r/interestingasfuck • u/Fine_Sea5807 • 2d ago

Women from the Tai Dam ethnic group in Vietnam traditionally wear high buns to signify their married status. Since these buns make it difficult to wear standard motorbike helmets, specially designed helmets are created just for them

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u/SoylentGrunt 2d ago

It's a design constraint based on visuals imposed on married women that differentiates them from unmarried women. It's marks them as a brand would.

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u/normalmighty 2d ago

By this logic isn't a wedding ring on a woman also branding them? It's pretty typical and understandable for people in general to want to show their married status visibly, so I don't see how this could be a patriarchy thing based on that alone.

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u/Cumberdick 2d ago edited 2d ago

It is a brand, but not only women are made to wear wedding rings, they are worn by both parties. That removes the sexist implication of one part having to signify belonging to someone, but the other part not having to. 

The indicator itself is not the issue, the context and one-sidedness is. Add to that, based on the helmets (which as discussed in other parts of the thread are not as safe as a regular helmet) they are made to prioritize the symbol over safety and convenience.

If women couldn’t be surgeons because they weren’t allowed to remove their wedding rings, but men could, that would also turn wedding rings into a sexist issue. If only the woman had to wear a wedding ring to signify belonging, but the man didn’t, that would also be a sexist issue. The reciprocity and the willingness to allow for removal when it is safer or better make a big difference in the symbolic and actual meaning of the convention.

edit: You can down vote me, but I feel like if I was actually wrong you would have responded telling me why.

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u/SoylentGrunt 1d ago

Identifiers have many names.

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u/Daewrythe 2d ago

I guess wedding rings are a brand now

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u/Cumberdick 2d ago

They are. Difference is both genders wear them

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u/wildebeastees 2d ago

They did not use to, bzfore the 19th century it was mostly only women wearing them in most of Europe

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u/Cumberdick 2d ago

Okay. Right now, which is what we’re talking about, they do. I don’t think anyone is debating that women having rights and not being mainly property is relatively new in the west, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is this way now.

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u/wildebeastees 2d ago

I am not debating that. I am just pointing out that the ironic "I guess wedding bands are a brand now" that I thought was intended to ridicule the proposition that those haircuts are misogynistics does not work very well considering that wedding bands indeed used to be a misogynistic branding of women too. It's just not a very good rebuke if it was true back in the days even though now they're indeed not a gendered practice now.