Thais And A Dark Skin Colour..

[Siwanan]

Hi!

I keep on thinking one thing..why are so many Thais against dark skin colour? Even that so many of them have dark skin, most people in south etc.

I have two Thai children and the other one has very dark skin, but he is the most beautiful child I have ever seen! (he is adopted) Still some Thais ask me if I really love him because he is so DARK!!

I can not understand the way they think, the colour of skin could never be the reason to love somebody or not to me.

We visited one orphanage one day and very young children pointed my son and said: "black, black!!" Children are open-minded, that must have come from adults mouths..

In Europe it was easier to explain racism to my child, but how to do it here where he is Thai like the others?

[IMA_FARANG]

Hi!

I keep on thinking one thing..why are so many Thais against dark skin colour? Even that so many of them have dark skin, most people in south etc.

I have two Thai children and the other one has very dark skin, but he is the most beautiful child I have ever seen! (he is adopted) Still some Thais ask me if I really love him because he is so DARK!!

I can not understand the way they think, the colour of skin could never be the reason to love somebody or not to me.

We visited one orphanage one day and very young children pointed my son and said: "black, black!!" Children are open-minded, that must have come from adults mouths..

In Europe it was easier to explain racism to my child, but how to do it here where he is Thai like the others?

I know what you mean about "dark" Thai children. My Thai girlfriend was married to a Burmese-Indian mix man. She had 3 children by him before her divorce. The children look darker than pure Thai children. We had a lot of problems getting them passports and Thai I.D. cards some years back. They are all grown now, and married into Thai families. She even has a grandaughter who is clearly inheriting some of the Indian-Burmese look from her mother. She is a petite little thing that in my opinion is going to me a real looker in another 10 years. The talk about the black part of their heritage has definately dropped off in the last decade or so. It's getting better.

I think a lot of it comes from Thai history and the wars fought between the Thais and the Burmese or Cambodians. The Thais were traditionaly lighter and fairer skinned.

A Burmese woman who is a good friend of mine told me that one of the first questions that was asked 50 years ago when a child was born was, "Is it fair?" (meaning light skinned).

[Rinrada]

Its all a plot by those grotty multi-national cosmetic firms to flog off all their cheap skin whitener/lightiner creams to Thai femails on the assumption or pretex that white is right...and sexy... ..innit

......and also they dont want to be seen to be considered to be anywhere on the same pecking order/level as Buffallo hearders....

Give me a bottle of factor 20 and a bronzie any day.....

[jdinasia]

it is the same everywhere for the most part .... and even amongst blacks (particularly in the US ... see the Spike Lee movie dealing with tone)

[chingching]

Its all a plot by those grotty multi-national cosmetic firms to flog off all their cheap skin whitener/lightiner creams to Thai femails on the assumption or pretex that white is right...and sexy...

This is quite true, in the Philippines skin whiteners account for 70% of ALL cosmetic products sold.

[migrant]

......and also they dont want to be seen to be considered to be anywhere on the same pecking order/level as Buffallo hearders....

My ex is Korean. She explained it similar to Rinrada. She said a dark hue means you work outside, and are therefore poorer.

She always had a hat, and covered up in the sun, just as my Thai fiancee does now.

[farangsay]

Yes , it is ridiculous.

Used to be amused when I came here first , lounging on

the beach desparately trying to put a bit of colour on my

pale skin with a Thai GF and her friends sheltering under

the trees trying to do the opposite.

Same GF , when I was bringing her to Europe , asked me

"do they have cream make skin white?"

I said "No , just cream make skin brown".

What a f*cked up world we live in , you just have to love it !

[glenbat]

Having spent the first 29 years of my life lusting after Scandanavian type 6ft blondes, and swearing never to change I spent a month in the LOS and now i'm a converted man! For Good! Give me a petite, dark skinned, beaming smiled filly any day of the week!

And I too much prefered the darker thai girls, my favourite couple came from Buriram/Isaan area and apparently they are darker there? Is this just due to more exposure to the sun?

It used to drive me nuts when they'd point at a picture of some pasty skinned model on the front of a magazine and say how sexy lady she was?! Then did i realise why every one of em carried a bottle of talc with them

Crazy the lot of em!

[Soph]

My ex had beautiful dark skin, much nicer looking than the puny chinese/bangkok thais and I thought it was lovely. I remember taking him to meet some work colleagues from my school in Hat Yai - most of whom were pale skinned or covered in talc, and they treated him like sh@te, it was horrible and made me angry.

In fact they treated the darker kids in the school (a minority) in pretty much the same way too.

[Thaddeus]

The attached picture is of my little one.... she has quite a dark skin colour. She has taken some stick in the past at school from some of the boys (never the girls) so, she handled it in the only way possible at that age.... and illustrated that it's better to be a darker shade of brown than having your face pushed in the mud (you just end up red that way)

The darker skin colour as a stigmatism only about 'field work' .... it goes a little bit deeper than that.

[glenbat]

Its wierd isnt it? Most Thais associate pale skin with (I'm guessing) success, wealth, beauty etc and since my two trips, I'm afraid my views slightly different.

Any pale faces I tend to think want to be like the Westerners, and the darker skinned as 'real' Thai people, hard working, fun and not afraid to get their hands dirty

I'm hoping that sounded right

Ps, as a blue eyed blonde should I ever father with a delectable thai lady, what look would be most likely?

Edited October 24, 2006 by glenbat

[Thaddeus]

Ps, as a blue eyed blonde should I ever father with a delectable thai lady, what look would be most likely?

Shouldn't matter, just love them...... that is the most important thing.... far more important than overlaying stereotypical attitudes on your nearest and dearest.

[BlackArtemis]

It's funny, I ended up with a fair Thai fiancee (she is 1/4 chinese) Pale or dark I don't care, but our thai friends find it odd that me being farang that I like fair girls. They think all the farang want dark skin girls. I don't know what spurred this thought. I hope not all the see-ah and dek see-ah/ bar girl nonsense...

[Siwanan]

Hi!

THADDEUS; what a sweet, sweet little girl! Thank You for sharing a picture!

I know, the problem is global..I was just hoping that when we move back to Thailand with our children, they would not face racism here.

I have many stories from my country, in Northern Europe, but here is one of the worst:

When my child was just a baby and I was shopping with him, there was an older woman with her husband passing us in a shop. I heard her saying to her husband that: did You smell how bad that child smells? THOSE people always smell!

[leftcross]

the dark skin look never appealed to me and if im being totally honest part of the reason was that i wouldnt want my child to have dark skin.

i'm white as a sheet and i want my kid to look as much like me as possible.

[Thaddeus]

the dark skin look never appealed to me and if im being totally honest part of the reason was that i wouldnt want my child to have dark skin.

i'm white as a sheet and i want my kid to look as much like me as possible.

My God, I wouldn't, in comparison to most of the kids around here I'm hideous (I'm not actually, I'm quite cute )

Thank you Siwanan, my little girl is my angel and I thank the deity of my choice that her looks have nothing to do with me and I also thank the same supreme being that I have the chance to teach her that the colour of her skin is immaterial and anyone that wants to make an issue out of it is myopic first, prejudiced second, bigoted third and lastly, not worth wasting time or energy on.

[pumpuiman]

I have read that the original name for Thailand (Siam) translates as "dark people"

I wonder if this had anything to do with the decision to change the name?

[Boatabike]

Thaddeus

I second that compliment it is a lovely picture, of a lovely little girl.

I hear the same sort of thing daily at school, my normal response is either better black skin than black heart, that is normally when one of the boys is teasing another kid, or you are not black you are 50% honey and 50% chocolate and everybody likes honey and chocolate don't they. That one goes down rather well in my experience, try it.

Edited November 4, 2006 by Boatabike

[ronz28]

To me, its looks like a beautiful tan and I absolutely love it.

[glenbat]

Im with ronz, absolutely beautiful, real healthy look and combined with them perfect smiles simply cant be matched IMO anywhere else in the world

[sbk]

My husband is quite dark skinned and since he likes to fish alot, gets even darker. I don't particularly care one way or the other, just don't want him getting skin cancer and cataracts

BUT, I hear all the time that "farang like dark" and that dark skin is not good looking. Amazingly enough, many people think whiter skinned people are good looking simply because they are whiter.

I believe it does have to do with the division of classes: ie white skinned people did not work in the sun and brown skinned people did. If you go back a few hundred years in Europe the aristocracy used to eat arsenic to look whiter because it was considered coarse and low class to be brown.

Same thing, in my opinion. The change in Europe came about when the lower classes started working in factories. Then you could prove you weren't lower class because you had the time to sunbathe.

Now, its just a fashionable thing and probably most people wouldn't even think about the class implications. But, at one time, they did think about class and it did matter. Old attitudes die hard.

[PeaceBlondie]

My partner was trying to explain somebody to me today and said, "You know, that black man." He meant a dark Thai, not an African!"

Some of my kids and grandchildren are mistaken for albinos. When my son and his Mexican-American wife had their first child, she was quite light, even light brown hair. His Mexican grandparents love her. But when the second one came out as a darker boy, they preferred that he looked Mexican! Oddly enough, the lighter one's first name is Spanish, and the boy is Dalton James...

When my daughter-in-law first took her fair haired daughter out shopping in the pram, she was mistaken as a Mexican nanny!

[JimsKnight]

I have read that the original name for Thailand (Siam) translates as "dark people"

I wonder if this had anything to do with the decision to change the name?

I think it translates as "Swarthy People" so perhaps thats what could be interpreted as 'Dark'?

I find I prefer the in-between olive-brown, not extremely dark nor as white as N.W European.

[endure]

I spent three years sailing with Filipino crew and when they were working on deck they were dressed such that the only flesh you could see were their eyes. They used to wear boiler suits, boots, gloves, balaclavas and a wide brimmed hat, even in the tropics during the heat of the day.

[think_too_mut]

Pattaya Jomtien...one would think sun is sought when on the beach...

[Donz]

My Fiance is light skinned as she is only 1/4 Thai 1/2 chinese 1/4 portugese (however you spell it)

when she does go in the sun she gets pretty tanned but when she not in the sun for a few weeks she goes white. So I get abit of both.

Also in Oz all the girls are the opposite and want a tan and burn themselves to get it, as pasty white girls are really appealing.

I guess it comes down to always wanting what you dont have.

For me I like the lighter girls, I find them more attractive but I also find many darker girls attractive too.

[MiG16]

I have read that the original name for Thailand (Siam) translates as "dark people"

I wonder if this had anything to do with the decision to change the name?

I think it translates as "Swarthy People" so perhaps thats what could be interpreted as 'Dark'?

I find I prefer the in-between olive-brown, not extremely dark nor as white as N.W European.

Siam changed its name to "Thai" which means free, and the english name given was Thailand = the land of the free

this happened around the time of british and french colonisation era in the region, mainly cos Siam remained the only uncolonised nation in the region.

atleast thats what my Thai history tells me

[Briggsy]

Thais are taught to profile people by race, both Thais and foreigners, from a very early age. Thus every Thai child knows that people from Isaan ride buffaloes and are to be laughed at, farangs like dark women, fair-skin is synonymous with success, etc. These views are held very widely indeed and often obstruct people from seeing the person under the skin colour.

[tutsiwarrior]

's funny...when my wife is at home in Suphan she's out in the sun all day and becomes a nice mahogany color. When she's with me overseas she spends a lot of dough on skin whiteners...

over concern with skin color can have lethal consequences. My mom was very dark and used to be called 'la negra' by other family members. One day she was walking to a restaurant in the andean town that she had retired to, to meet her sister for lunch. She was carrying a parasol to shield against the high UV that are found at high altitudes. The parasol obscured her view and she wasn't looking anyway and WHAM! splattered over the tarmac by a 3/4 ton Ford pickup that she had walked in front of...she died not knowing what hit her...the parasol was in the way...

Edited November 6, 2006 by tutsiwarrior

[helicoptor]

's funny...when my wife is at home in Suphan she's out in the sun all day and becomes a nice mahogany color. When she's with me overseas she spends a lot of dough on skin whiteners...

over concern with skin color can have lethal consequences. My mom was very dark and used to be called 'la negra' by other family members. One day she was walking to a restaurant in the andean town that she had retired to, to meet her sister for lunch. She was carrying a parasol to shield against the high UV that are found at high altitudes. The parasol obscured her view and she wasn't looking anyway and WHAM! splattered over the tarmac by a 3/4 ton Ford pickup that she had walked in front of...she died not knowing what hit her...the parasol was in the way...

What can you say to that? absolutely awful