Goerwitz

We're looking, in this photo, into an umbrella-making facility.

Umbrellas have interesting cultural significance, not just because of their beauty, and not just because they keep people dry, but also because they serve to keep out the sun.

It turns out that Thai people value light-colored skin. My theory is that this is partly cultural (light skin means you are wealthy and don't have to work in the fields), and partly a matter of Thai history (Thais originally migrated from the north, where people were, in fact, lighter skinned).

I love to tell Thais that people in the United States prefer dark, tanned skin. Actually, the truth is that people in the United States used to value fair skin (if you've every read the Little House on the Prairie series, Laura's mother is forever trying to keep her sun bonnet on, and frets about her becoming as "brown as an Indian"). Laura's mother might as easily have been Thai, at least in this respect. In the United States, people didn't start tanning until the rich started heading south to the Caribbean and to various exotic warm places, where they naturally became tan. People being snobs, this made tan skin seem more beautiful, and resulted in a delightful inversion of cultural norms surrounding skin color. But amusingly, the ideal of beauty in the United States isn't dark skin per se, but rather light skin that has become tan through sun exposure, preferably unhealthy levels of sun exposure.

I love this story because it shows how culturally relative beauty is, and how dependent it is on perceptions of wealth and status. It's the same with almost everything, including my favorite: Body size. In a culture where not everyone has enough to eat, being plump is considered a sign of beauty. In a culture where everyone has plenty to eat, and only the rich can afford to join the local health club while their nanny takes the kids, it's cool to be slim.

Anyway, to return to the subject of hand-crafted umbrellas: In Thailand, as elsewhere, hand-made items are often valued highly. This is largely socioeconomic, of course. Hand-made things are more individualized and require more labor, and hence suggest wealth and prosperity.

What kinda offends me is how European and American tourists flock to Thai shops, because they can find beautiful hand-made things for reasonable amounts of money. Again, they think they want "nice things," but in reality the function of those things isn't just to be beautiful (remember that beauty is highly relative). Their true function is to assert and reinforce status, education, and so on.

(All that from a bunch of umbrellas!