Betel Nut Beauty

If you happen to walk or drive around Taipei or any other cities in Taiwan, particularly in highway or big intersection, I bet you will find at least one shop having clear glass (like a glass box) and colorful lamps in front of the shop. Inside, usually you will see girl(s), often cute and beautiful, with somewhat attractive clothes. Mind you, most of them wearing mini skirt and tank-tops.

Betel nut beauty, so they’re called. Although the habit of chewing betel nut (here in Taiwan it is called bīnláng) is pretty much common in Asia, for example in Indonesia where old people in some rural village do that (we call it ‘pinang’), betel nut beauty is native to Taiwan, there is no other country has it. This phenomenon of betel nut beauty was started in the mid 1990s, in which at that time, the girls were wearing the least outfits to attract customers (yeah, the least). Around 2000s, however, legislation banned those girls to wear such ‘too much open outfit’ and the government strictly implemented 3B’s rule: breasts, buttocks, and bellies have to be covered. Since then the betel nut beauty changed, they’re still cute girls but what they wear is more appropriate to see.

Betel nut is popular here not just because the customers love to see those girls, but more of its psychoactive compounds, which along with nicotine and caffeine, are consumed to help people stay awake. In Taiwan, the customers are mainly drivers or hard workers, who need the betel nut as stimulant for their long work hours. I don’t know the exact price, but I heard from my local friends it costs TWD 70 (IDR 21,000) for 10 ‘joints’. The ‘joint’ consists of betel nut mixed with lime and then wrapped with piper betel climber. The size is adjusted so the customers can directly chew it.

Concerns have been raised in correlation to this betel nut beauty, not just about how they are an example of women exploitation, but also health concern, since chewing betel nut leads to mouth cancer. That’s why nowadays betel nut beauty is less and less popular. In Taipei, betel nut shops are not that popular anymore, they still can be found in several not so big roads or at the corner of a street. Even if there are some, it is a woman (let say older woman, not cute young girl) who is selling the betel nut. There are some shops I can find around my school, but they're not in the main road, mostly along smaller streets, and the shops are often very small you can only notice the lamps.

Anytime you visit Taiwan and see those heavily decorative lamps in a glass shop, probably that’s where you can find betel nut beauty.

-Citra