Tattooed-Faced Mu’un Woman
Mindat, Myanmar, 2018
The remote mountain region of Burma’s Chin State was known for its beautiful women, who eventually became known for their tattoos. Originally, the tattoos were applied to make the women less appealing, to protect them from being kidnapped by the Burmese king, who wanted them as concubines. It is also believed that the tattoos were a means to identify the women’s tribe, in case they were kidnapped by other tribes. For more than a thousand years, tattoos were made on the faces of girls between the ages of 11 and 15 with cane thorns. The tattoos mirrored an animist totem planted in their villages. The tradition was finally banned in the 1960s. I met this woman on my evening stroll around the village. She sat on her porch surrounded by her grandchildren. She smiled and welcomed me over, and the two of us sat easily. Soon we were playing with her many grandchildren, as the sun went down behind the misty mountains, dropping the temperatures drastically.
Mindat, Myanmar, 2018
The remote mountain region of Burma’s Chin State was known for its beautiful women, who eventually became known for their tattoos. Originally, the tattoos were applied to make the women less appealing, to protect them from being kidnapped by the Burmese king, who wanted them as concubines. It is also believed that the tattoos were a means to identify the women’s tribe, in case they were kidnapped by other tribes. For more than a thousand years, tattoos were made on the faces of girls between the ages of 11 and 15 with cane thorns. The tattoos mirrored an animist totem planted in their villages. The tradition was finally banned in the 1960s. I met this woman on my evening stroll around the village. She sat on her porch surrounded by her grandchildren. She smiled and welcomed me over, and the two of us sat easily. Soon we were playing with her many grandchildren, as the sun went down behind the misty mountains, dropping the temperatures drastically.
Mindat, Myanmar, 2018
The remote mountain region of Burma’s Chin State was known for its beautiful women, who eventually became known for their tattoos. Originally, the tattoos were applied to make the women less appealing, to protect them from being kidnapped by the Burmese king, who wanted them as concubines. It is also believed that the tattoos were a means to identify the women’s tribe, in case they were kidnapped by other tribes. For more than a thousand years, tattoos were made on the faces of girls between the ages of 11 and 15 with cane thorns. The tattoos mirrored an animist totem planted in their villages. The tradition was finally banned in the 1960s. I met this woman on my evening stroll around the village. She sat on her porch surrounded by her grandchildren. She smiled and welcomed me over, and the two of us sat easily. Soon we were playing with her many grandchildren, as the sun went down behind the misty mountains, dropping the temperatures drastically.