Too Many Chinese And Eurasian Faces On Thai Media?

[drronnie]

Sometimes I get a little annoyed to see so many Chinese and Eurasian faces on Thai TV and in the magazines. There are many smart and good looking Thai people which I see in daily life. Why are the not considered at all in the media?

[theblether]

Are these people Thai or foreign nationals?............we end up getting involved in circular arguments on this Thai-Chinese issue. Thais of Chinese heritage are Thai and they will get angry if you contest their nationality with them.......and therefore are just as entitled to appear in the media as anyone.

Eurasians are regarded highly as being pleasing on the eye and it's no shock that they do well in media roles.

[villagefarang]

You may as well get used to the fact that 60 million Thais don’t agree with your opinion of good looking. You are of course free to like what you like but you're not going to change the opinion of anyone else.

Topics of this ilk are numerous but packaged under different titles. I’m sure you will find someone to jump on the bandwagon eventually but it really won’t make any difference in the way Thais see things.

Edited August 14, 2012 by villagefarang

[giddyup]

The Thais also regard white skin very highly, so maybe the Eurasians fit the bill in this respect.

[samran]

Are these people Thai or foreign nationals?............we end up getting involved in circular arguments on this Thai-Chinese issue. Thais of Chinese heritage are Thai and they will get angry if you contest their nationality with them.......and therefore are just as entitled to appear in the media as anyone.

Eurasians are regarded highly as being pleasing on the eye and it's no shock that they do well in media roles.

Indeed, we are the true handsum man.

But the girls even knock us blokes out of the ball park.

[DP25]

Some of the people you think are 'Thai Chinese' are probably just regular old Thai. Thais are migrants from southern China originally. There is a wide variety in appearance and skin tone among those with little or no recent Chinese ancestry. Just because they don't look like your average dark skinned farang bar girl doesn't mean anything.

[drronnie]

Some of the people you think are 'Thai Chinese' are probably just regular old Thai. Thais are migrants from southern China originally. There is a wide variety in appearance and skin tone among those with little or no recent Chinese ancestry. Just because they don't look like your average dark skinned farang bar girl doesn't mean anything.

No the regular old Thai are usually more tan. if you look at the old historic photographs you see that the old high society mostly darker skinned. The Chinese started to become more prominent after World War 2 in Thai society.

But my point is that Isaan people and South people are much higher percentange that Thai Chinese so in a normal world they should be more present in the media. It is not that daker skinned Thais are uglier than white skinned ones. Thai should be proud of their heritage and not worship white skin.

[theblether]

In whose opinion?........who are we farang to tell Thais what to do? .........if they want to appreciate white skin as desirable then so be it........I see plenty of farangs that do the opposite.

This Thai-Chinese debate is brain damage, especially as the the people of Chinese heritage are proud to be Thai.

[DP25]

Some of the people you think are 'Thai Chinese' are probably just regular old Thai. Thais are migrants from southern China originally. There is a wide variety in appearance and skin tone among those with little or no recent Chinese ancestry. Just because they don't look like your average dark skinned farang bar girl doesn't mean anything.

No the regular old Thai are usually more tan. if you look at the old historic photographs you see that the old high society mostly darker skinned. The Chinese started to become more prominent after World War 2 in Thai society.

But my point is that Isaan people and South people are much higher percentange that Thai Chinese so in a normal world they should be more present in the media. It is not that daker skinned Thais are uglier than white skinned ones. Thai should be proud of their heritage and not worship white skin.

I have looked at old photos and there is a wide range of appearances. Lots of Thais have light skin that do not have any recent Chinese ancestry. Thais are from Southern China, look at the Zhuang, they are the largest ethnic minority in China and speak a language closely related to Thai. In Isaan and the south there is a lot mixture with Khmer and Malay and some have darker skin as a result. Thais have a wide range of appearances because there have been a large number of cultures living in this area for centuries. There is no standard skin tone for Thais.

It is true that darker Thais are underrepresented on TV but they are not more real Thais than anyone else.

[samran]

Some of the people you think are 'Thai Chinese' are probably just regular old Thai. Thais are migrants from southern China originally. There is a wide variety in appearance and skin tone among those with little or no recent Chinese ancestry. Just because they don't look like your average dark skinned farang bar girl doesn't mean anything.

No the regular old Thai are usually more tan. if you look at the old historic photographs you see that the old high society mostly darker skinned. The Chinese started to become more prominent after World War 2 in Thai society.

But my point is that Isaan people and South people are much higher percentange that Thai Chinese so in a normal world they should be more present in the media. It is not that daker skinned Thais are uglier than white skinned ones. Thai should be proud of their heritage and not worship white skin.

I think that you are confusing issues here. Unlike other SE Asian countries where those of Chinese descent are likely to be a bit more likely to identifiy themselves as Chinese in some form, you'll find that most people of a similar extraction will get rather angry if they are identified as anything other than Thai.

Sure, they might like eating and celebrating all things Chinese, but scratch the surface and you'll find most of the new generation will struggle to identify with anything other than Thai.

[bkkjames]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. OP suffering from a case of white is better? stay out of any cosmetic shop then if I were him.

[theblether]

@samran.......correct. I was on a business class flight recently and 4 of the stewardesses identified themselves as being Thai of Chinese heritage.

When I asked them which part of China they said they weren't interested as they were Thai.........seems about right to me.

[samran]

@samran.......correct. I was on a business class flight recently and 4 of the stewardesses identified themselves as being Thai of Chinese heritage.

When I asked them which part of China they said they weren't interested as they were Thai.........seems about right to me.

Of course I'm bloody correct. I'm always right, except when I'm not

[David48]

Advertising is typically aspirational in nature.

The OP seems to aspires to a different 'look' to those to whom the Marketing is directed at yet doesn't seem to understand that he is not the 'Target Market'.

.

[MrRealDeal]

Probabbly because those smart good looking people didn't take on a carer in Journalism ...... Believe it or not you actually need to be qualified and have some education to be a Journalist not just smart and\or good looking.

It's a bit like asking why a big healthy person is not a personal trainer in a gym ...... It's because not all big healthy people want to be or are qualified to be personal trainers.

[HardenedSoul]

The number threads about Thais of Chinese extraction is matched only by the number of TV members eager to claim they've married a female or have high-powered, influential friends from this curiously highly-celebrated demographic.

I only know one Thai of Chinese descent and she ain't here; she's in England where she's lived for coming up on 9 years and she's still baffled at how fervently white folks pursue darker skin using lotions, pre-tans, sunbeds and/or spending hours, oiled up, sizzling under the sun like sausages in skillet. She's only now beginning to allow herself to catch a little sun since it's taken this long for UK beauty advertising to break the brainwashing of the Thai variant.

There's little to be gained by lamenting on how poorly darker-skinned Thais are represented in the media since the beauty industry in Thailand - like that in any country - is geared towards selling the majority an ideal they cannot attain and retain without spending money regularly. Most Thais are darker so it sells them the concept of whiter skin being equivalent to superior beauty. It's just about the dosh and while some may think darker skinned Thais are at an acute disadvantage in the beauty stakes, I'll just say I've seen countless Thai couples comprised of dark and light skinned guys and girls which may mean that things are changing fast and, perhaps, in 10 or 20 years, the issue of skin tone, such as it is, won't exist.

[Naam]

Are these people Thai or foreign nationals?............we end up getting involved in circular arguments on this Thai-Chinese issue. Thais of Chinese heritage are Thai and they will get angry if you contest their nationality with them.......and therefore are just as entitled to appear in the media as anyone.

Eurasians are regarded highly as being pleasing on the eye and it's no shock that they do well in media roles.

Indeed, we are the true handsum man.

But the girls even knock us blokes out of the ball park.

Samran, if i had not known that you are half Thai i would have never guessed.

by the way, true hansum men have ridges on their a forehead

[Trembly]

Some of the people you think are 'Thai Chinese' are probably just regular old Thai. Thais are migrants from southern China originally. There is a wide variety in appearance and skin tone among those with little or no recent Chinese ancestry. Just because they don't look like your average dark skinned farang bar girl doesn't mean anything.

No the regular old Thai are usually more tan. if you look at the old historic photographs you see that the old high society mostly darker skinned. The Chinese started to become more prominent after World War 2 in Thai society.

But my point is that Isaan people and South people are much higher percentange that Thai Chinese so in a normal world they should be more present in the media. It is not that daker skinned Thais are uglier than white skinned ones. Thai should be proud of their heritage and not worship white skin.

I've recently tagged along with a Thai academic doing some anthropological / historical research in upper Isan and it only served to reiterate that there are no shortage of Lao (and by inference Isan people) who have skin every bit as white as the Chinese. Many of the interviewees were old people from various sections and sides of the Mekhong river who simply weren't born in the right time or in the right place for the racial intermingling that many credit the white-skinned Thais to. It also (for me) utterly destroyed the myth that "Thais" have only recently become big. I met more than a few old boys between the ages of 60 - 90 who were easily 6 feet and were built accordingly.

By the way, those dark-skinned hiso that you see in those sepia tinged photos were probably Siamese; while I hesitate to name the Siamese as a race or ethnicity, I have noticed a particular 'type' who tend to inhabit areas that were within the borders of Siam (some of the most sublime female bottoms I have ever set my eyes on can only seem to be found among communities of indigenous Bangkokians + environs).

"Thai" is a contrived political construct that happens to sound the same as the name of a many-branched ethnicity of continental South East Asia (Tai), not dissimilar to the name/political construct of 'Iran' which was invented for Persian people by the Mullahs in the 70s.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Trembly

[Trembly]

The number threads about Thais of Chinese extraction is matched only by the number of TV members eager to claim they've married a female or have high-powered, influential friends from this curiously highly-celebrated demographic.

I only know one Thai of Chinese descent and she ain't here; she's in England where she's lived for coming up on 9 years and she's still baffled at how fervently white folks pursue darker skin using lotions, pre-tans, sunbeds and/or spending hours, oiled up, sizzling under the sun like sausages in skillet. She's only now beginning to allow herself to catch a little sun since it's taken this long for UK beauty advertising to break the brainwashing of the Thai variant.

There's little to be gained by lamenting on how poorly darker-skinned Thais are represented in the media since the beauty industry in Thailand - like that in any country - is geared towards selling the majority an ideal they cannot attain and retain without spending money regularly. Most Thais are darker so it sells them the concept of whiter skin being equivalent to superior beauty. It's just about the dosh and while some may think darker skinned Thais are at an acute disadvantage in the beauty stakes, I'll just say I've seen countless Thai couples comprised of dark and light skinned guys and girls which may mean that things are changing fast and, perhaps, in 10 or 20 years, the issue of skin tone, such as it is, won't exist.

I don't think that there is any one in Thailand who is sound of mind and seriously gives a sheet about skin colour and social perceptions of same when it comes to choosing a mate. They go with what turns them on whenever they can and that's about all there is to it. I know a girl who is ac/dc so far as colour is concerned, I have a personal Thai hiso Chinese friend (actually she's decidedly middle class, just happens to have money) who admits to preferring "men with a proper thick arse and proper thick body, not necessarily ripped and skin that looks nice and dark and healthy" and yet another one who would only go with pale skinned chaps, sod all to do with "status" or the media, dark skin just didn't do it for her.

I dabble with the darkness but in my heart of hearts I know that my my body really wants to make babies with the lighter skinned specimens of the fairer sex. The feeling is unmistakeable and is completely and perfectly hardwired into my brain (and all other concerned parts of my anatomy). It's nothing to do with society, politics, money, status, it just is.

I get the feeling that a lot of farang have a rather unhealthy obsession with the 'strange social mores of the natives' when the truth is really quite simple and natural. Of course, that's not to say that Thailand doesn't also have it's fair share of mildly crazy common-reference-point adherents and commercial / media sheep who could do with being shaved within an inch of their lives with father Occam's razor.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Trembly

[TheWalkingMan]

They are there because the masses enjoy seeing them.

[samran]

Are these people Thai or foreign nationals?............we end up getting involved in circular arguments on this Thai-Chinese issue. Thais of Chinese heritage are Thai and they will get angry if you contest their nationality with them.......and therefore are just as entitled to appear in the media as anyone.

Eurasians are regarded highly as being pleasing on the eye and it's no shock that they do well in media roles.

Indeed, we are the true handsum man.

But the girls even knock us blokes out of the ball park.

Samran, if i had not known that you are half Thai i would have never guessed.

by the way, true hansum men have ridges on their a forehead

I do my best George Clooney impression in the photo I think you are talking about!

[WebBangkok]

I personally like the light Thai's.

[barefoot1988]

well. at least you could tell the differences.

i can't seems to really differentiate between some female actors here. they look similar. the worst are the korea all girls bands that are all hyped up now. dam_n they sure all look the same

[maxme]

I personally like the light Thai's.

The skinny ones?

[WebBangkok]

I personally like the light Thai's.

The skinny ones?

Depends on the day.

Sometimes I like skinny ones, thick ones.

I love woman of any race or color really.

[7by7]

For most of the last 1000+ years in Europe if you had a very light skin it meant you were aristocratic and spent your life relaxing inside, out of the sun. If you had a tan it meant you were a poor agricultural worker.

This started to change with the industrial revolution, when workers spent most of the day at their toil inside the factory or mine and the concept of the Grand Tour became fashionable with the well off.

By the 1930s the situation had changed completely; light skin meant poor, worked indoors, couldn't afford holidays. A tan meant well off, could afford holidays in the sun.

I understand that the 'fashion' in Thailand is still as it used to be in Europe; light skin, well off; dark skin, poor.

It is noticeable that in Europe the peddlers of potions and lotions try to convince that their products will reduce 'the signs of aging' whereas in Thailand they try to convince that they will lighten the skin.

Like an earlier poster said, my wife, who has lived in the UK for 12 years, still cannot believe the number of white women who tell her that they wish they had her wonderful, golden tan. She wants their pale, white skin!

[Murf]

I personally like the light Thai's.

The skinny ones?

45kgs and under

Spinners.

[maxme]

I personally like the light Thai's.

The skinny ones?

45kgs and under

Spinners.

Standard then...

[Berkshire]

The flavor of the day is to look as Korean or Japanese as possible. And who gets to decide what are the standards of beauty in any society? OP, if you were to go to America and complain that there weren't enough fat women on TV, do you think anyone would listen? Big women certainly make up a sizable (pardon the pun) portion of the population. Why do Americans discriminate against fat people???

Same same.

[kennedy]

The number threads about Thais of Chinese extraction is matched only by the number of TV members eager to claim they've married a female or have high-powered, influential friends from this curiously highly-celebrated demographic.

I only know one Thai of Chinese descent and she ain't here; she's in England where she's lived for coming up on 9 years and she's still baffled at how fervently white folks pursue darker skin using lotions, pre-tans, sunbeds and/or spending hours, oiled up, sizzling under the sun like sausages in skillet. She's only now beginning to allow herself to catch a little sun since it's taken this long for UK beauty advertising to break the brainwashing of the Thai variant.

There's little to be gained by lamenting on how poorly darker-skinned Thais are represented in the media since the beauty industry in Thailand - like that in any country - is geared towards selling the majority an ideal they cannot attain and retain without spending money regularly. Most Thais are darker so it sells them the concept of whiter skin being equivalent to superior beauty. It's just about the dosh and while some may think darker skinned Thais are at an acute disadvantage in the beauty stakes, I'll just say I've seen countless Thai couples comprised of dark and light skinned guys and girls which may mean that things are changing fast and, perhaps, in 10 or 20 years, the issue of skin tone, such as it is, won't exist.