Photo Essay : Burmese Tribe Takes Beauty to New Height

When the tourists first came to gawk at the “long-necked” women of the Padaung tribe, those curious visitors were something of a curiosity themselves.

“We were happy when the people came,” said Lahai, one of the Padaung men living in his tribe’s primitive encampment on the Thai side of the Myanmar-Thailand border. “We had never seen anyone like them, either.”

His observation is a small amusement in an unamusing situation. The Padaungs are not in Thailand by choice. They are poverty-ridden refugees from the interminable civil wars in Myanmar, formerly Burma. The Padaungs left the eastern mountains of Myanmar for Thailand, along with hundreds of their ethnic cousins, the Karens, in 1989. But they soon found themselves being taken from the large refugee camps and placed in satellite villages after the Thais recognized the moneymaking potential in the exotic “long necks.”

Only about 20 of the female refugees are still practicing the ancient “beauty” custom, but their arrival in northern Thailand has helped fuel a tourist boom in the nearby border city of Mae Hong Son. Beauty is surely in the eye of the beholder in these villages. Tourists stare in amazement at women with bizarre, foot-long necks. But Ma Nang, a 37-year-old “long neck,” smiled and explained guilelessly, “When the neck is longer, you are prettier.”

The ritual begins at about age 5 when the first brass coils are twisted into place around the neck. More coils are added later. Weighing up to 20 pounds, they force the collarbone and rib cage downward, giving the neck its stretched appearance. “There is some pain, but the body gets used to it,” said Ma Nang.