European tourists.
"Are you the witchdoctor lady?" one British woman asked Mah Nang.
After the British couple grinned madly at the woman's brass neck, they
bought souvenirs.
The British woman opted for "only one" neck ring, cut from a longer
coil, and bargained it down to four US dollars. After the sale, the
tribeswoman necklaced the tourist with the single circle of brass.
A Thai tourist was less diplomatic. He placed an entire spiraling coil
around his neck, and then ridiculously bounced his head up and down,
repeatedly, as if the coil was a big spring.
When the British tourists asked Mah Nang if she had any other souvenirs
for sale, the long-neck woman laughed and replied, "You can buy my
husband. He does nothing. You can even have him for free."
Behind her, wandering through the hut, her husband smiled. He adjusted
the "longyi" sarong most Padaung men wear, and sat down to smoke a
cigarette.
Mah Nang then played a four-string guitar and sang a Padaung-language
song which sounded hauntingly like a languid, plaintive, American
Appalachian Mountain tune.
Looking for a Husband
Mah Da, a 17-year-old who said she was seeking a husband, freshened her
red lipstick and said, "When we die, we are buried with our coils on."
Mah Nang stopped singing and said of the teenager, "She would have lots
of boy friends, Thai and foreigners, to choose from to marry if we
didn't have a rule that says we have to marry only within our tribe."
Many, but not all, mothers obediently follow tradition and coil their
daughters.
Long-neck mothers and teenage girls insisted they "like" wearing the
brass brace.
"We have worn them since we were children," one twentysomething Padaung
woman said.
"So we are completely used to them. These coils are normal for us. They
are comfortable."
As she spoke, a long-neck teenager displayed how itchiness under the
coils is a problem, especially in Thailand's humidity.
The teenage girl, sitting on a wooden bench in front of her hut, tugged
at the coils to lift them slightly from underneath near her collar, and
scratched herself under the lowest coils.
It was impossible to determine if the tribe purposely stressed the
positive aspects of the tradition in an effort to attract tourists.
Long-neck women who sold souvenirs always smiled, and -- as if in a dirt
village Disneyland -- gracefully stopped whatever they were doing and
posed for free whenever tourists held up a camera.
But one long-neck woman, cradling her infant daughter, said, "No, I am
not putting these coils on my daughter." She declined to elaborate.
Refugees from Burma
Most of the Padaung tribe's 7,000 men, women and children live scattered
in and around Loikaw, a town in northeast Burma, though Burma's military
regime has outlawed the coiling of any female.
Frustrated guerrillas from a larger tribe, known as Kayah or Karenni,
dream of turning that region into an independent Kayah state. Some
anthropologists believe the Padaung are an ethnolinguistic subgroup of
the Kayah.
Over the years, about 300 Padaung have fled the off-and-on fighting in
northeast Burma and settled on the Thai side of the forested frontier.
Here at Thailand's Na Soi village where some Padaung refugees live,
Karenni tribesmen guard the entrance and demand about seven US dollars
from foreign tourists, while allowing Thai citizens free access --
because the village is on Thai territory.
The name, passport number and country of residence of each foreigner is
noted on a payment receipt issued by the "Karenni Culture Department."
This small Padaung and Kayah village of bamboo, thatch and wood huts --
set in low mountains amid dense forest -- has more than 50 long-neck
females.
The surrounding northwest region also hosts a few other, smaller,
Padaung refugee settlements, similarly dealing with tourists.
"I wish we had electricity here," one long-neck woman said, gesturing
toward a cluster of huts, half of which boasted tabletop displays
crowded with handicrafts, jewelry, and other souvenirs for sale.
"The people here say we can't have electricity because it would spoil
the atmosphere and make it look too modern, and then the tourists
wouldn't like it.
"But I want to watch television."
Early displays of Padaung ladies include a 1934 visit by three of them
to England.
Long-Neck Economics
Myths and misconceptions persist.
Joe Cummings, American author of the popular Lonely Planet Guide to
Thailand, told The City Times, "A myth says that the women's necks will
fall over from atrophy, and they'll die, if the coils are removed. I've
sat there and watched the women attach and remove the coils at will,
with no problem.
"In interviews I've done with the long-necks in Thailand, they say they
earn around 3,000 baht (85 US dollars) a month selling handicrafts, and
from a small portion of the entrance fees collected from foreigners. The
bulk of the entry fees goes to the KNPP," said Cummings, referring to
the Karenni National Progressive Party which uses the tourists' ticket
fee to finance their smoldering guerrilla war inside Burma.
"The long-neck tourist thing is also big in (Burma's) Shan State, around
Inle Lake, where conditions are more zoo-like. But in both sides, they
told me they weren't bothered by the gawking and photo-taking, which
they consider to be part of their livelihood.
"To put it baldly: these ladies have chosen to hang out in Thailand and
be photographed, diddle with handicrafts, and earn a little money rather
than dodge rockets and/or work as army porters in an ethnic war."
Cummings, who is based part of the year in northern Thailand, added, "To
naive tourists who get upset that the Padaung tourist villages seem like
'human zoos', one must ask: would they rather see the Padaung in their
natural state in Myanmar (Burma) -- in utter poverty, not knowing from
one moment to the next whether the Tatmadaw (Burma's military) is going
to level their village?"
Na Soi is 10 kilometers from the Burmese border, near northwest
Thailand's mountain town of Mae Hong Son.
The occasional clashes between the Burma's military and minority ethnic
tribes along the border are currently a focus of Thai officials who want
to move all Burmese refugees, including the long-neck women, to special
camps despite protests from the tribe and tourism officials.
The tribe warns the camp would be closer to border skirmishes. Tourism
officials warn of lost dollars.
Worried about the possible shift, Poolsak Sunthornpanit, chairman of Mae
Hong Son's provincial chamber of commerce, was recently quoted as
saying, "All tourism-related businesses, such as hotels, restaurants and
transportation services would be badly hit."
Poolsak added, "Long-necked (Padaung) are the star attraction to draw
tourists to visit our province."
However, Mae Hong Son's deputy governor, Amornphan Nimanand, said, "If
the tourists want to view the tribespeople, they will be allowed to see
them in the new camps."
In Mae Hong Son and elsewhere in Thailand, long-neck women are used in
ubiquitous advertisements to attract customers from North America,
Europe and elsewhere to join group tours in the northwest mountains.
As refugees, the tribe appears to be at the whim of officials and others
who can decide where they live and who can profit from their existence.
In 1996, Thai officials investigated the alleged snatching of several
Padaung for use in an urban tourist attraction.
At Na Soi, meanwhile, the mood appeared relaxed and sometimes carefree
as young long-neck girls teased each other, rode a bicycle, and
gleefully admired themselves in postcards for sale.
"That's me," said one one long-neck woman pointing to herself in a
postcard.
Touching the throat of another long-neck girl in the postcard's group
portrait, she added, "And that's my daughter."
-30-
from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 2, No 41, December 7, 1998
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Laissez Faire City Times is a private newspaper. Although it is
published by a corporation domiciled within the sovereign domain of
Laissez Faire City, it is not an "official organ" of the city or its
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Published by
Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc.
Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar
All Rights Reserved
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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