The Htamein: Tradition, Inequality, Women, and Resistance in Myanmar
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​Written By Shwe Ye Shoon Myat
Edited By Sooa Lim​​​​​
Introduction ​
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I do not remember when, I do not remember how, but I remember why the htamein (figure 1) became an object that suffocated me. Htamein, also widely known as a sarong or a longyi is a skirt worn by women in my motherland, Myanmar. This type of textile is made from a 200 centimeters long and 80 centimeters wide rectangular shaped piece of cloth. The two ends of the rectangle length are folded and bonded together to then make up a circular cylindrical form which wraps the lower body of a woman. A htamein is always worn tight, encapsulating a woman’s figure, their hip to waist ratio. For whose’s gaze and comfort was the htamien ever made for, I’ve always asked myself as a child. I was never sure if it was ever for me. Each day as I wore this piece of cloth all I could think of was tearing it off my body, I had a hard time breathing with me in it, it hugged below my ribcage, tightening my waist, accentuating my womanhood. Was I beautiful when I was in htamein? Or did I wear the htamein for in the world I live in, I had to look like a woman to be beautiful? This shape that I was born in, a woman was constantly captured by this one cloth that constantly wrapped around my body. Physically I wanted to take it off and mentally I wanted to escape it. As a girl, I envied my brother’s Pasoe, the freedom that it bore him in its form. As a young adult, I envied my brother’s status, how he was told to never walk under a htamein. It is just a saying but this saying put me beneath him. I was becoming a woman, him a man. Just a piece of cloth yet this piece of cloth defined to what extent I could move, where I could be, and whom I may ever come to be.​
I vowed to run and escape one piece of textile as I grew, yet I sit here pondering upon it, writing of it, simmering on the thought of it. Maybe, maybe after all it was the htamein that made me, me. Looking back I wonder if the htamein suffocated me or if I have boxed the htamien under its constrictions to let it become an object of suffocation to myself.
​In this paper I will first survey the history of dressage within Myanmar relating it to the concepts of Burmanization. I will then study the design of the pasoe and htamein, deconstructing how the performance of gender is reflected within its design itself. Leading from this discussion of differences in gender performance, I will explore how htamein constructs a girl’s identity whilst she transforms into a woman and the relationship between a htamein and womanhood. I will then explore the difference of htamein across ethnicities and migrant bodies through a series of interviews conducted in the Myanmar community. Whilst the htamein is surely a boundary forming object of the past, the last part of my paper will seek out to understand whether the Htamein can be reconstructed as an object of power within the 21st century through the Htamein Alan movement initiated in 2021.
I argue that the htamien is a boundary forming object, a reminder of a person’s spatial designation within the Myanmar society. As a cultural object, the htamien reminds the ethnic diaspora of Myanmar of the Burmanization committed by the Bamar group. As a gendered object, the htamein reminds women of their position placed below men. Wearing the htamien is a constant reminder to women and ethnic minorities on how they are considered second class citizens. Still the htamein also functions as an object of power and resistance. The strength of bearing an object that denies your equality each day is a strength in itself.
Figure 1. https://www.spurlock.illinois.edu/collections/search-collection/details.php?a=2010.01.0435
The Golden Land
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The geographical convergence of multiple oceanic and terrestrial routes to immigrate to South East Asia makes up for the diverse geographical makeup within the region. The first settlement within the area began with a pattern of southward migration from Central Asia. Through repeated settlement across different generations, the genetic disposition within the area are listed as Khmer, Tibeto-Burman, Tai, Lao, Malay, Karen, Chin, and Nagas. The main ethnic makeup in Myanmar is made up of the Tibeto Burman, Tai, Karen, Chin, and Nagas groups. (King, Victor T., Southeast Asia and the concept of ethnicity, Asian Journal of Social Science 10.1, pg 1-6, 1982).
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The area in which constitutes modern day Myanmar existed as multi kingdom states through its dynastic periods. The unification of this area has only been documented under three Burman rulerships: the Pagan Empire, Taungoo Dynasty, and Konbaung Dynasty. The word Burman comes from the ethnic group of Bamar. Bamar is an ethnic group settled on the bay of Irrawaddy river that flows through the center of the current Myanmar state. It was not until British settlement that the name Burma was documented for the first time. (Aung-Thwin, Michael. A history of Myanmar since ancient times: Traditions and transformations, Reaktion Books, 2013).
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The Burman ethnic group has since then been the ruling and majority ethnic group. The civil strife amongst the other ethnic groups and against the Burman is a very key part of the political makeup and configuration of Myanmar. Other key ethnic groups in Myanmar are listed as: Kayin, Rakhine, Shan, Mon, Chin, and Karenni. (figure 2, The Burmese version of the constitutions were sourced as a primary source The Burman Wear)​
In 1961 a British missionary named Doris Sarah Morris wrote in her diary, “It is almost impossible to distinguish a Burmese man from a Burmese woman ... both wear long black hair twisted up on top, both have a kind of white jacket and a long coloured skirt. The only difference is that a man wears a coloured handkerchief around his head and a woman wears nothing on her head.” (Edwards, Penny, Dressed in a Little Brief Authority: Clothing the Body Politic in Burma, The Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas, pg 121-138 2007) This diary entry sparks two inquiries, whom did Doris Sarah Morris observe and why her observations in dressage of Burmese (Burmese/Bamar, different from Burma, is the central inland ethnic tribe in Myanmar. Burma on the other hand is the colonized name of Myanmar.) men and women felt so similarly. Doris Sarah Morris’s entry likely observed the Bamar ethnic group, prominent in the central inland Mandalay area of Myanmar where the British ousted the ruling Thibaw King of Konbaung dynasty in 1855.
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After the ousting of the Bamar royal family, traditional dressage was ousted by the British Empire. Bamar regalia was delegated to a curio status and instead a British system of ornamentation of medals, honors, and ceremonial dressage took center stage. In response to the power of colonization, the Bamar men were subjected to one of two choices. The first group, changing their constitutional clothing to trousers, button-up shirts, and jackets. The second more nationalistic group adapted to the longyi, pinni, and gadung (figure 3). These sentiments towards nationalism also led the Young Men’s Buddhist Association in 1917 to call upon Burmese women to safeguard the purity of Burmanism through dressage, shunning Bamar women of mix race unions and reinforcing the dressage of Htamein, the Longyi form made for women. Once independence from the British was achieved, the two types of Longyis, Pasoe and Htamein with the accompaniment of the Pinni top became the official national costume of Myanmar. (Edwards, Penny, Dressed in a Little Brief Authority: Clothing the Body Politic in Burma, The Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas pg 121-138, 2007).
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Essentially one must see that the traditional national costume of Myanmar is based upon the model of Burmanization. (Burmanization is the process of repressing other ethnic identities apart from the Bamar group culturally, politically, and linguistically in Myanmar. It can also be read as the washing away of ethnic minority identities.) A concept brought into Myanmar by Burmans to nationalize Myanmar as one nation post British colonialism. Whilst in this period of instability a uniformed national costume allowed the growth of nationalism, one must also consider that other ethnic groups present in the area had their own traditional dressage according to the climate and lifestyle of their own ethnic tribes.
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Chief Editor Paris Koh