Life of Brian

Betelnut Beauties . . . exhibit

Another chance to see an exhibit of betelnut beauty photographs . . . 高雄工商展覽中心 . . . Tobie has a wonderful eye and has a unique perspective on the betelnut beauty phenomenon. He talks to and befriends the girls, bringing a humanity to the photographs and personal perspective that other photographers just don't come close to.

Betelnut Beauty Exhibition

Here's the set of images taken at my friend Tobie's Betelnut Beauty Photograph Exhibition . . . he has some awesome work on the subject.

Misadventures in Taiwan . . . pole dancers and betel nut girls

Betelnut Beauties video . . . another look

Here's a heads up that I have changed the content on the Betelnut Beauties video post from April to include more information about the video as well as contact information for the filmmakers . . . Tobie Openshaw and Big Nose Productions.

More Life of Brian posts on the subject of Betel Nut Beauties in the category section here.

For my large and extremely out of focus collection of drive-by photographs of betelnut beauties, see the galleries here.

All the best,
Brian

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Betelnut Beauties

The folks at Big Nose Productions (what a great name) have made a little piece exploring Taiwan's betelnut beauty phenomenon . . .

The video is interesting but in that short a time, one can't really explore the entire phenomenon of the betelnut beauty. One also doesn't see just how sexy some of the girls dress in an effort to compete with other stands.  Just so you know, Big Nose Productions shot this piece as a trailer for a larger piece.  If you would like to contact them about the project or if you need an experienced production company, then you can visit their webpages or email Tobie Openshaw directly (he's personable and approachable).

Here's another clip taken from a compilation video of other people's stuff on the same subject . . .

This is just a very brief clip which gives one the idea while staying in the pg area. The piece it was taken from shows girls in far more revealing outfits peddling their binglang as well as allowing customers to fondle their breasts or peek inside their panties.

More Life of Brian posts on the subject of Betel Nut Beauties in the category section here.

For my large and extremely out of focus collection of drive-by photographs of betelnut beauties, see the galleries here.

Thanks to The Real Taiwan for the headsup on the saffies piece and thanks to Big Nose Productions for the nice piece.

Betelnut Beauties Revisited . . .. . . driveby shooting, more blur, more beauties

Well, as you know, my family and I took a short Spring Break trip to Taichung the past couple days . . . and you all know what that means . . . more Betelnut Beauties . . . continuing Life of Brian's ongoing homage to the roadside seller of betelnuts, fashion sense, great costumes, beauty, and blurry driveby photography.

Betelnut Beauties are a phenomenon in Taiwan whereby roadside betelnut hawkers have discovered that if you dress the salesgirls in sexy costumes . . . sometimes ultra sexy costumes . . . then sales go up. Go figure.

One of my Taiwan-specific hobbies is to build my collection of driveby photos of various betelnut girls on our assorted trips throughout the island. Some locals have looser clothing guidelines than others. Some are downright unclothed.

Typically, Lorraine drives the car and I sit in the passneger's seat with camera ready. All of the photos in the collection are drivebys from a moving vehicle (no stopping in traffic) so its an adventure in blurriness and fun.

See the complete collection as it grows here in my Fotki pages.

The various posts are also in the new Betelnut Beauties category here.

Betelnut Beauties Additions . . . more driveby blur

For those of you who enjoy the Betelnut Beauties album, I have added a slew of drive-by blurriness from our trip this weekend to Taichung. Some of the shots look more realistic and far less surreal than this one but this one captures the spirit of the phenomena so powerfully to my mind . . . a blur of flesh as the car speeds by.

Betelnut Beauties

New additions to the Betelnut Beauties album.

See here for details and here for the complete album of images which I periodically add to.

Betelnut Beauties

Well, for those who have been asking for it . . . I have finally set up a Betelnut Beauty Gallery at my Fotki pages at http://public.fotki.com/briandavidphillips/brian/betelnut_beauties/.

You will note that most of the photos are pretty haphazard as they were all taken from a moving car as we drove by on different dates in various cities (the file names have the date and location the photos were taken). The night shots just plain suck. I usually end up keeping perhaps just one in eight photos taken.

Eventually, we'll improve our method. You will note that most of the images are from Taoyuan with a few from Taichung. We took a few in Taipei as well but they didn't come out very well.

As we randomly come across these, we'll add photos to the gallery.

See my earlier post on the subject for links to the Betelnut Beauty debate as well as other galleries.

Naked Taiwan . . . Self-Voyeurs . . . exhibitionism by any other name

Evidently, the Taiwan police hot and bothered about `self-voyeurs'. Evidently self-voyeur is just another way of saying exhibitionist if you don't happen to have that word in your vocabulary.

Evidently, there has been a lot of exhbitionistic postings out of Taiwan on the internet of late and the police have been embarrassed by a few shots of naked women posing by traffic signs on the highway . . . with one notable example posted with a patrol car clearly visible in the background.

Although law enforcement officers yesterday expressed concern about the increasing number of "self-voyeurs" on the Internet, women's rights activists looked at the issue from a different point of view. Officers of the National Police Administration's Highway Police Bureau said that they recently received several pictures of nude women that were photographed on the highway. The police yesterday showed pictures to the media of a naked woman, with the face and pubic area blurred, standing next to the highway. A big road sign of the Ching-shui Rest Area next to the highway is visible in the background on one of the pictures. A police patrol car was also captured in the same picture, but the officers inside the patrol car apparently did not see the naked woman when they passed by. The highway police are now trying to trace the woman.

The police are now saying that they suspect the photo in question has been photoshopped:

Officials said yesterday that they strongly suspected these pictures were the result of computer editing. "Officers investigated the spot where the picture was taken. There should be a slight left turn in the road, but it was a slight right turn in the picture. We therefore strongly suspect that these pictures have been edited," said Kuo Kuo-ming (郭國明), section chief of the highway police's First Division Traffic Section.

Of course, whether that one piece has been manipulated or not is beside the point. The trend towards exhibitionism and posting self-voyeuristic photos on the internet will continue. While Josephine Ho, professor of English at National Central University, certainly is on the right track when she says that "Actors and actresses also expose their bodies in front of cameras. So, why can't ordinary people?", these aren't really equivalent issues. Actors are performers . . . while exhibitionists are the performance, they are regular people expressing their humanity in a unique and previously unavailable way . . . more like bloggers than dramatists.

Josephine Ho (何春蕤), a professor of English at National Central University, said the phenomenon can be approached from the perspectives of education and the arts. She described it as a form of self-expression, which is a basic human right protected by the Constitution.

This is only partially correct as well . . . the protections for self-expression in the Taiwan constitution do not extend to indecency or public morals venues . . . I think they should . . . but they don't. I do think the police should prosecute folks who violate public safety (standing naked on the edge of the highway can be a traffic safety risk, just as betel nut stands can be if the girls are too hot and sexy) but the freedom to be naked and freely express that nakedness should not be stymied . . . in my opinion.

"Actors and actresses also expose their bodies in front of cameras. So, why can't ordinary people do the same thing? We shouldn't just dismiss these pictures as pornography," Ho said.

Here, I also agree. It's not pornography . . . it is self-expression . . . of course, one person's self-expression IS another person's pornography . . . but community standards need to be broad enough to allow self-expression . . . as long as there is consent in the taking of the photos, the distribution, and the viewing, then let folks do what they want.

Social critic Pu Ta-chung (卜大中) said that photography can be regarded as a kind of record and evidence. A woman taking nude pictures of herself in public locations is an alternative way of self-expression and a challenge to authority.

That's the key . . . folks who live in conservative and bottled-up cultures or lifestyles need to find some release . . . society's "shadow" has not been properly integrated into the personality and so individuals with a real need to express themselves and their sexuality are left with very little recourse to appropriately and healthily express it and so this sort of thing must evolve.

The Taipei Times yesterday spoke to some college students, who agreed that "self-portrait nude pictures" was a form of self-expression. One of the students admitted to having taken nude pictures of himself. "I did it for fun," said Joseph C, who is now a junior. "But I would not post the pictures on the Internet." His classmate Alanis K said that it is just another way to deliver a message. "I do not think the issue is worth a front-page story. Everybody has the right to deliver a message no matter what that is. No big deal," she said.

I don't for a moment think she thought it was "no big deal" posing for her own self-voyeur photos and posting them to the internet. Of course, it's a big deal . . . it's a challenge to preconceived notions of what is acceptable and a means of self-expression for the folks who are doing it.

Certainly, it's not serious . . . and does not warrant a lot of butt-whacking or police resources . . . but it is significant. It will be interesting to see how it evolves as technology becomes even more readily available . . . the polaroids of the wife folks used to hide under the mattress are now digicam images being saved on hard drives and posted to webpages or chat rooms.

Betel Nut Beauty

There's a nice gallery of various photo pages and articles related to the Betel Nut Beauty phenomenon at Taiwan 8m's Betel Nut Beauty pages.

For those not in the know, betel nuts are sold in Taiwan as a kind of chewing product similar to the way chewing tobacco is handled in the markets in the West. Recently, road side betel nut vendors have started competing fiercely with one another by hiring young women to sell their products while wearing very revealing out fits.

Well . . . the betel nut beauty wars began . . . and the outfits got skimpier and skimpier until the sex became the product rather than the betel nuts. In some places, the girls will flash their privates to passing motorists and in others they will engage in sexual intercourse or perform fellatio or the like.

This photo is one I took from our car window in Taoyuan . . . it's pretty tame . . . but then we don't go to any of the places with the really racy betel nut girls.

In the past year and a half Taipei and other cities have cracked down on the betel nut trade and the use of scantily dressed girls so the stands have begun reverting to the old fashioned seller but there are still a number of sexy spots around. Hopefully, I will be able to document some of these shops with my new 3D digital rig once we finally get it.

Go ahead and visit my Betelnut Beauties Gallery.