http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...p?story=450091
Bangkok Stories: Teens, trains and too-tight tops
By Jan McGirk
05 October 2003
Female Thai college students, who are required to wear black skirts and white military-style blouses with metal buttons up the front, manage to look trendy, in their own way. The latest fad in Bangkok is to wear the smallest size possible: when the Chatuchak weekend market stalls started hawking tiny cotton shirts labelled SSSS, which stands for quadruple small, they sold out in under an hour.
Teens who wear these restrictively tight shirts must take care to breathe shallowly. Afraid of bursting a button, most only simper instead of laugh, and sneezing is out of the question. Ultra-trendy girls flaunt neon-bright padded bras beneath their white blouses and slash their skirts to mid-thigh.
While wearing a fashionably too-tight top, it is almost impossible to reach up for the hanging straps on the after-school Skytrain without splitting a seam. Instead, pairs of girls grip each other by the elbows or lean tightly together so they won't totter over when the metro swerves. Other passengers are transfixed by the spectacle: it's rather like watching a Thai version of the paedo-popsters Tatu, albeit without the snogging.
The deputy rector at Bangkok University, Suree Buranathanit, wants to discourage young women from sexing up their uniforms. "The university understands that young girls must be trendy, but that may put them in danger," she maintains, adding that male students get so distracted by "provocative and inappropriate uniforms" in mixed classrooms that it hampers their studies.
But Ms Suree has given up trying to enforce a stricter dress code. Instead, the university is dangling diamonds in front of those willing to dress demurely for class. Every month, officials will select suitably frumpy candidates whose names go into a lucky dip. At the end of the academic year, three winners will claim sparkly diamond pendants on gold chains, each worth 6,500 baht (about £100).
But few students think this is such a gem of an idea. "They should focus on improving the quality of instruction," said Sunisa, a fourth-year business administration student. "Sexy clothes don't impact on student learning."
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