Very Thai - Beauty Queens

• Posted by admin June 6, 2011 - Filed in Thailand Books - #book  #Very Thai  #culture  - 3,183 views

   

  Thailand Books

   

  Very Thai | Beauty Queens
  

   

  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 2nd 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

   

   

  Beauty Queens

  At more than one pageant per day, beauty is serious business

  
  A popular measure of female beauty, Apasara Hongsakul won Miss Universe 1965. Her victory then launched the modern era of Thai beauty contests, which peaked after Pornthip Narkhirunkanok clinched the country’s second Miss Universe title in 1988. LA-schooled, and with an American accent, Pornthip heralded a new standard of beauty: forthright, professionally educated in the West, and often only half-Thai.
  
  

  Pornthip fever swept the land, with around 700 Miss Somethings crowned per year. Pageant-fatigue has since seen contests drop below 500. With just nine every week, that’s like Bill Gates being reduced to $50 billion. Beauty being such a priority in ‘face’ culture, the country remains enthralled by demure maidens parading gowns, grins and virtue. Though many do pageants for fun, half enter the circuit for fame and fortune – or as a way to pay for further education. Contests aren’t only for women; men out-beautify men to win Mr titles, while Thai ladyboys out-beautify everybody.

   

  Pageants power the fantasy business. Until the recent boom in media, fashion and photo studios, they’ve been the main way to harvest a new crop of celebrities. Today, the genres can merge, as in male and female supermodel contests voted by readers of women’s magazines.

   

   

  

   

  Benjarong pots and national costumes for Miss Songkran 2001 winners at Wat Bang Ping, Samut Sakhon. PJ

  
  

  Whether managed by agencies or coached by pageant organisers, hopefuls learn how to be products in the image industry. Think of the sash as a brand name. Miss Dutchie Girl does. Her crowning glory is to advertise DutchMill yoghurt with Mr Dutchie Boy. Commercial pageants compete for trade, whether they promote fruit (Miss Durian), cars (Miss Motor Show), underwear (Domon’s Man of the Year), herbal whisky (Miss Drunk) or hangover tonics (Miss Hang). Such commercial events require designer hair with clothes far more fashionable than the pageant cliché in which the provinces revel.

   

  Many contests are held outdoors, where every feature must be accentuated and weather resistant. Hair gets built to withstand monsoon gales, either piled into a lacquered helmet called phom klao (gathered-up hair) or aerosolled into a faraa wreath – named after Farrah Fawcett. Faces are caked with make-up to look ultra-white and stay intact under sun, rain or the inevitable tears. By night, vivid costumes must out-shine the day-glo backdrop. The winner’s prizes must scream even louder: boldly printed sashes, poster-sized cheques, and trophies of gold coloured plastic a metre high. Now thanks to air-conditioning, glam staging and camera close-ups, major commercial pageants allow for softer hair, more natural make-up and subtler traditional fabrics, along with the Western staples: crowns, gowns and swimwear.

   

  Provincial and fruit festival contests may be limited to locals, but they often act as practice heats for national contests, which are riven by schisms among organisers and sponsors. Devotees of beauty worship a trinity of goddesses: Miss Thailand, Miss Thailand World and Miss Thailand Universe. Each contest aligns with a TV channel (iTV, Channel 3 and Channel 7, respectively), plus a global pageant such as Miss World and Miss Universe. Though national contests take sequinned international shape, local pageants reveal the ancient Thai tradition to pick the prettiest person.

   

  Festivals often involve the appeasing of spirits or gods. Judging by the angelic faces on murals, comeliness is next to godliness, so processions and rites require actors to embody these supernatural beings. As the good-looking presumably have good karma, they get picked for parades and for dozens of contests at two national festivals: Songkran and Loy Krathong. Nang Songkran (Miss Thai New Year) represents one of the seven daughters of the Brahmin god Kabila, who take yearly turns to lead the mid-April parade. At Loy Krathong in November, Nang Noppamas evokes the princess of Sukhothai credited with starting observance of this rite to honour the water goddess Phra Mae Khongkha (Mother Ganges). Perhaps because beauties have long conveyed social messages, few object to them endorsing products, promoting tourism, advocating causes or even playing politics.

   

  “The national beauty contest was first held by the government on 10 December 1934 in order to honour Constitution Day so the people could understand democracy better,” reveals Prasert Jermjuthitham, an organiser and historian of beauty pageants. After that it was a stop-start process, reflecting the political climate, with Miss Thailand contests suspended during wars, dictatorships and royal mourning. Now Miss Thailand plays cultural ambassador for the tourist authority.

   

  The public service role requires contestants to fit a conservative image of femininity: virgins yet to be sullied by real-life womanhood. Miss Thailand World Second Runner-up 2003 was vilified and stripped of her sash for lying about having been married. But the beauty queen demographic has changed. Formerly a route out of poverty for country girls, pageants led into a world of entertainment scorned by middle and upper classes. Now that celebrityhood has become a career for hi-so women, too, rich material girls monopolise the crowns. To cope with the clamour for glamour, many contests add extra titles like the media’s Miss Photogenic, Miss Confidence, or a people’s choice.

   

   

  

   

  The 1960s movie star Petchara Chaowarat started out as Miss Hawaii in Lumphini Park.

  
  

  “In the past, they didn’t need to have any skills. A beautiful face was enough,” says Prasert. “Modern beauty queens always come as a package; beauty, high education and a good family play crucial roles. Judges now look for brains equally with beauty. This upgrades the image, but it’s almost impossible for a provincial girl to become a star these days.” Because many entrants are now urban students or graduates, less educated beauties daren’t enter due to the tougher interview round. Universities themselves often hold ‘Miss & Mr Student’ contests with titles like ‘Smart Freshy Boy & Girl & Talent’.

   

  Intelligent, professional role models like ‘Mr & Ms Scientists’ or ‘Miss Mobile IT & Smart’ draw approval, but not everyone delights in mixing beauty with brains. When psychiatrist ‘Dr Bird’ won Miss Thailand in 1999, fears her swimsuit appearance could provoke erotomania in patients led to calls for her to be banned from her job. “Beauty contests in our country are closely identified with sexuality and the contestants are viewed as sex objects,” Professor Dr Nongpa-nga Limsuwan insists. “A beauty queen cannot be a good psychiatrist as patients can relate to her in an inappropriate way.”

   

  Another barrier to country girls is their ethnic look. Though models with golden skin can do well in foreign markets, pale skin has long been favoured over dark. Also Sino-Thais, dominant in the economy and media, have become major arbiters of taste. Today, entrants, judges and audience favour dainty Chinese features and the taller, luuk khreung (half-Thai) look. Part-Western accents and looks have become a pageant fixture ever since lots of offspring fathered by foreigners in the 1960s and 70s came of age in the 1980s, along with returning daughters of the elite who’d studied abroad. Often more forthright, they emanated the success that boom-era women professionals seek to emulate.

   

  Career girls, however, don’t conform to the old early-marriage ideal. A 2003 contest for singleton professionals over 28 was named Miss Khan Thong (Miss Spinster). It attracted women from some prominent families, though the winner now says men with fragile egos are afraid to date her. Also not to be excluded are Ms Memai (Ms Divorceé), nor women over 64 contesting Senior Miss Songkran. The 2004 winner was 90.

   

   

  

   

  Hosted by Samphran Elephant Ground, Miss Jumbo Queen promotes pachyderms by finding the woman who most match their outsize but delicate grace. SYL

  
  

  Further expanding the definition of beauty, Miss Jumbo Queen has since 1999 selected women over 80kg who display the grace of the elephant. Contestants shimmy through song and dance numbers in outfits also judged for their novelty, and get weighed on stage. The heaviest wins a topical title like Miss WTO (Weight Top Over) or Miss IMF (I’m Fat), with a record scales tip of 187kg. It aims to promote elephant conservation and increase self-esteem among large women. Now Miss Jumbo Queen Junior targets hefty kids and Miss Payoon (Miss Dugong) enables women over 100kg to help the endangered mammal by wearing a mermaid fish tail.

   

  Empowerment is a buzzword in pageants. Miss Malee Confidence promotes personal development – and sells Malee fruit juice. That argument was used by the 2004 Miss Sexy Body contest, in which children aged 3-12 dressed up like Britney Spears. An outraged ministry of education resurrected a dictatorship rule from 1961 that bans schoolgirls and teachers from beauty contests. Thailand’s new puritanism has consigned the swimsuit behind closed doors in Miss Thailand and banned it in Miss Thailand World, though some think this deprives Thai girls of preparation for competing abroad.

   

  While fame from winning lingers throughout a career, so do expectations. The higher class the title-holder, the further they may fall. Despite close supervision, incidents like saucy fashion shoots stir controversy. The Miss Thailand cliché was revised most dramatically by Areeya ‘Pop’ Sirisopha, who went back to her journalism career and also joined the army. Donning khaki fatigues, 2nd Lieutenant Pop taught English at the Chulachomklao officer academy.

   

  The last word in beauty, naturally, goes to kathoey – transgender queens. While they’re barred from most women’s contests, women have had to be screened out from hugely popular contests held to bolster the chorus lines of the Pattaya’s Alcazar and Tiffany cabarets. Played for fun and charity, events like Sao Praphet Song (Miss Second Kind of Woman) send up the whole process. Miss ACDC (formerly Miss BBC: Beauty Brain & Creation) spoofs Miss Universe, with contestants caricaturing each country. However, Miss Tiffany Universe qualifies for America’s global cross-dressing contest Miss Queen of the Universe, which Thai she-men won in 1999, 2000 and 2002. Come March, the media ponders who’s prettier: Miss Thailand or Miss Tiffany? May the best man win.

   

   

   

   

  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.’