The Kayan Women’s Neck Rings

by Read Listen Learn

The Kayan women from Myanmar are famous all over the world for the rings they wear around their necks. These make their necks look very long, so long that some tourists call them the giraffe women. There are about 130,000 Kayan people living in Myanmar and in northern Thailand, where they went to escape from Myanmar's military government. Now that the government in Myanmar is changing, we can only wait to see what kind of future the Kayans have inside their own country.

When Kayan girls are very young - sometimes as young as two years old - they start to wear metal coils around their necks. Slowly, this coil is changed for a longer one. And so on and so on, until the adult Kayan woman can have a coil twenty centimetres long or more. This makes it look like the woman's neck is very long, but actually the coil does not make the neck longer - it only pushes the shoulders down.

Perhaps the most interesting question is why the Kayan women wear the metal coils. They have worn them for so many generations that nobody knows how they started. Some people say that the Kayan made their women wear the long coils because they made them look unattractive so that men from other tribes did not want to steal them. Other people say almost the opposite. The metal coils make the women very attractive because they make the difference between men and women much greater. Finally, there is an idea that the metal coils make the women look like dragons and the dragon is a very important creature in Kayan beliefs.

When Kayan women are asked the reason why they wear the metal coils, they say it's because they want to feel the same as other Kayan women. When they start wearing the metal rings on their necks, they usually don't take them off again. However, recently, some of them have removed them so that doctors can see what happens to their necks. At first, the women feel very uncomfortable without the rings but, later on, after about three days, this feeling stops. The muscles in the neck also begin to get stronger because when the coils are in place around their necks, the muscles become very weak. Unfortunately, the women's necks also change colour under the rings and this seems to last for a very long time - perhaps for ever. The Kayan women can feel naked too without the coils because they've worn them since they were small children.

The government of Myanmar has tried to stop the women wearing the rings because it makes the country look old-fashioned. Some people think the coils are cruel and make women look like circus people. These days, it is not so usual to see Kayan girls starting to wear the rings. But old women and girls in small villages in the countryside continue to do so.

Sadly, there are some people who want to make the Kayan women wear the metal coils. In northern Thailand, where there are many tourists, the women are special because foreigners have never seen anything like the metal coils before. Even when the women want to take them off, some try to stop them.

It is difficult to decide if the Kayan women are happy wearing the rings around their necks. Some people think it makes them like animals in a zoo, where curious tourists can stand and look. Others see the rings as part of Kayan culture and think they should wear them if they want to.