When I think of a maids uniform, an image bubbles to the surface of my mind of a revealing black and white lacey outfit, complete with a feather duster, and a pouty smile. I can almost see the ad campaign now. "Impractical yet ellegant, this pushup black brazier will keep all eyes on your chest, and not the one you were supposed to clean."
Well, for better or worse, the fantasy inducing "French Maid" costume is not the uniform of choice for maids and nannies here in Thailand. Not surprisingly, most wear more practical attire when cleaning, cooking and performing other sweat inspiring and dirt attracting household chores.
Maids will typically wear old tee shirts and faded jeans or three-quarter length pants. Nannies might replace the tee shirt with a yellow king shirt. As you might expect, most don't include applying make-up and hair styling as part of their daily routine.
Its pretty easy then, to tell the maids from their employers around here. First, the majority of employers here are falangs. As the maids are all Thais or Laotians, light skin and non-black hair are a dead give away. The Asian and Thai female employers are also usually easy to distinguish from the maids. Middle and upper class Thai women tend to dress very nicely. You can also usually tell from the way the person carries themselves, and particularly how they interact with the kids. As I explained before, the maids are very deferential to the children.
Recently, however, I was a bit perplexed by someone. My neighbor owns a successful Vietnamese restaurant here in Bangkok. There was a young woman who I saw around the house. This young woman would wash the car, walk the dog, and sweep around the front of the house. Her actions yelled that she was a maid, but her dress told another story. She would wash the car in low heals, a nice blouse and a skirt. Time for sweeping? Our mystery woman would wear a dress. She was doing maid's work, but dressing like she was going to a mall.
While not a mystery for the ages, I was at a bit of a loss. Perhaps she was the daughter of my neighbor. When I asked Tim about it, she was equally perplexed.
I was ready to call in the help of Encyclopedia Brown when I brought in bigger guns. We decided to ask our maid and nanny about this woman. They started laughing, and told us that indeed, the woman was a maid. They thought it was very funny that she would dress so nicely when cleaning.
At first I thought it was ridiculous that someone would be so vain as to wear nice clothes to do dirty work. Then I thought about it a bit. Status is important here in Thailand, and by wearing nice clothing, the maid was able to put doubt in my mind. When she is walking a dog, people that she passes by have no way of knowing that she is a maid.
Perhaps people treat her differently because they think she is a "higher" social class. Are people more polite and deferential to her than they would be if they knew she was a maid? I cannot be certain, but I think they just might.
2 comments:
I don't know how the blouse and skirtl you talked about looked more. But there are rich people in most countries who require the young live-in maid/nanny girl to wear a uniform, even if it may be other clothes. In Europe and North America, it's more common to require the girl too also look neat while working as a nanny/maid girl, even if really she hates it and thinks it's very uncomfort and wants to wear clothes jeans/sweater and t-shirt instead. However, clothes like blouse/shirt and skirt are common in he uniform for these young girls. I remember, not many years ago (late 2004 or something), watching a television program some years ago about a 16 year old (or something like that, at least in her late teens/early 20's) live-in maid/nanny girl in Hamburg, Germany (or something). She had to wear a white long sleeved blouse and a black knee-length skirt, white waist apron and black high-healed footwear and for the most dirty work a white full-length apron was required. Also, a nametag was included. She also had to have short hair (or at leat a pony tail), appears polite curtsey in front of her employer too. The girl really hated it. Recently (mid 2008) I saw a following up interview and she still worked there and was treatened the same way (I don't say she was treatened very bad, waitress girls also have to wear uniforms). She wanted to leave but had not much money (low wage), and hard to find another work because she was low-educated.
She had free food and clothing (however not the clothes she prefered) and lived in a small room with a radio (and TV also if I remember everything). Her employer was not mean to her, but very strict.
There might some different approaches according to place or knowledge. Your skills depends on how you got an opportunity and where you have trained. Personal or professional training might distinguish between each other.
พี่เลี้ยงเด็ก
Post a Comment