Published on January 10, 2005

Thai teens prize a fair complexion, a tall and slender physique and, in boys, a businessman-like personality as ideal traits – so much so that many of them are willing to brave plastic surgery to change their looks.

This is according to Chulanee Thianthai, a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, who conducted extensive interviews and “participatory observations” with 36 teenagers, male and female, aged between 16 and 19.

According to her study, teenage girls’ ideal appearance was a model-like slender body between 168cms and 177cms tall. Teenage boys in turn envisioned a slim but muscular physique between 175cms and 189cms tall.

The boys preferred slim and strong women with a fair complexion suggesting a wholesome innocence. The girls liked tall slender men who were strong enough to protect their girlfriends, were jovial companions with a good sense of humour, and had a good education enabling them to work in lucrative jobs.

In short, Chulanee explained, Thai girls looked at themselves with great emphasis on outward appearance and were considered in the same light by boys. As a result, many teenage girls sought to improve their looks by taking diet pills and even resorting to plastic surgery. On the other hand, girls identified not only appearance but also various personality traits in an ideal man.

Chulanee said parents, teachers and peers as well as media and advertising professionals should encourage young Thais to accept their natural appearance and focus instead on their inward beauty by cultivating their sense of morality and proper behaviour.

In the same vein, Amornwich Nakornthap, director of the Ramjitti Institute of Thailand Research Fund and a lecturer at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Education, stressed that four factors played a large part in the erosion of morality and a skewed value system among young Thais. These were: family problems with increasing rates of divorce; widely available pornography; lack of recreational and sports facilities; and educational institutions’ failure to provide teens with proper guidelines.

He said these trends were in a downward spiral and that only a government-sponsored and well-orchestrated national campaign could halt them.

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