Taichung police has ordered the city’s scantily clad betel-nut saleswomen to dress more conservatively to help reduce car accidents, it was reported on Monday.
Under the new dress code, women peddling spicy chewing betel nuts at roadside stands are barred from revealing their bodies in sexy transparent clothes or soliciting business on the streets, the local TVBS station reported.
”Don’t put on any dissipated poses such as dancing outside the sales booths,” a policeman said while promoting the new dress code.
Instead, he suggested several young saleswomen should don white navy tops, tight short pants and the same type of hats worn by singer Feng Fei-Fei, a local diva in the 1980s.
Taichung police consider the so-called ”betel nut beauties” a likely cause of traffic accidents in the central city as drivers are often diverted by saleswomen in flashy, revealing clothes, the report said.
A young sales girl told reporters the tighter dress code sounds reasonable.
”But it’s really not my business, it’s my boss’s problem,” she shrugged.
Betel-nut beauties thrive in central and southern Taiwan.
A Department of Health study two years ago reported one-10th of Taiwan’s population regularly chew the indigenous nut, the seed of a palm tree, as a stimulant. — Sapa-AFP