Looking in a mirror, darkly: abroad and at home, a focus on skin color and assumptions about beauty

We travel with the hopes of experiencing, learning about, and living in other cultures. And whether consciously or unconsciously, we bring with us bits of our own. Remnants of our culture are revealed in our speech and mannerisms, reflected in the customs we try to understand and exposed through the faux pas we commit. When we travel, we — from backpackers to businessmen and everyone in between — are ambassadors of our countries, products of our cultures.

So while we head out into the world to learn about other cultures, we may find we are simultaneously forced to take a good look at our own. In some cases, we may discover a new appreciation for a particular custom or value. Other times we may come face to face with downright disgust. It is easy to draw up and point out cultural differences but sometimes surprising and often eye-opening to uncover the similarities.

Every culture has standards by which it measures beauty. In Thailand I discovered that, although at first glance our standards seemed drastically different, in the end they are quite desperately similar.

From my first day at Kainarai (the primary school where I taught English), the Thai teachers were generous with their compliments. "Sooay mak mak! (Very beautiful)" they would exclaim nearly every day. "Slim slim!" they would add, gesturing with their hands the subtle curves of a woman.

Though I wasn't sure I deserved the attention, I enjoyed the banter and daily ego boost, courtesy of my co-workers. I assumed that most foreign English teachers in small town schools were receiving the same attention. Being an English teacher (and one of only a few non-Thai faces) in rural Thailand means that in addition to being an English teacher you also become something of a celebrity. When compared with local salaries, yours is high. Your face is easily spotted in a crowd. And in some cases, you may be the only foreign person a Thai student or teacher ever comes into contact with.

High-fives and hugs from students became standard, and compliments from coworkers flowed.

... Until I came back from a weekend on the southern island of Koh Samui.

I returned refreshed and ready to tackle another week at Kainarai. But I was met with a less than warm welcome. Rather than their usual kind comments, most of the Thai teachers said nothing. And the ones who did had two simple words for me: "Mai sooay (Not beautiful)".

How could a weekend away have possibly changed anything?

Certainly, I need not be thought of as "sooay" every day to be happy. But in a country where a strong emphasis is placed on appearance, I thought it may be important to find out the reason for my declining status among the staff.

So when a Thai teacher and friend of mine looked at me across the lunch table and said no more than the two popular words of the day, "Mai sooay," I ventured to solve the mystery.

"Why?" I asked. "Why am I 'mai sooay'?"

"Black," the Thai teacher responded without hesitation, pointing to my many and multiplied freckles (that had emerged despite my best efforts to stay constantly covered with sunscreen), with a look of disgust on her face.

"Really?" I replied, confused and admittedly a bit hurt. But then, recalling a story my Israeli-American friend Yasmine had shared with me a few weeks earlier, I quickly saw an opportunity to give my opinion, whether it would mean anything to my co-workers or not.

"I think these are beautiful," I retorted, slowly and deliberately counting the freckles on my arms and face.

Like me, Yasmine (an English teacher at a neighbor school) had been initially greeted with glowing remarks. She, too, received a daily dose of "Sooay mak mak!" — until she returned to work after a week in the sun. Some students shamelessly stared and some teachers actually asked if she was ill. The students whispered in her classrooms and the teachers talked in her office. Yasmine's solution: She stood up in front of her gossiping students and declared, "YES! I am dark! And I think it's beautiful!" And then she pointed to the students' own dark skin and declared them all "Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!"

The obsession with white skin in Thailand made me rethink the Western obsession with tan skin. I thought about the beautiful brown faces of my students I saw each day, smeared with whitening creams. And I thought about my own country's countless skin-coloring products. I thought about an educated and undeniably gorgeous Thai friend who told me that she couldn't get a boyfriend because she "never used whitening products" on her skin. And I thought back on my own pre-prom tanning sessions.

And I was sad — sad for the Thai children whose parents fear they will not be beautiful without whiter skin, sad for my Thai friend who has been told so many times that her dark skin is "mai sooay" that she actually believes it, and sad that in the West as well, so much time and money is spent and even our health is put at risk for the sake of altering the natural appearance of our own skin.

And I wondered why so many of us look outside for beauty, why we always want to be the thing that we are not, why we cannot look in the mirror and find what we see — no matter how different or dark or light or big or small — to be beautiful.

Perhaps Yasmine and I were there to teach more than just English ... and to learn more than just teach.

To limitless learning through living and to truly seeing the beauty in that which we have been blessed with,

Ashley

Ashley M. Fitzgerald was a teacher, model and program coordinator in Thailand until December, when she left due to political unrest. She is now the international student adviser and registrar at Intercultural Communications College in Honolulu, Hawaii. She is a 2000 graduate of Harrisville Central School and a graduate of Middlebury (Vt.) College. "Grown Local, Gone Global" is published every other Sunday. You may send your questions and comments to her at afitzgerald@wdt.net.