Thailand's Long-Necked Women
Why The Padaung Hill Tribe Wear Brass Rings Around Their Necks
The heavy weight of the brass rings doesn't stretch the neck, it compresses the body, and if they removed them the head would collapse. It all stems from a legend.
Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace, Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child has far to go, Friday’s child is loving and giving, Saturday’s child works hard for a living. - Anon.
There are many ‘Wednesday children’ among the Karen Hill Tribes living along the border with Burma/Myanmar in Thailand, Padaung who originally came to Thailand in flight from the fighting in Burma. These members of the Burmese Karen are also known as Padaung or “long-necks” because of the heavy brass rings they wear around their necks. How they came to be “long-necks” is the stuff of legend.
Long, long ago, the headman of the tribe had a dream in which he was told that a tiger was going to kill one of the much-loved children in the village - a child that had been born on a Wednesday. As his own child had been born on a Wednesday and as tigers kill their victims by first breaking their necks, he there and then decreed that all children born on a Wednesday should wear heavy brass rings round their necks.
As the tiger didn't kill a child, it was presumed that the wearing of the brass rings worked, and over the years this custom became popular until it is now institutionalised as part of tribal life. Not only that, it is considered lucky. In fact, so much is this the case, that women try to arrange a mid-week birth so that if the baby is a girl, she will be a fortunate 'Wednesday's child.'
Rings are placed around the neck of the Wednesday girl-child from the age of five, continuing until she is twenty. By this time the woman will be wearing approximately twenty-three rings weighing up to fifteen pounds in total. These rings can never be removed. If they did, the head would collapse.
The neck is not really stretched: X-rays have shown that the collar-bone is pushed down by the heavy rings, distorting the body and compressing the face.
Their lives are constrained by what we would judge a handicap, but they seem to enjoy the attention they get from the tourists who visit their villages.
The older women, attractive and pale skinned, look like exotic porcelain figures, their white skins accentuated by vivid lipsticks and smudged eye make-up. Their stillness and erect posture is due in large part to the great number of heavy brass rings round their necks and (more recently) their legs and arms. It’s hard to be energetic when you are weighed down by about five kilos of brass and you are wearing at least six rings on each leg.
Some people say the Paduang long-necks are simply being used by tour companies to attract visitors. That may be so but the the alternative is a life of slavery, or worse, under Burmese government forces and drug barons who are fighting over their land.
They acept visitor’s curiosity about them with charm and equanimity and seem to enjoy the attention they get. Paying an entrance fee to the village seems preferable to the begging that goes on in other hill tribe villages. The entrance fee provides them with a living, they sell their handicrafts and they don't have to beg for money.
Formerly nomadic they have now accepted a settled existence in which tourism is playing an increasisngly important role. The Thai government is actively courting a more ecologically aware kind of tourist, one who will appreciate the natural beauty of the area and its shy but friendly people.
Inevitably some tribes will diminish or vanish, but these people have adapted in the past and will again. And surely, anything that can raise them from the grinding poverty of their daily lives can be constructed as destructive only by the most perverse of eco-tourists.
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