The Giraffe women of Padaung.

The Kayan Lahwi  people also known as the padaung are a minority  ethnic  group with populations in Burma and Thailand. The padaung women are peculiar for their interesting culture of wearing brass rings around their elongated neck, even on their arms and legs. They are a serious attraction to western tourists who pay a good sum of money to see the "giraffe women" in flesh.

The Padaung girl begins to wear her neck ring between two to five years, following a ritual by a priest. Initially it's quite uncomfortable but begins to feel normal over the years. As she grows, the length of the coil is lengthened so that a full grown woman could have up to twenty or thirty something rings of brass wound round her neck giving her a seemingly elongated neck which is considered very attractive by their men.
No one knows for sure the origin of this weird culture but many of these women still hold fast to it in Thailand today.

Neck-stretching is form of beautification to the padaung women, they rarely remove the neck rings in their life time except on rare occasions like during medical exams. It's also said that a woman on committing adultery can be stripped of her neck coils as a punishment. When the ring is removed after many years, the neck muscle has atrophied and can no longer support the head normally. Besides that, the neck is usually scarred and discoloured leaving the woman with little or no option than to put back the brass coils.
(Image © Keystone/Getty Images) 

Does the brass neck coils really elongate the neck?
X-rays have shown that the ring compresses the rib cage and pushes the collar bone/clavicles and upper ribs  downwards giving the illusion of an elongated neck. The weight of the rings twists the collar bone and eventually the upper ribs at an angle 45 degrees lower than what is natural.

I'm enthralled by God's creation of varieties of beautiful amazing people with their unique cultures, many of whom we are not even aware of their existence.

Really, I respect this culture but I don't fathom the idea of disfiguring one's body out of a misplaced sense of beauty. Imagine the pain and inconvience those little girls have to go through with such heavy object on their neck.
(Image © Karl Lehmann )