Imagining the Western Husband: Thai Women's Desires for Matrimony, Status and Beauty

Abstract

This article examines a group of Thai women's perceptions of western Caucasian men as ideal marriage partners and its impact on their sexual practices and relationship decisions. Based on conversations with women living in a ‘slum’ community in Bangkok, I argue that women who do not fit local ideals of light skin color, economic success and urban origins face obstacles among potential Thai suitors. Some of these women strategically prefer western suitors to local men. Through their relationship choices, these women upset local hierarchies of desire as they attempt to subvert skin color-bias and pose challenges to Thai marital traditions. At the same time, their relationship pursuits conform to gender expectations of the male breadwinner and female caretaker and may unintentionally reproduce skin color and status hierarchies. Although Thai women's sexual relationships with western men are not a new phenomena, they underscore the transnational nature of sexual desire and contemporary social change.

Keywords:

• Marriage
• Thailand
• Sexuality
• Globalization
• Gender

Acknowledgments

A Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and a Brown University Graduate School grant funded research for this article. I am greatly indebted to Naamkhlaŋ friends and residents, as well as the National Research Council of Thailand, and Mahidol University. My appreciation extends to this issue's Guest Editors, Cymene Howe and Jakob Rigi, Ethnos’ Editor Mark Graham, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. Additionally, I thank Joan Spade, Margaret Blackman, Mara Leichtman, Kathleen Patchan and Michael Weisenburg for useful feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Notes

All names and that of the community are pseudonyms. Additionally, Thai words are written in a phonemic manner according to the transcription system employed by Mary Haas (1964) and appear without tone or stress markers.

In everyday usage, women use the word ‘fëën’ to refer to boyfriends, husbands, and cohabiting mates.

This article is based on my conversations with eleven Naamkhlaŋ women and interviews with other members of the community during 2003–2004 with a brief follow-up visit in 2006. Additional semi-structured interviews with a sample of 134 community members, 120 of whom had been married, or were cohabiting at the time of interview, also inform my analysis of local marriage ideals and values.

See Askew (1999) on how foreign tourists perceive Bangkok as a ‘city of prostitutes’ and Humbeck (1994) concerning the stereotyping of Thai women as prostitutes when they move to Germany as wives.

In Thai society, authors are customarily referred to by their first names. I follow this convention in my text and reference list for those authors publishing in Thailand.

See for example Prapairat Mix and Nicola Piper's research (2003) on Thai women married to German men.

My rough estimate of the community's total population derives from a sample of 10 percent of all residential dwellings (486 house numbers rounded up) within the slum proper. Fifty house numbers were randomly selected, yielding 152 households and approximately 447 residents.

Thais often conflate social standing and ethnicity (Bao 2005). For instance, people often assume that ‘dark’ skin indicates a Northeastern background — the poorest region in the country with an ethnically distinct Lao population (Mills 1999). Likewise, ‘white’ skin implies mixed parentage, typically mixed-Chinese ancestry. Marrying members of the Chinese minority, often stereotyped as shrewd business-folk, is often described as beneficial. Many celebrities like pop-star Tata Young claim mixed Thai-Caucasian heritage and their economic success ‘proves’ the benefits of ‘white’ origins, Chinese or western, and further perpetuates ethnicized and racialized hierarchies of social status.

Penny Van Esterik notes that the ‘evaluation of beauty is deeply entrenched in Thai culture’ as one's outward appearance reflects one's karma and potential power (2000:155). The belief that beauty, epitomized by a ‘white’ complexion, acts as a visual index for one's moral character dovetails with notions of high social class and a proper upbringing.

I am indebted to a discussion with Dr. Chai Podhista for this interpretation of contemporary marriage as a means of upward mobility.

I see similarities between the administration of former P.M. Thaksin's response to societal change and that of other Asian state regimes, which have attempted to control female sexuality through ideological campaigns linking morality, national identity and marriage, sometimes through religious rhetoric (see Kendall 1996; Ong 1995).

While I reference a specific article here, the magazine regularly featured a ‘Faraŋ Husband’ column and other articles of similar content in 2005 and 2006.