800 Hong Kong dollars

Life hasn't been so lovely to this Chinese gal, whose 15 minutes of fame take the form of a page (with photos, vital stats, price, performance review, professional name, and the phone number of her pimp) on Hong Kong's leading online catalog of vice. China can be a cruel place for the poor and pretty.

To each her own

The couples might not belong together, but the photos do. Above, Taiwan starlet Rainie Yang and friend. Below, mainland Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi and friend.

At least the terrier isn't wearing a scarf.

Express yourself

Sometimes it seems like every Thai girl wants to be a model, even if it just means posting her pictures on a popular web site like, for example, mthai.com. The offerings range from girls-gone-cute to girls-gone-feral, though not quite wild. The pic above is the only one of that girl, and marks the outer limit of wildness, on that web site at least.

A few more of this girl are here. And one more for the road:

Compared to what their cohorts in other countries are up to, the Thai picture-posting scene is pretty innocuous. Though word has it (well, the TV news has it) things are getting a bit heavy in the Thai chatrooms of camfrog.com. Not really my specialty, though if anyone wants to peruse, please do report back with your findings.

Girl next door dot com

From Thai teenybopper web site Sanook.com's post-it-yourself section. This girl's message to the world is "sA-wAd-dEE-mA-fReNz-@-sAnOoK- cLuB-kA ^^". And the world's reply is "น่ารักมากเลยค่ะ สวยไสถูกจัยสุดๆ". Meaning, you're so cute and pretty. I have nothing to add.

New School

This gallery, which I found on a Thai web site and is credited only to a "magazine in Japan", caught my eye because of the school uniform theme. The styling on this shoot is uninspired -- mainland Chinese-looking, actually -- except for the most important thing, which is quite nice: the uniform. As far as I know there are no school uniforms in Japan (or China) that look remotely like this, but it happens to evoke the Thai college uniform a bit, which might be why the photos ended up where I found them. I wonder if any of the schools here could be convinced to adopt this look -- of course, replacing the girl's boring shirt with something thinner and silver-buttoned.

Japan + Taiwan + Vietnam = cute

Most Japanese girl pictures are boring. Most Chinese girl pictures are inept. How do you save two countries with one photoshoot? Have a Japanese photographer shoot a Chinese girl. Don't ask me why, but it works.

One of my favorite photo books (not that I've ever laid hands on the actual book) is "La Petite Amante", a Japanese-made showcase of Taiwanese acress Annie Yi, aka Yi Neng Jing, aka in Japan as Shizuka Inoh. The title seems to be a reference to the book/movie "L'Amant", aka The Lover, which is about a French girl coming of age in colonial Vietnam.

It's a concept-photobook, with Annie in the role of indolent tourist in, naturally, Vietnam. She loiters at a soft drink stand, rides in a cyclo, plays with makeup in her hotel room. Sounds a little tacky, and she was already 30 when the book was shot (it was released in Jan. 2000), but it's a winner -- it's just got that I-don't-know-what, as the French say. The secret, I suppose, besides the fact that she's cute, is that she's not just posing, she's acting. And though it's not a very skin-oriented book, it ends up being a lot sexier than your average Japanese swimsuit-idol production. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for wistful, lonely girls with a bit of an attitude.

Photos are here, though not all of them from this book.

Mayabang persons need not apply

Angel Locsin was always the prettiest girl in her class, and according to FHM, she's now the most bodacious babe in the Philippines. It's not hard to believe. If you've fallen behind on Angel's journey from schoolgirl to supergirl, Wikipedia can help. The entry ends with the information that she recently broke up with a man named Oyo Boy, but they are still friends. Her pet peeves are"untidy and mayabang persons", another profile tells us. Mayabang means boastful or cocky. Her favorite food is lasagna. She hit the big time with her role as half-human, half-avian Elwina in the fantasy TV show Mulawin. She's also stepped into the boots of legendary Filipina superheroine Darna:
Here's looking at Angel -- eight galleries of her, a commercial and some cheezy montages. And here's more on Angel's TV role as Darna. She also plays Narda, the Clark Kent to Darna's Superman. The photos are strangely fun to look at, and the story's worth checking out too if you want to learn about the Philippines' greatest comic book darling. Not doing so would be downright mayabang.

The Rise of Saigon

Communism is not conducive to vibrant modeling and publishing industries. People are poor and scared. They can't afford to buy the things that beautiful women normally advertise. But Vietnam has an indigenous sense of style that gives me great hope, an easy, graceful look that reminds me of the traditional ao dai dress even when they're not wearing one. Here's the ao dai, for reference:These three men just escaped from a hospital in Hanoi. Here's the garment in its natural habitat:


The fact that Vietnam has, arguably, Asia's most fetching traditional women's clothing, is a sign that the culture has good taste when it comes to female appearance. Which is really the most important thing, after all. On the minus side, Vietnamese photos are plagued by excess airbrushing, odd choices of settings and poses, and an inexplicable addiction to the fan-blown hair look.

Galleries here and here.

She died for beauty

South Korean pop star U-Nee hanged herself in her room on Sunday, following in the footsteps of actress Lee Eun Joo, who did the same two years ago. Both were major stars. Both committed suicide after coming under criticism for risque performances (U-Nee was apparently the target of a hate-campaign by so-called "anti-fans"), even though they were pressured to be risque. The English-language press in Korea said in both cases that the women suffered from depression, but considering the amount of pressure they were under, this doesn't seem to be the medical condition that we call "depression" in the West.

Why is Korea driving its pretty stars to suicide? Probably a combination of a corrupt and abusive pop-culture industry (I've read that female stars are routinely blackmailed by their agencies, via secretly-shot nude photos or videos), lingering traditional moralism that's always lashing back against liberal popular culture, and a society where women's status is probably lower than anywhere else in Asia, which is saying a lot.

But U-Nee's death also gives me pause as an avid consumer of pretty girls, or their images at least. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the marketing of sexiness. But because the industry is a made up of older men who market young kids, mainly girls, the risk of abuse of power is very high. And in countries where the balance of power between men and women is already skewed, and where speaking out against your superiors is frowned upon -- like, say, Asia -- it's even worse.

U-Nee's suicide will no doubt cause some soul-searching in South Korea, as it should. For me, it's a reminder to be a conscientious consumer.

Meanwhile in the United States of America...

Complexly Asian-American model Jarah Mariano is big-time, mainstream, international billboard stuff. She doesn't really fit the Other Asians theme. But I can't avert my eyes.

Sometimes we get so caught up in searching for hidden treasures that we miss what's right there in the Victoria's Secret catalog. Let us forgo for a moment the thrill of discovery and appreciate the thing itself.

I won't muddle your heads with a whole lot of links... and anyway she looks like she enjoys being Googled.

In the mood for Ploy

Her older sister Sinitta (aka Noon) gets more face recognition outside Thailand because of her lead role in Last Life in the Universe, but at home in Bangkok, 24-year-old Laila "Ploy" Boonyasak is the girl of the moment. Though she's not a new face, in the past couple of years she shot from mere popularity to A-listdom thanks in part to some great photo shoots that show her transformation from pretty starlet to statuesque beauty. This photo-set, which channels the Sino-decadent look of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai's recent movies In the Mood for Love and 2046, shows her at her best. If Wong Kar-wai, or at least his cinematographer Christopher Doyle, could come to Thailand and shoot us some reels of Ploy, I'd really appreciate it. (Actually Doyle shot Last Life in the Universe and she did appear in that, in a school uniform even, but she was killed off early to make way for her sister.)


Here's a photo set where the emphasis seems to be on putting a lot of gel in her hair. In this one she's goofing around at the beach after a long day mending fishing nets.

And for those of you who prefer your women horizontal, she does that too (full gallery here):

As with most famous Thai girls, there's a good collection of her photos at the all-knowing, all-seeing Thai girl-blog Asian Sweetheart.

Nut Job

Stop right there, it's not what you think. The roadside transaction you're looking at the bottom half of involves betel nut, the mildly stimulating natural intoxicant favored by a wide variety of less-privileged Asians, including in Taiwan where this photo was taken. Wikipedia explains the phenomenon of the Taiwanese bīnláng xīshī, or "betel-nut beauty":

Taiwanese betel nut kiosks, heavily decorated with bright neon lights, are most common on highways and suburban roads in the western part of the island, such as around Taichung. The main clientele is composed of truck drivers who chew the mildly addictive nuts for the stimulant to help them stay awake on long trips. The high profitability of betel nut production and commerce has led to a multiplication of such kiosks, and as competition for customers' attention has increased, the girls staffing them have been wearing less and less. In 2002, local governments began to ban nudity and excessively revealing clothing in betel nut kiosks...

The girls are so popular, they've spawned a line of action figures:
This is the real thing:
Two more real things:
Besides the ones shown here, there are about 59,996.5 other betel nut girls in Taiwan, according to Bloomberg. And they're quite well documented by an army of fans. There's a set of more than 200 photos on Flickr tagged with "betel nut". And the innocently-named David's Guide to Taiwan has a comprehensive list of betel-nut-girl resources on the web.

It's a nutty job, but somebody's got to do it.

Other Indonesians

So maybe Anggun has whetted your appetite for the Indonesian strain. Well, there are plenty of other dishes on the menu, and you can get a sampling at the Indonesian Celebrities blog, which is informative and entertainingly snarky. The girl above is named Adinda, by the way.

There's also a big database of Indonesian girls at the Beautiful Indonesian Girls web site, but there's no information on the girls or the photos, and it's all a bit hard to make sense of. The girl below doesn't have a name, and if she was, say, Thai, I'd guess this was a magazine photo from the 1960s or 70s. But since it's Indonesia, who knows. Quite beguiling, though, and more stylish than most more recent-looking Indonesian photos.

I've seen some good, recent photo-shoots that are approaching Thai standards, but I haven't seen good jpegs of them yet. I'll post them as soon as I find good galleries. In the meantime, the search for Indonesia's hidden beauty continues. Please pitch in with your discoveries.

She can sing, too

Indonesia has a case of the China Syndrome -- lots of beautiful women but they don't find their way into jpegs (and you thought bird flu was the only illness they had on common).


Anggun, an Indonesian-born singer who's made her name in France under the banner of exotic chic, is a happy exception, because she's been photographed mainly outside her native land. Here's a gallery from a fan club web site.



In fairness to Indonesia, its pretty-girl-photo industry is more advanced than China's, thanks to far less censorship. But it's still a lot less freewheeling than the country itself because conservative Islamic groups exert a lot of pressure on the government (though in contrast to Malaysia, they don't control it).

Back to civilization with Gybzy

After a brief foray into the mainland Chinese wilderness, here's a touch of sophistication: Thai starlet Wanida Termtanaporn, better known as Gybzy (yes, she's ethnically Chinese, but she's Thai now). A tiny girl, she's reputed to have a 20-inch waist. But she knows how to use it.


Her official job is singing in the band Girly Berry with three somewhat less attractive girls. Her voice is not her best asset -- she earns her keep as a pretty face with an attitude.

Gybzy gallery here.

The China question

More than Japan, more than Thailand, China is Asia's superpower of vice. The whole country is a red light district that the borders can't even contain, with mainland girls spilling into neighboring countries and dominating their water trade. Their karaoke parlors and nightclubs are packed with tall, lithe, fresh-looking girls who would seem excellent fodder for magazine photographers. Which raises the question of why we're not seeing a flood of Chinese beauties turning up on the web.

Well, the beauties are there, like the anonymous one above waiting for the elevator (here's the gallery, from mainland Chinese web site mmkao.com). But the style's not quite up to par. Put this girl in the hands of Japanese or Thai stylists and photographers, get her out of that lobby and into some real clothes, and she'd be ready for prime time. A big part of the problem is that the usual market for good pictures of girls -- magazines -- is government-controlled, and while the government is fine with brothels on every block, they're not cool with printed material. They also control the web, but their grip is weaker there, and that's where we're starting to see some signs of progress.
This photoshoot still has more going against it than for it, but the potential's hard to miss.

School Daze

Like Japan, Thailand indulges in the cult of the uniformed schoolgirl. Thailand's fascination focuses on the university uniform, which is tighter and more revealing than anything seen in Japan. (On the morally bright side, the Japanese-style Lolita complex over underage girls seems absent in Thailand.)

Here's Richa Parichart showing off a typical college outfit -- a white, short-sleeved blouse with silver buttons, tucked into a navy or black miniskirt, with a slit on the side. No pleats... those are for high school.

A diverse array of uni uni photos can be seen here, courtesy of Jabchai.com. For example:

More resources on this important category of girl will be provided soon.

We sail tonight for Singapore

Southeast Asia's repressed little city-state is home to one of the most rollicking DIY girlie web sites in the East, sgGirls.com. It's been operating for years and has archives of thousands, nay tens of thousands of photos: candid shots, beach pictures, bedroom snaps, risque self-portraits, and the occasional revenge-post. Smartacres sometimes put up pics of professional models, but they get sussed out before long.

If Singapore is a nanny state, then I want my nanny.

Kratae: Thailand's favorite chipmunk

Ask a Thai person who their country's hottest female is, and they're likely to mention Kratae (กระแต, Thai for chipmunk), a model/actress with a stunning smile and striking curves. This gallery from Thai entertainment web site Jabchai.com will get you started with 165 shots of the rambunctious rodent. Unfortunately for you skin fiends, this is as undressed as she gets, at least for most of us.

Her full name is Supaksorn Chaimongkol (ศุภักษร ไชยมงคล), but like most Thai people, she's known by her nickname.

Blogger asiansweetheart.net also has a nice section on her.

A new perspective

Greetings. If you're here, that probably means you're a fellow connoisseur of the Asian feminine mystique. My goal is to help you explore that realm with more depth and breadth than you have up to now.

Language barriers and a lack of good marketing have kept most of Asia's girl-photo industry closed off from Western aficionados. Search the web for Asian girls, even ones with heir clothes on, and you'll find mostly Japanese material (which can be good, but uniform) and Southeast Asian hookers, along with the tired old crowd of stateside Asian debutantes.

In the world of girls, like in most other fields, Japan is Asia's has-been. Korea, China and the non-red light districts of Southeast Asia are producing the freshest stuff these days. I'm going to help you dig it up and provide links. There won't be any full galleries on this blog.

Nor will there be proper porn. For the time being, the girls will be covered up, if only barely.

Enjoy, and please feel free to contribute thoughts and links.