Back in grad school, about 35 years ago, I wrote a paper about the photos my local newspapers ran each year depicting Hmong people on the occasion of the their New Year's celebration. It's an occasion when many people dress in the traditional clothing they wore in Laos, before coming to the U.S. as refugees, starting in the 1970s.
The gist of my analysis, which was based on photos by a number of photographers over 10 or 15 years in two papers, was that Hmong women were the ones shown in the traditional clothing, while men were almost always shown in Western clothes. If I remember correctly, there was one photo of a man in the entire sample.
Of course, I thought there was a gendered reason for that in the paper: that the women represented the "primitive" Hmong culture, while the men represented their advance toward modernity. Or something like that... there was more to it in the paper.
This came to mind a few days ago when there were once again photos of our local Hmong New Year's celebration. Here are the photos from the Star Tribune:
That last photo shows Kaoly Her, our newly elected mayor here in Saint Paul, so they have an excuse for showing her, and she wore what she wore.
But do you see what's on the left and right edges of that photo of Her? Yes — those are two men wearing traditional vests. But are there any men intentionally included in any of the three photos who are wearing traditional clothes?
Still, in 2025, there are not.
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Star Tribune photos by Leila Navidi.
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