Akha Headdress
The Headdress
The headdress is the most characteristic piece of clothing for the Akha women. The style of the headdress depends on multiple factors, including age and in which stage a girl or (young) woman is in her life, an individual’s personal preference for ornaments, social status, and to what sub-group the individual belongs.
Characteristic elements are glass beads, buttons, silver balls, and coins. Those who can afford them use silver coins, such as silver Chinese dollars, French-Indochinese piasters, or Indian rupees which refer to the old colonial days. Burmese, Indochinese, and Thai coins of small value are used too.
What do I see?
This souvenir is a simplified and cheaper version of the traditional Akha headdress. It was made in the late twentieth century. The headdress is significantly smaller, and there is no extravagant amount of hammered silver beads and coins – which are symbols of prestige and wealth.
There are only five coins, of which only the Indian rupee in the middle is relatively valuable. The traditonally used glass beads, handed down from mother to daughter for many generations, are replaced by red, white, blue, and yellow plastic beads. In stead of using silver balls, aluminum-like decoration is used. The stitching on the inside indicates that most of the work was done by machine, and not by hand.
Tourism
The Akha are heavily promoted as a tourist attraction, and the headdress too has become a symbol of ethnic tourism in Thailand. The marginalized hill tribes, however, hardly benefit from tourism because of the unequal distribution of profits. On top of that, villagers who try to sell their handicrafts outside the villages have seen their market change with the arrival of souvenirs that are mass-produced in Bangkok.
Back in the villagers' hometowns, tourists expect to be part of an ‘authentic’ experience characterized by colourful costumes, foods, crafts, and traditional homes and practices. As a result, the hill tribe villagers try to preserve and present an 'authentic' experience to fulfil tourist expectations. They hide televisions and other electronic devices, and perform rituals just for tourists. The involvement of tourists has led to the loss of traditional practices.
