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A Kaleidoscope of Malaysian Indian Women’s Lived ExperiencesSurviving Body Shaming: An Auto-ethnography of a Malaysian Indian Woman

A Kaleidoscope of Malaysian Indian Women’s Lived Experiences: Surviving Body Shaming: An... [Beauty is intangible, and standards of beauty differ from culture to culture and have changed over the years. Past studies in psychology have shown that at the individual level, the quality of one's body image is strongly related to the level of one's self-esteem and psychosocial adjustment. Shame inopportunely is a powerful self-conscious emotion which emerges from the experience of being seen by others as flawed, inferior, inadequate or powerless. Regardless of what we have been told, that only what lies within matters, most women grow up seeking perfection in their physical appearance as they are socialised to believe it is important to be physically perfect. Using the auto-ethnography method, this paper will explore my personal experience as a large-sized and dark-skinned individual, from my childhood days until I became an adult. Using my personal experience as a member of a minority community in Malaysia’s multicultural society, I will explore how issues related to body shaming, objectification and colourism affected me at different stages of my life. It shows how living in a culture that places emphasis on the physical attractiveness of women and insistently objectifies them, inadvertently leads to the feeling of body shame and low self-esteem and eventually creates despair and misery in adolescent girls and women’s lives. This paper also explores the journey of empowerment as I began to accept my body and it chronicles the choices I made to be who I am today.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Kaleidoscope of Malaysian Indian Women’s Lived ExperiencesSurviving Body Shaming: An Auto-ethnography of a Malaysian Indian Woman

Editors: Karupiah, Premalatha; Fernandez, Jacqueline Liza
Sangaralingam, Jayaeswari
Springer Journals — Oct 23, 2022
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13 pages

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Publisher
Springer Nature Singapore
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022
ISBN
978-981-19-5875-5
Pages
163 –176
DOI
10.1007/978-981-19-5876-2_9
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Beauty is intangible, and standards of beauty differ from culture to culture and have changed over the years. Past studies in psychology have shown that at the individual level, the quality of one's body image is strongly related to the level of one's self-esteem and psychosocial adjustment. Shame inopportunely is a powerful self-conscious emotion which emerges from the experience of being seen by others as flawed, inferior, inadequate or powerless. Regardless of what we have been told, that only what lies within matters, most women grow up seeking perfection in their physical appearance as they are socialised to believe it is important to be physically perfect. Using the auto-ethnography method, this paper will explore my personal experience as a large-sized and dark-skinned individual, from my childhood days until I became an adult. Using my personal experience as a member of a minority community in Malaysia’s multicultural society, I will explore how issues related to body shaming, objectification and colourism affected me at different stages of my life. It shows how living in a culture that places emphasis on the physical attractiveness of women and insistently objectifies them, inadvertently leads to the feeling of body shame and low self-esteem and eventually creates despair and misery in adolescent girls and women’s lives. This paper also explores the journey of empowerment as I began to accept my body and it chronicles the choices I made to be who I am today.]

Published: Oct 23, 2022

Keywords: Beauty; Culture; Colourism; Minority; Discrimination

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