Agency and Empowerment in the South Asian Community
Whoa. What a huge topic. To be honest with you, this is such a broad discussion to have with so many view points but it is something that has been weighing on my chest for a few weeks now and I thought a blog post would be a great way to get my thoughts and feelings out. When I talk about agency in this post I am talking about the right to advocate for yourself, the right to your own voice. Often in the South Asian community, women and young people especially, feel that their right to speak up is stifled. For young people, it is the idea that you never talk back to your elders. To a large degree I believe that maintaining a level of respect is important and a very beautiful thing in our culture. However, elders in our community are often reflections of what they have been taught growing up. They have a way of talking or a perspective on the world that isn’t always aligned to the way that we operate in a society today. In America especially, we are taught that respect is a two-way street and that it is earned not bestowed upon you per your status. Power dynamics can often be complicated but the way we handle these incidents often plays deeply on our mental health.
Recently, I was in conversation with a family friend and my mom had requested a sweet dish from them for our family. Quite frankly, the friend said “We would be happy to!” and nodded in my direction and said, “Not for you though, you need to go on a diet. Make sure you get your blood sugar and pressure checked out too.” (For clarification, I really don’t think this person had a vested interest in my health and, frankly, its none of his business.) My mom just smiled politely and kept the conversation going. There are two aspects I would like to highlight in this interaction. One, I lacked the basic agency to say to that person, “I don’t appreciate that comment, that was hurtful.” Two, I deferred the power to my mother to say something but she was stifled out of her “responsibility” to be respectful and not offend the other person. Every time I told that story to someone, they laughed. Often the response was “What are you gonna do? These uncles and aunties don’t know what they do is hurtful.” Only my one cousin who has been teased her whole life for her weight said, “No Preeyaben, that’s not right. No one should say something like that to you.”
I have been teased most of my adult life for my weight. People like to make jokes saying that I’m plump and jolly, or that I come from a well-fed house. Recently, I looked back on old pictures of myself from college and realized how much I tormented myself over my weight and now looking back I wish I could look like that again. So many people in my life are probably reading this thinking “Toughen up Buttercup! People don’t need to care about your feelings. Who cares what some rando on the street says, it doesn’t matter.” But here is why it does matter. All my life I tried to be great at everything I did. A great daughter, a great singer, a great student….all of it. That need for perfection drove me forward my whole life. Until it started driving me backward. I felt like the world couldn’t see me. There was only one thing people could see in me. My weight. I felt like the world could only see my physical self, no one cared if I was a good person, they just cared that I didn’t come in very nice packaging according to their terms. What I lacked was the agency to stick up for myself and what ends up happening, is you let others beat you down and you continue to take it and then internalize it for a later time. That internalization then leads to low self-esteem, low confidence, and an overall inability to see your own value in the world.
I remember as a little girl, dressing up for my school concert, thinking to myself, “I think I’m pretty why doesn’t anyone else see it?” So many people say that you should have self-love and that way no matter what anyone says you’ll always love what you see in the mirror. I feel that when the world tells you that what you see is a lie, you start wondering if you’ve gone crazy. If so many people say I don’t look nice, then maybe I am crazy to think I look nice! This is especially true if no one gave you permission to say “That was not appropriate to say. I don’t appreciate comments like that.” The amount of mental pressure that would have evaporate if I could just stick up for myself is massive. The fact that I deferred to my mother and even she didn’t defend me also speaks volumes of my community.
This is all to say that as people in a community run by skewed imagery of perfection, the easy thing to do is internalize your feelings and keep moving. However there is a huge amount of power to be gained in simply having the agency to say “I don’t like that, you’re being hurtful.” If the person adjusts their behavior accordingly then you have a more harmonious relationship going forward. If not, then you know that the other person has no interest in your feelings or thoughts and you can adjust your interactions/expectations with them accordingly. Saying something to someone doesn’t have to mean putting someone on blast and insulting or humiliating them. It means acknowledgment that their actions are hurtful and mean spirited and even though they might not intend it that way, there is a certain standard to how you feel someone should treat you. For a lot of parents there is a lot of conversation about teaching children about agency in a physical way. Teaching them that it is ok to refuse a hug or physical contact in a way that makes them uncomfortable. In the same way we should be teaching agency for our own mental health by being able to vocalize when things are hurtful or unkind. Just being allowed to say something makes a huge difference. For me, I feel more peaceful knowing that, at the very least, I tried to stand up for myself even when no one else would. Looking back, I am less angry at the person and more angry with myself for not saying something. I hope this post encourages you to speak up for yourself more often. I wish I had done that so many times in my life and I am working on being more vocal going forward in my life.
