Model’s Nude Pics Reveal Vietnam’s Cultural Gap

Jakarta Globe, Marianne Brown, April 17, 2011

A model who published nude photos of herself on the Internet has sparked a media frenzy in Vietnam, with critics claiming the images threaten traditional values in the communist country.

Ngoc Quyen posted the photos online with a message
of environmental awareness. (DPA Photo)

Actress and model Ngoc Quyen, 23, published a series of photos of herself posing naked by a river in a forest in rural Vietnam. The images carried the caption “take care of nature in the same way you care for your body.”

The story spread like wildfire in the media, Facebook and Internet chat forums, with many commentators criticizing the use of nudity to raise awareness for a cause.

Quyen said she published the photos as a personal initiative, unconnected to any organized environmental campaign.

One post on popular Web site Dan Viet by a contributor calling themself Huyen Trang, said: “Nude photos are not acceptable in Vietnamese culture. She is not protecting but polluting the environment.”

“If Ngoc Quyen has parents, what do they think? I would be so ashamed of her,” one commenter wrote on Nikovn.com Web site.

The photos received “a huge amount of media coverage,” the entertainment editor of one popular newspaper who requested anonymity said.

She said the controversy centered on whether the nude images were offensive, artistic or whether their use for a cause was legitimate.

“I personally don’t see any art, just a sexy body,” she said.

In a largely patriarchal culture that prizes and expects modesty in women, depiction of the naked body is a very sensitive issue. A woman’s body in particular should be a mystery and never fully exposed in public.

Another controversial photographer, Thai Phien, 48, said that women’s bodies have been used for hundreds of years in Vietnamese art, but always in a subtle way, “half covering and half showing.”

His own more revealing nudes, usually incorporated into landscapes, were initially considered pornography, but his work has gained wider acceptance in recent years.

“The public is changing its attitude to nude photography,” he said. “However, the management of art and culture in Vietnam is still very conservative. They try to avoid the topic [of nudes].”

He said he thought Quyen’s photos, however, were “far below the standard of nude art.”

The controversy has touched a raw nerve in Vietnam, hinting at the widening gap between the old and new generations, and stoking fears that rapid development is leading to the breakdown of traditional family values.

Vietnam emerged from decades of war in the 1980s to become one of the fastest growing economies in Southeast Asia, its gross domestic product soaring by 6.8 percent last year alone.

The speed of change has created a widening chasm between the old and young generations. Greater wealth and new technology have given younger people new ways to express themselves, and drawn them away from the traditional Confucian values cherished by their parents.

“With every generation there is a struggle between old and new,” said Khuat Thu Hong, director of Vietnam’s Institute for Social Development Studies.

“The reason why the struggle is very dramatic in Vietnam is because the speed of development is happening at a much faster pace than before,” she said.

But even in these changing times, Quyen’s initiative was “very unusual for the Vietnamese public,” Hong said.

“As an actress, Ngoc Quyen wanted to find her image publicly and make herself more desirable,” she said. “Being aware of the public’s reaction to nudity, she tried to neutralize the act with a message to protect the environment.”

But the strategy may have backfired, Hong said. “However, she made people angry that she wanted to show how beautiful she was but she used the environment as an excuse.”

It is a struggle but not a rebellion – yet.

In an interview on VietnamNet, Quyen was asked whether her mother and boyfriend approved of the nude photos. She admitted she “could not have done it” without her mother’s support.

“I sent the pictures to my boyfriend and he said ‘do what you think is right and makes you feel good,’ ” she said.

It may come as a comfort to traditionalists that although Quyen sought to grab headlines with her naked body, she made sure to get parental approval first.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur