Photos shine light on Taiwan’s ‘betel nut beauties’

Mong Shuan was just 16 years old when he turned to an unconventional source of income: selling betel nuts at a small stall in the north of the country. Taiwan. The stimulant, a small, oblong fruit derived from areca palm trees, is chewed by millions of people across Asia. For the next three years, Mong would work six days a week for the equivalent of about $670 a month. A little bonus was added for dressing provocatively to attract male customers.

His job was to chop the nuts and add a pinch of slaked lemon (or calcium hydroxide, which increases the body’s absorption of the stimulant they contain), before wrapping each one in a leaf. To reach your sales goals, betel nut “must be delicious.” she told CNN in an email. But hoping to attract more business, Mong would wear long dyed red hair, some makeup and a schoolgirl outfit in the style of Japanese anime character Sailor Moon. “The most important thing is how you look,” she added.

Suppliers like Mong, who left his job in February, are known locally as “betel nut beauties”. The phenomenon emerged in the late 1960s, when Shuangdong Betel Nut Stand, a stall in rural central Taiwan, successfully marketed its products with a campaign centered on its “Shuangdong Girls”. At the turn of the 21st century, tens of thousands of neon-lit booths, which dot highways and industrial neighborhoods across the island, were occupied by young women.

Hoping to document the phenomenon, photographer Constanze Han spent a month in 2022 driving along the highway that connects the island’s capital, Taipei, to the southern city of Kaohsiung, encountering betel nut beauties along the way. Her fascination with women dates back to summer trips she took to her grandfather’s courtyard house on the outskirts of Taipei.

“I loved driving there because the betel nut girls were there,” she recalled in a phone interview. “As a kid, I didn’t really understand (who they were). My family was in Amsterdam once and we went through the red light district, so I thought it was something similar.”

Although scenes of scantily clad women in glass booths may resemble brothels, the sale of betel nuts is not widely associated with prostitution in Taiwan. In fact, women rarely leave their stalls except to approach drivers in high heels. However, the very existence of provocative betel nut beauties seemed strange in a “quiet and conservative culture” like Taiwan, said Han, who hoped her project could help dispel some of the stereotypes women faced.

“(People with) ingrained ideas of respectability, without actually knowing or having interacted with these girls, might think, ‘Oh, these are girls from the wrong side of the tracks,’” she said. But in reality, Han added, “everyone seemed pretty balanced and responsible.”

The photographer, who grew up between Hong Kong and New York with stints in Latin America, has always been interested in the jobs women take to survive, regardless of the stigma associated with them. She was inspired by the work of Susan Meiselaswhose 1970s photo series, “Carnival Strippers,” captured women working hard and long hours performing stripteases at carnivals in New England.

“I always end up gravitating toward women,” said Han, who spent time getting to know his models before asking to take photos. “The conversation part, where there are no photographs, is a big part of it. I end up having more honest conversations with women and become more curious about the nuances of their experiences.”

Changing habits

Han photographed 12 women, most in their late teens or early 20s, as well as a slightly older model named Xiao Hong, who dresses more conservatively as she prepares the product wearing bright blue gloves at a walnut stand. betel in New Taipei City. The others appear drenched in the neon light of their booths or are shot looking through windows; a woman’s face is distorted by the reflection of the busy streets outside. The photographer spent hours capturing small, quiet moments that revealed the mundane nature of the work.

Han’s experience as a former fashion editor shines through in the photos, which often look as if they were staged or taken from the pages of a glossy magazine. But it’s important that her images are “as honest as possible,” she said.

Women typically arrived at work in their regular clothes and wore more revealing clothing in the cabins, Han explained. Sometimes the owners encouraged them to dress sexier, although some of Han’s subjects said they would have done so anyway because it helped them sell more products.

One of the women Han photographed, Ju Ju, is photographed wearing red lingerie as she looks out from her strobe-lit booth in the city of Taoyuan. She began selling areca nuts to help make ends meet, the photographer said, adding that job opportunities were limited for the young mother, who has no higher education. But since then Ju Ju has come to value job stability. She has now been promoted to the position of manager of two stalls and hopes to one day buy her own stall, Han added.

However, concerns that women are victims of exploitation persist in Taiwan and have led to some regulation over the past two decades. In 2002, for example, the local government in Taoyuan County implemented a strict dress code that requires salespeople to cover their breasts, butts and stomachs.

Although it is traditionally served by Taiwan’s indigenous communities at important gatherings, the use of this addictive stimulant is also declining sharply. The island’s Ministry of Health and Wellbeing — which notes that users are 28 times more likely develop oral cancer than non-users – says fewer than one in 16 Taiwanese men chewed betel nuts in 2018, a drop of more than 43% from 2012.

As such, Han’s photos document an aspect of Taiwanese life that may eventually cease to exist. She hopes viewers “can see this as an interesting phenomenon without a lot of judgment.”

“I hope (the photo series) opens people up to a different idea of ​​– or curiosity about – Taiwan as a whole.”

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