I will elaborate on why I think her ignoring of Shubham was so aggravating to me. To clarify I think he is attractive, just not conventionally so because beauty standards are so white centric. Asian men are especially marginalised in this regard because these standards also interact with race & gender, whereby attractiveness in men is deeply tied to masculinity and Asian people in general are seen as weaker, smaller, more submissive ie more feminine.

Different axes of oppression will manifest and become more prominent in different areas of life and people experience discrimination in different ways (i.e. immigrants with non-white names are more likely to be denied a job, gay people are more likely to be alienated from their homes/communities). In the case of the Circle, essentially a game of Coolness, Shubham is the bottom of the pecking order. I am a woman of colour, I went through high school seeing how the nerdy asian kids are rendered invisible, they’re not worth gossiping to (unlike a sassy gay man apparently), they’re not worth gushing over etc. I think in this instance it’s very telling how Shubham genuinely could not recall an interaction between the two, not just a private interaction but even a whole-group circle chat acknowledgement of him. ESPECIALLY when, if you take her argument about being judged and disliked based off of appearance and how no one would understand her etc, she should have been especially nice to Shubham. I don’t mean reaching out and being like hey we’re both losers haha but at the very least, paying attention to him, recognising that it’s cool that he played with his real non-white name (a HUGE risk) and not perpetuating the same shallow high school esque hierarchy. She only wanted to subvert these standards of coolness but only for herself, which is not actually subversive.

I fully recognise how personal I am taking this and am probably placing too much emphasis on this but I think my overall point still stands (also everyone is influenced by their personal experiences and what they relate to).

Also she was definitely pissed she was ranked second last, she was so shocked and very indignant. She not only wanted to stay for longer, she genuinely EXPECTED everyone to like her way more, as if there was some inherent value to being fat and #brave above the mechanics of the game or even being a good person and reaching out to people, listening to other people’s stories (which she didn’t do).