What's your perspective?

Straight hair is polite.
Curly hair is sexy.
Wearing glasses is fashionable.
Wearing glasses makes you look old.
White skin is beautiful.
Dark tan coloured-skin lacks beauty.
A space between front teeth is beautiful.
A space between front teeth shows poverty.
Chubby is healthy and shows wealth.
Thin is beautiful.

On a recent trip to Bangkok, with three young adults from Laos who are preparing for a one year exchange program in Canada with MCC, we talked about diverse perspectives on physical appearance.

I chuckled to myself as they shared their perspectives and then found myself awestruck, as they talked about straightening their “straight” long, black hair to be polite.

How we understand the world around us, is molded by the place and time in history we have grown up. And so, they pay for whitening products to whiten the hair on their arms and others pay for tanning products to darken the colour of their skin. Some pay for curls and others pay for straightening services.

And again I came back to thoughts I’ve had earlier in life. When you struggle to accept personal “flaws”, just keep looking for the culture who finds beauty in this “flaw”.

From the fashionable, sexy, beautiful one