Anyone here considered unattractive in Malaysia but suddenly considered attractive overseas?
My skin is on the sawo matang side, and my facial features are mostly south indian (I'm malay + indian Mix). Got told that I am not as attractive as light skin people as a child. My thick eyebrows and bolder features aren't helping, too. Got crushes on a lot of malay guys who in the end all of them rejected me, with one guy saying that it's because I am not fair enough and he preferred amoi looking/amoi. Chinese and indian guys some more, got crushes on them, but they usually only stick to chinese women and indian women. Plus i wore tudung at school, takkan la nak approach camtu je.
So I never got into relationship in Malaysia. Not only that, but thanks to strict conservative family, I never really made friends and grew up with social anxiety.
I started communicating with Westerners on the internet, and they told me that some things that asians generally find unattractive are attractive for them, and that asian beauty standards are too strict. That was like at least 7-10 years ago.
I got a scholarship to study overseas (europe) and it was an eye-opening. The features that people find unattractive in my home country are considered attractive here, and also rare. Being called exotic (it's not healthy I know) but bruh. I got more chances here. I just needed to be careful to not fall in superficial romantic discourses.
Fast forward in 3 years time I have a boyfriend matsalleh, who I met during studies. He really loves how I look, but unfortunately I still couldn't fully shake off the social conditioning since childhood. Breaking my mental shackles as days go by, but I just couldn't escape from it. I mean, in europe it's not really 100% inclusive, if you know what I mean, but they are more accepting of diverse looks.