Family & Friends

How to respond to my family underestimating me?

I live with my parents and it's pretty common in Asia where in many places grown up children aren't allowed to live alone, especially women. Now the issue is that I'm my patents' youngest child, I've an elder brother. When I was a kid people started believing that I'm very delicate and fragile. This idea was also influenced by my appearance, I've light skin which is prone to sunburn unlike most people around me, stereotypically feminine face (big, round eyes etc) and I'm thin. When I was younger my peers would always make fun of me, it's like they always associated me with the idea of weak, delicate feminine, more like a 'damsel in distress'. It made me so defensive that I grew colder in nature (and everyone thought I'm either shy or vain).

My parents further enhanced these stereotypes. As a kid, I'd see all the women from my family (direct and extended) sit and Crack jokes about me. Everyone thought I'd get married once I complete school because that's why 'girls like me' do. It didn't happen, I was a straight A student, completed my postgraduation last year. However, they still see me as the mindless burden incapable of caring for herself. My mother accompanied me to my phd entrance interview last week and it hit me harder. Among so many parents and students, my mother kept on giving me instructions on the easiest stuff as if I don't have the capacity to understand anything. When I informed my parents that I'm choosing a university that's not very close to my house they got mad and kept saying: "who do you think will accompany you every time you return home or go there?" well, nobody! I'm still the butt of jokes among my relatives, everyone is just so happy about the fact that I'm dumb (I'm the most educated person in my entire family currently), that I don't know anything about the outside world (I speak 3+ languages, I have travelled to places they've never heard of secretly). I don't want to create a scene but how do I handle them?

How to respond to my family underestimating me?
Post Opinion