A Kayan woman from Myanmar

A bronze sculpture by American artist Malvina Hoffman (1885-1966), originally for the 1933 Races of Mankind exhibition. Anthropologists and historians are unsure about the origins of the Kayan practice of using rings to extend the neck, but it was probably done to fit that culture's norms of high status. Today in the U.S. many people change their bodies in similarly radical ways, from liposuction to braces on children's teeth.