A Land Full of Compliments

A pale girl in Cambodia can really rack up the compliments. It’s nearly a daily occurrence for me to hear, “Wow. You’re so white.” It’s a compliment by Cambodian standards. (Funny that the same phrase in America means something very different.)

Being that I am a very pale Anglo-Saxon American, I gotten quite a few compliments in my time. I tried to keep up with how many times a day that I was told that I was beautiful (or “sah-at”). The highest I ever got, was five compliments in one day. Can I tell you… that can really make a girl love a country. Hearing that you’re beautiful all the time is definitely one of the perks of living here. 

My favorite compliment was given by a store clerk who tried to tell me that I looked like a baby. I kept asking him what he meant, but I couldn’t understand why he would say I looked like a baby. Finally he said, “You know, like baby doll.” Okay! I look like a baby doll? I’m going to ahead and assume he meant Barbie doll. Either way the compliment was a commentary on my pale skin, big eyes, and red lips. Apparently, what makes a girl pretty is light skin, light eyes and red lips (or make-up, colored contacts, and lipstick). 

Recently the compliments have declined. I wear less make-up and the Cambodian sun has darkened my skin. Now I hear far less “beautiful” comments, but this week someone else said that I looked like a doll. This time I knew exactly what they meant!

I even have a red-headed friend (and thus very pale) who was once pulled over by a policeman. When she asked the officer what she had done wrong, he said nothing. He told her that he stopped her so that he could tell her that she was beautiful. 

My stunning beauty (aka, my pale face) has even gotten a bus driver out of a ticket once. I was sitting in the front seat of a mini-bus when the police pulled the driver over. I didn’t really understand what the driver had done wrong, but the policeman was staring at me the whole time he was talking to the driver. I was annoyed by the staring, so I refused to make eye-contact. Eventually I noticed that the talking had stopped and everyone was staring at me. I gave the policeman a smart-aleck smile, that was supposed to mean, I see you staring. Instead the policeman was so happy that I smiled at him, that he told the driver he didn’t need to pay the fine. He then pointed to me and said, “I like. You…”And made the hand gesture for smiling. My friend and I laughed the whole way back to Phnom Penh about the instance. Who would have thought that a smile could get someone else out of a traffic ticket?

 

Don’t worry. These compliments aren’t going to my head. Beauty is a strange thing. In American dark skin is beautiful. In Mauritania, obese women are attractive. In Cambodia, people want pale skin. In the end, it makes you wonder if anyone is right or is everyone wrong? If beauty is so subjective, does it really matter at all?

(Pictures taken from Google Images)