Myanmar has changed in so many great ways over the last couple of years, but the pressure to maintain the culture, values, and traditions we grew up with remains a part of everyday life. People coming of age in this rapidly modernizing country are forced to balance their long-carried traditions while also trying to stay trendy and have fun. When one’s balance between traditional and modern, or between local and foreign, visibly tips too far in one direction, it can stir controversy.
Let’s start with the seemingly innocuous activity of speaking English. In reality, it can be both a blessing and a curse. Speaking English is perceived as a privilege that only well-off people enjoy, so people are often impressed when they encounter someone who can speak English well.
However, speaking English in public is often construed as boastful, especially when it’s not necessary in a given context.
“I feel like a pretentious, spoiled child when speaking English,” said Leo, a photographer in Yangon who went to an English-speaking school as a child. “Yes, I went to an English school, but people don’t get that.”
Instead, Leo said, people assume he is trying too hard or showing off.
The flipside of this situation arises when a Myanmar millennial travels abroad. We are taught that our culture and traditions are important, regardless of where we are, and displays of national pride are especially important while in a foreign country. If we’re not told to bring our traditional Burmese attire, our elders would have us waving the Myanmar flag instead. We’re often told to not get influenced by Western ideas and culture because it could potentially destroy us. However, at the same time, we have our own desires to learn, adapt, and explore unfamiliar places as thoroughly as we can, and sometimes, this means immersing ourselves in a culture that is not Burmese.
Young women endure gender-specific challenges in Myanmar’s tightly patriarchal society. For instance, even though showing skin is acceptable in other cultures, it is still seen as inappropriate or disrespectful in Myanmar.
“I wish my parents would meet me halfway. I always have to make sure that whatever I wear gets approved by my dad,” said May, a 22-year-old college student. We are engaged in a constant battle between what is cool and what is appropriate, struggling to appear cool to ourselves and acceptable to our parents. More often than not, one precludes the other.
Mady, an American-Burmese college student currently on a holiday in Yangon, says having a tattoo makes her an even bigger target for assumptions she would never face in the United States.
“As a Burmese woman with a tattoo, I feel very self-conscious going around the city because there’s still the stereotype that women with tattoos are somehow unethical,” she said.
Stereotypes about women with tattoos are hotly contested by old-school Burmese traditionalists and the youngsters of today. In the olden days, we are told, women with tattoos held unscrupulous jobs and were not worthy of respect. Today, this traditional attitude is combined with more modern perceptions of tattooed women as being unladylike — perceptions that have largely faded elsewhere in the world.
It is also very difficult to feel empowered as a Myanmar woman, since Buddhist ideologies tell us that men are holier and more capable of doing great things. No matter what we do, we always seem to be in the wrong, and many Myanmar women grow up only being viewed as capable of motherhood and household work.
May recounted an interaction with elderly woman who approached her while she was shopping at a sports store a few years ago. “I got told off by an old woman while I was buying soccer shoes for school. She basically said: ‘You’re a girl, you shouldn’t be playing football.’”
Growing up in Myanmar, we are also conditioned to anticipate violent crime around every corner, so the ways in which we dress, consume, and transport ourselves are constantly questioned. Several well-publicized cases of rape and robbery committed by taxi drivers force us to be on high alert when traveling from point to point in Yangon.
May says her parents have a way of keeping her safe while she’s using public transportation that limits her ability to enjoy being out of the house.
“Whenever I take a taxi, I am required to be on the phone with my parents and to take a sneaky picture of the driver’s information card at the front of the taxi,” she told Coconuts. “Of course, I know it’s for safety reasons, but it does put me on edge whenever I’m casually out and about in the city, as if every men out there is out to attack me.”
On top of the ridiculous hurdles we are forced to jump to assure the patriarchy that we are safe, Myanmar millennials, especially women, must also suffer the widespread assumption that our fun is inherently sinful.
“I hate going out of the house in high school, having to tell my parents exactly where I will be going and who will be there,” said one Burmese student at the University of Miami who did not want to be named.
Despite resenting the rules imposed upon her, she has done her best to sympathize with her parents, who came of age in a vastly different age.
“I thought it was annoying at first, but then I realized they are just protective and caring. It’s all for the best after all, I guess,” she said.
Some parents pine for a time when the raves, clubs, and bars we frequent in Yangon did not exist, so that their children would have fewer opportunities to behave sinfully. Our burden is to level with our elders and teach them that the fun and entertainment we seek in these places are not harmful unless we let them be.
The struggle of Myanmar millennials stems from the different ways in which we and our elders seek to incorporate our traditions and culture into newer ways of working and socializing in an ever-evolving world.
We are still young, and we need to expose ourselves to the real world, have fun, grow, and change, and the only way for that to happen is to find a middle ground or build a bridge between two generations. Maybe it’s even time we teach the older generations the fantastic things they’re missing out on, if they would only let us.
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