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.