We noticed a smudge here, a dab there. At first, when we saw yellow paint on women's faces in Myanmar we didn't think anything of it. Dirt? Yellow Caladyrl instead of pink?
But then, we saw women and girls with leaves drawn onto their faces. The girls in this photo clinched it that this yellow stuff is on purpose. Nobody has a leaf drawn on her face by mistake.
The yellow pigment is call thanaka. It comes from grinding the wood of the thanaka tree, a species local to Myanmar. When the wood is scraped from the trunk into a fine powder, it is mixed with water into a paste. Women (mostly women; very few men use it) spread the paste onto their skin. Some paint their thanaka into leaf shapes for decoration. Thanaka is believed to protect against sunburn and to cool the skin. Some people also spread it over their arms.
We visited a thanaka market where logs are sold. Trees must be about 35 years old or more to be able to produce the powder for the paste.
Even babies get thanaka'ed (if you can say that). Even if you can't say it, that baby's pretty cute, right?
