Sah-aaht

"Sah-aaht" is the Khmer word for beautiful, handsome, pretty, attractive, etc. I mean, of course they have other words for more specific cases, but "sah-aaht" is kind of the crazy-catch-all. One dictionary that I read said it best equates to "lovely."

The most important thing for being beautiful is light skin. Not caucasian, not as white as me for example, but maybe the color of this girl I found on a Google Image Search would be considered very beautiful. And really, once you have skin that color, nothing else really matters, you're pretty by default. You don't need to have a good face; light skin trumps everything else. So there are a lot of times in Cambodia where you'll see a girl put up on a poster or billboard as beautiful and we as westerners might think she's not so attractive at all, but to Cambodians, as long as they have white skin, that's about all they need to be beautiful.

Which is kind of cool, because to be beautiful all you need to do is kick up the brightness in Photoshop.

And it also comes from a somewhat legitimate place. Of course a long time ago everyone worked on farms in Cambodia, and if you had superdark skin that meant you were exposed to the sun a lot, and of course that could lead to skin cancer, and my guess is that people noticed over time that the people who spent the most time in the sun and thus had the darkest skin were most likely to die young because of some weird growth on their skin. But now dark skin is less about cancer and survival and more a marker of poverty or wealth. If you're rich, you either (a) don't work in the fields, so you keep your light skin, or (b) you can pay for whiteners and make your skin white.

The really sad downside, though, is that for not-rich people who are just naturally dark, they're ugly and there's nothing they can do about it. I mean, some days maybe they can powder their face, but in general they're ridiculed. There's one girl here who looks like a Disney princess, she's going to be absolutely beautiful when she grows up, but she has fairly dark skin (think Usher) and so here she's considered ugly. Kids make fun of her by calling her goan a'freek, or "child of Africa," and when westerners try to tell her that she's pretty she shakes her hands in the air and screams "NO!" and runs away. Face doesn't matter - she has dark skin, and that's all, not beautiful.

There is actually a Khmea word for a beautiful person who has dark skin, but I forget what it is, and I think it's what you would call a "book word."

Another thing that makes you beautiful is long fingernails. And the longer, the better. I mean, an inch long is really stylin' here. That also comes from "Look at me, I don't have to work on a farm!"

Also, having wavy/curly thick hair is seen as unattractive here. I'm not sure if that's just a fad, or if that's kinda timeless like the light skin, but it's unfortunate for the guys/girls that have beautiful naturally curly hair and feel ashamed about it and spend time straightening it some days and just feel embarrassed about it on the other days.

These rules don't really apply to white people though. White people are basically put into categories based on weight and age, and other than that there's kind of a they-all-look-the-same feel to their perceptions of us. So for example, they think it's pretty that I have a high and narrow nose (relatively speaking, of course), white skin and blonde hair, but I'm still not as attractive as a feminine Khmae guy with really good Korean fashion sense, which is all the rage here. White people are kind of in a parallel category that doesn't quite compete with Khmae people, except for the perception that we all have a million dollars, which makes you as beautiful here as it does in America.

(Strangely enough, dressing effeminately is attractive, but being gay is unacceptable)

Peace out.