Teressa Plammoottil on Beauty Standards, Culture, and Creating Your Own Village

In this episode of Our True Colors, Dr. Shawna Gann and Season 6 cohost Marcel DeJonghe sit down with Teressa Plammoottil, a first generation Indian American whose story explores identity, racial ambiguity, religion, family dynamics, and the complicated search for community. Raised in a traditional South Indian Catholic household and shaped by both life in India and the United States, Teressa reflects on the experience of living between cultures while constantly navigating how others perceive her.

Together, they unpack everything from language and representation to beauty standards, colorism, mixed identity assumptions, and the emotional impact of exclusion within one’s own community. Teressa also shares how leaving home as a teenager transformed her understanding of family, belonging, and resilience, ultimately shaping the compassionate and culturally aware person she is today.

As a discrimination complaint investigator for the State of California and commissioner on the City of Elk Grove’s Diversity and Inclusion Commission, Teressa brings both lived experience and professional insight to this deeply honest conversation about identity, empathy, and connection.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

•  Why racial ambiguity often creates both curiosity and exclusion 
•  The impact of colorism and Eurocentric beauty standards in South Asian communities 
•  How language can create a sense of home and belonging 
•  What it means to build chosen family after feeling disconnected from your own community 
•  The difference between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation 

Dr. Shawna Gann also shares reflections from her ongoing research into mixed identity experiences and belonging. Her upcoming book Mixed Signals: The Multiracial Case for Civility and Belonging at Work releases in early Fall. Visit the website to sign up for updates, book news, and upcoming conversations.

Connect with Teressa Plammoottil on Instagram @terenovah

Listen, subscribe, and share your thoughts with us. We’d love to hear how this conversation resonated with your own experiences of identity and belonging.

If this is your first time with OTC, check out  EPISODE 1: START HERE for more background on the show. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram!

Our True Colors is powered by The Culture Crucible. Go to THE HUB to learn more!
Consider joining the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Intro  0:06  
Welcome to our True Colors, hosted by Shaun again. Join her as she explores the challenges of being a racial riddle, an ethnic enigma, and a cultural conundrum. Let's dive in.

Shawna  0:23  
Hey, Marcel.

Marcel De Jonghe  0:25  
Hello, and good evening slash afternoon.

Shawna  0:29  
What's up? I heard you have a new friend that's kind of joining us today, and I've heard this new friend is controversial.

Marcel De Jonghe  0:37  
Yeah, so while putting my daughter to bed, she gave me this, and like, this is meow meow.

Shawna  0:43  
You have to describe for people who can't see

Marcel De Jonghe  0:45  
me. Oh, yeah, that's a very good point. We are on a podcast, so Meow Meow

Speaker 1  0:48  
is

Marcel De Jonghe  0:49  
two inches tall. She's a violently pink cat with glittery eyes, disturbingly wide pupils. I think Meow meow has seen things in her short life, but I interpret for meow meow, and quite often meow now says controversial things,

Shawna  1:13  
yeah,

Marcel De Jonghe  1:13  
like right now she is telling me that, you know, if people don't conform, we should probably use corporal punishment. I'm like, no, Meow Meow, that's terrible.

Shawna  1:22  
Yeah, that is controversial. You know, Meow Mel does have some opinions. We were kind of talking about this before the show, y'all. So, I don't know. Thank you to Genevieve for insisting Meow Meow join us today.

Marcel De Jonghe  1:34  
I'm worried about whether Genevieve's been teaching Meow Meow this or Meow Meows trying to teach Genevieve. I don't know which way.

Shawna  1:39  
Yeah, that's a good point. You might want to do some investigation there. We'll switch gears slightly. Just wondering, besides your mom or any sort of maternal figure in your life, has there ever been a woman that's really helped shape the person that you have become?

Marcel De Jonghe  2:01  
Yeah, there's an old manager, and I still speak to her to this day, and she would probably turn around and say, well, I would say it is absolutely cod, what, I think that's a swear in British, by the way,

Shawna  2:15  
I was like, what, what is that, I don't know,

Marcel De Jonghe  2:18  
basically absolute bottle, what I'm talking about.

Shawna  2:21  
Okay, okay. Her

Marcel De Jonghe  2:22  
name is Louise France. Absolutely inspirational woman. She probably.. some of the things I say now and tell myself and use as a leader come from her. Like, she always has told me you can't tell someone, Marcel, they've got to feel it. And for ages I was like, what does that mean, and then one day I was like, oh my god, she's right. So, you can't tell someone what they're doing in a relationship, let's say, is terrible. The person they're with is an a hole, you know, they've got to feel it for themselves. And then that's the same for just learning about mistakes in life. Sometimes you have to allow, not with children, but you've got to let someone realize that that is hot, and to touch it will hurt, you know. So, not that you want them to do it, but that's probably the only way they're gonna learn.

Shawna  3:08  
Yeah,

Marcel De Jonghe  3:09  
and yeah, she's

Shawna  3:10  
well, sometimes those hard lessons are the things that give us wisdom, too, right? So, that for the next generation, whether that means like age group or generation of workers, or whatever, that is, you can explain it to them from a place of experience, you know, that makes sense.

Speaker 1  3:27  
Yeah,

Shawna  3:28  
I have one too, but she's an interesting one. When I think about her, because I never was really sure if I liked her or not, and I never was sure if she liked me or not, but I learned a lot from her. She was my vice principal when I was teaching in Italy, and she was very stoic, very serious. That was one of my first teaching jobs, so I was very green then, and so naturally nervous all the time. Anyhow, but then she would like come out of the blue and be super like nurturing and caring, but I never knew to trust it or not, because I was like, yeah, because tomorrow you're gonna like make me cry, I don't know, like, but one thing I thought was so interesting about her, with regard to the space that we're in now, and like this show, and who we talk about, she was a white woman, and she was married to a Moroccan man, she just felt so mean, is not the word, because she wasn't mean, she was just very serious, very severe, let's put it that way, she definitely still had heart and was caring, but it took a lot to sort of get through those layers, but she had love for family like I've never seen, and that came through even as her role in our school as a vice principal as an administrator. I also was so like blown away because in those times there was not very much representation of interracial families. It just felt so good to see another couple a. That was completely different than us too, but being represented in this very prominent space. So I was just curious, I wanted to ask you about that. You know, we're about to welcome our guest, who, when I got to speak with her before this episode, you know, we talked a little bit about her upbringing, and it's just so interesting the different ways we can experience these identities that are parts of our lives in various ways. Her name is Teresa Plamotil, and she's a first generation Indian American based in Sacramento, California. Her parents immigrated from Kerala, India in the 1980s and she was raised in a traditional Catholic Indian household. She identifies as a third culture individual shaped by both her family's heritage and the American environment she grew up in, and she holds a degree in ethnic studies that informs how she understands race, power, and belonging. Her story gets interesting because after she left home at 16 due to difficult family dynamics, Theresa developed a deep awareness of independence, identity formation, and community, but today she serves as a discrimination complaint investigator for the state of California, and as a commissioner on the city of Elk Groves Diversity and Inclusion Commission. She brings both lived experience and professional insight into conversations about racial ambiguity, bias, and belonging. So she's out here serving the people, bringing her lived experience and what she has studied all to the table. So, Theresa, I'm so glad to welcome you. Thank you so much for joining us on our True Colors today. Thank you for having me. No, I was like, is that really all me? Like, I thank you for letting me join you guys on this talk. I'm really excited. Absolutely, it's great to have you. Since you said, 'Is that me? I think it would be fun to ask you this. Why don't you tell us something about yourself that a person wouldn't normally find in your bio? Anything surprising or interesting that would be different than maybe your professional self that you share?

Teressa Plammoottil  6:57  
That's a great question. I definitely. I think I usually identify as Indian American. I try not to differentiate between North and South, because I want to represent all of India, and I read, speak, and write Malayalam fluently, so that's the language of the state of Kerala from India. So maybe that's something I wouldn't have in my bio, usually professionally or not, but it's not a language that I need to use often, because of the smaller population of it throughout America. So, really, I only get to use it when you know I'm with my dad or talking to family in India. So, yeah, yeah,

Shawna  7:38  
cool. How does it feel holding that as part of the container of who you are, even though it's not a language that you use often here in the US?

Teressa Plammoottil  7:48  
I wish I got to use it more. I think almost every day there is a void within me that I subconsciously tend to fill when I'm trying to relate with others. People find me to be a very outgoing person, or like personable person, and I try to bond with people as much as I can, because of the lack of immersion with my own culture. I think, so the language aspect of it, when I see people, you know, like Spanish-speaking background, or any other language, when they're speaking it with each other, there is that. Oh, I wish I could speak like that to a co-worker or just a friend in passing, because there's more people from that language-speaking background that they're talking to. So it's great to be able to speak the language, but I don't have much use with it yet. I'm hopeful on being able to use it in some aspect soon.

Shawna  8:45  
There is a comfort when you find people that can commute, like communication is so important, and I feel like when somebody can speak your language, whether that's literal or figurative, it does make you feel more at home, more like safe in a way, more comforted. So, as you tell your story, Theresa, that's what came to mind for me, is like, yeah, there are other languages that aren't very used in the US, but gosh, how nice it must feel when you find somebody that can communicate with you that way.

Teressa Plammoottil  9:16  
Absolutely, I had a very at-home moment a few years ago, this is when I worked in retail still, and I was at Sephora, and two customers actually walked in, and I could kind of identify that they're South Indian, but I couldn't tell what, like, from what state, but as soon as they, like, they were talking to each other, I was like, "Oh, that's my people, and you know, outside of my dad, I don't get to speak it often, and I'm, you know, usually not approached by other Indians, so I was like, "Oh, Maleiano. I was like, "Are you a Malayali? And they're like, "Yeah, are you? And I'm like, "Yeah. And it's almost like you're finding a long lost cousin or family that you haven't like talked to in years, and it's immediately like, "Oh.. Where in Kerala are you from, and every Malayali knows this, where we go, not Liberia, so it's like, where from the motherland are you, is like the literal translation, but it's the go-to saying between Malayalees, or people from Kerala, Keralites, and that turned into, you know, a good connection, because they own a South Indian restaurant nearby, and I ended up going there, and now I have a place to go to for just South Indian food, and I absolutely love that at home feeling that we were talking about earlier. So, even though it is not commonly spoken, at least in the Sacramento area, where I grew up in Chicago, I went to like a South Indian church where everyone spoke the language, so that was nice until I didn't have it anymore, and I had to go looking for it. Almost,

Marcel De Jonghe  10:49  
it's that birds of a feather flock together, right.

Teressa Plammoottil  10:51  
Absolutely, yeah.

Marcel De Jonghe  10:53  
And you can understand how you have a Chinatown, how you end up with a little Italy. I live in Birmingham, and we have specific areas in Birmingham, which are largely populated by, say, Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, and then you've got another side of Birmingham where, like, there's a place called Soho Road, and that is predominantly Indian, but it's more Hindu and Sikh, you know, and language defines just the way our brains are programmed, right?

Teressa Plammoottil  11:20  
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Do you speak any languages?

Speaker 1  11:24  
That's

Marcel De Jonghe  11:25  
the one problem I have. I'm terrible with languages. Numbers, give me numbers, that's another language to me. Well, actual language. Oh, my mum, my mum has attempted multiple times to teach me Shauna the language from Zimbabwe, which she speaks, and she just gave up eventually.

Shawna  11:42  
Do you have the receptive language? Because sometimes you know we understand.

Marcel De Jonghe  11:46  
Yeah, I can. I can understand what I was in trouble quite often, and I know the.. I know what she means, but I would never be able to converse properly.

Shawna  11:56  
Yeah, I mean, because right, receptive language is usually comes before expressive, but you know, even then it can feel like a connection. I have interviewed so many people, Teresa, like with my study, where folks will say they felt lost because part of their heritage included people in their family who spoke a different language and they didn't speak it, and so they felt like, gosh, these are my family members, and I can't even communicate with them this way. Can I really claim this identity? I sometimes people perceive us differently than we identify or than we know ourselves to be. Is that the case for you? Have you been perceived to be somebody different or assumed

Speaker 1  13:02  
to be

Teressa Plammoottil  13:02  
absolutely in, in both positive and negative adjacent ways, too. Like, I learned a lot from it, but I absolutely get mistaken for a different ethnic background, or they people will ask, "Oh, are you, you know, such and such? I'm like, "No, they're like, "Oh, are you mixed? I'm like, "No, but it's interesting, because when I do say no to being mixed, right, I'm like, well, technically, are we looking like 32,000 years back, or are we talking about like in the last 5060 100 years, you know, because then I'm like, we're kind of all mixed to some degree, if we're looking at all our ancestry, everyone's migrated, right, but it's one of those things where it's helped me really understand other cultures and how people think. It gives me a lot of insight into how people try to relate, you know. A lot of the times when people do ask me a question, I used to take offense to it when I was younger, and now it's like I try to understand where they're asking that question from, and it's usually in their attempt to relate, or be like, "Oh, I know this thing about your culture. They're looking for something to relate over, usually, and there's other times where they're just trying to, they're like, "Oh, you seem different, or "You seem like you don't belong here, where are you from? They're just trying to place it, and they're trying to categorize you, right, but I try not to think that until it's very evident that that's what they're trying to do. But yeah, to answer your question, it's definitely happened, and it's absolutely a big part of my identity.

Shawna  14:34  
Yeah, I think for some folks too, if you aren't part of the main race conversation, at least in the US, there's also some strange way of being excluded, even from the conversation of race and ethnicity, like people here tend to just love working in the binary, whenever you say something about race, people immediately just think black and white, forgetting that there's all these other kinds of people, and for the longest time I. Or forms have reflected that too, right? Like, for example, there was some discussion during, I think, first in the Obama administration, and then it came back with the Biden administration about our census and how we can allow people to identify themselves, and there was a question about the MENA category, which would be Middle Eastern, North African, because people that are Middle Eastern or from North Africa aren't black, they're not white, like, are they Asian, but they're not Asian, like, because all of this stuff is made up anyway, and geographies change, borders change, and so is there a time where you thought I'm in this space but not this space, and you know, we talk a lot about this liminal in between, have you had experiences like that?

Teressa Plammoottil  15:44  
Oh, plenty. I mean, there's, as you were talking, I was thinking about Lean, when it comes to, like, the forms in the US, right? And when we're filling out whatever paperwork, I've always checked off that I'm Asian, because India is part of the Asia continent and I, there's been plenty of times where I'm at like work or whatever outing and I'm around colleagues or friends of Asian descent and from different backgrounds, but for them with their physical appearance it's the evident Asian and what I mean by that is, it is what people in the US perceive as Asian, which is Chinese, Filipino, you know, that they have very prominent features compared to South Indians, right? We have different features, and India also is a very diverse country by itself, but there's been times where, you know, they're like, represent this, and it's the Asian group, so I'll go stand over there, and they're like, "Oh, Asians are generally, you know, five three. I'm like, "No, 510 as well. I understand that maybe your demographic might be five three, or whatever the average height is, depending on what kind of Asian, but I remember even feeling excluded from the Asian group because I look so different from them, but also I was like, do they not consider me Asian? I was like, because I'm South Asian, or India's a subcontinent, you know?

Shawna  17:08  
Right,

Teressa Plammoottil  17:09  
and it's because of what, what is considered Asian here in the US, and what is taught to us is as Asian, or referred to as Asian,

Shawna  17:17  
right?

Teressa Plammoottil  17:17  
People separate Asian from Indian, right? It's like Indian American, and then there's Asian American, and they get grouped together, and then we're a separate group, almost. At least that's what I've come across.

Shawna  17:28  
Yeah,

Teressa Plammoottil  17:29  
and there's other times where culturally, because of my upbringing, I've gotten separated from, you know, the South Indian community, and things like that. I have that also, like, do I not belong in that identity anymore? Because for so long, that was my identity. I'm South Indian, I'm Catholic, you know. I went to church every Sunday, maybe Fridays and Saturdays too. And and then I'm around other South Indians, maybe for like a family gathering or whatever event that I get invited to, and I can't fully relate anymore because they've grown up around each other, so immersed in the culture and with the music and the clothing and the food, and they're talking about things that either don't remember or don't know or just can't relate to, because they would consider I'm too Americanized or too westernized now, but why wouldn't I be? I was born and raised here, so there's overlapping experiences when it comes to that sense of belonging, or like how I'm being perceived by other people.

Shawna  18:28  
Yeah,

Marcel De Jonghe  18:28  
so in the UK, it's a little bit different in regards to when we refer to as Asian. If you say Asian, you are most likely referred to someone from South Asia, which is, if the reference, that would be India, Pakistan, maybe Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Those are the areas, and because of the history of the Commonwealth and Empire, and so forth, we have a really healthy population of South Asian individuals. But for those who don't know, obviously India, and that whole area, and Kashmir, there is a little bit of animosity between those cultures. You could argue that they were even perpetuated by certain groups to divide, but Asian culture is a big thing here. But I say Asian culture, it's not East Asian culture. We have a very small population of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, you know, Philippine, as well, it just doesn't occur, really. So our exposure is very minimal, and I always use the analogy of an episode of Family Guy.

Shawna  19:35  
Oh no,

Marcel De Jonghe  19:37  
sorry, sorry,

Shawna  19:38  
go ahead. Oh, I hate Family Guy,

Marcel De Jonghe  19:42  
it's It's so controversial.

Shawna  19:44  
This is meow, meow, telling you to say this.

Teressa Plammoottil  19:46  
Let's hear this.

Marcel De Jonghe  19:49  
It's, it's how people can differentiate between each other. So, what happens is, I find, is the more you're exposed to a culture, the more you're able to identify into.

Teressa Plammoottil  20:00  
Jewel, sure.

Marcel De Jonghe  20:00  
So, for example, I can very easily identify multiple different people from different parts, like I'd say that person's Sri Lankan, that person's probably South Indian, that person's from Pakistan or Bangladesh, but I'm not au fait with understanding the difference between Korean - I know, obviously, from a location and looking at a map - Korean, Japanese, or Chinese, until probably I can kind of not understand the language, but you can understand that sound in Japanese and South Korean, yeah. And it's the episode where they have to go to Chinatown to run away, and

Shawna  20:34  
so worried

Marcel De Jonghe  20:36  
everyone's Jackie Chan, because he just has no exposure, but, but I love the response that all the East Asian people think he's Ethan Hawke, because their exposure to white people, you know, from their perspective, all white people look the same, they could be from anywhere, as long as it's a white location, and there is so much variance in just north south of a country, you know, you get that in the UK, and we're tiny, I get that in the US. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, which brings me to the question, which I've got to ask here, which is, you have beautiful curly hair. Thank you. Right, that isn't a normal Asian, South Asian thing. The culture is straight, dark hair. There's this desire to be lighter-skinned. So, you know, did you find that there was this from Asian people, or people with darker skin, want to lighten themselves for beauty standards, when in fact there's this little bit right now, isn't there about dark-skinned, where the dark you are, like people are like, oh, so beautiful, but that feels more like a blip on a map.

Teressa Plammoottil  21:51  
Yes, absolutely, it feels like fetishization or Catholicization a little bit to me. Yeah, I actually want to say a couple things, so the curly hair and more melanated skin. There's a lot of us actually in India that is like that, but media represents the fairer-skinned and straight hair, right? I think it's similar to how telenovelas are like that, where they represent more European features or beauty standards, and it's slowly changing over time, but there is a lot of the European beauty standards are the standard across the way, so yes, I think in the most recent years there's a lot more accessibility and a wide range of products for melanated skin, but there's definitely brands that are missing the range with that as well, so people are like, well, I'm just gonna go with the closest thing to my skin tone, and then there's definitely people who come in, my skin tone are lighter or darker, their perception of what they look like is different from what we see, and we're matching them to, so if I'm taking a foundation and applying it to them, I'm matching it to whatever shade they are in that moment in that store, but now you go stand outside, you're going to be, you know, a couple of shades lighter, maybe because of how the light is hitting your face, and they don't realize when our skin fluctuates, you know, depending on the season, depending on our hormonal cycle, depending on so many different factors, right. So one particular shade is not going to be your shade throughout the year, and then also like this whole contouring thing, like contouring your nose to look more narrow, more, you know, European-featured, and all that. And then just to, like, quickly add, years ago, so this is long before Covid 2018 or 2015 I can't remember. I was shopping in India, because I love shopping in India, but stopping by the skincare and makeup section and being so, so disappointed because this is supposed to be like the higher end or more luxury products for makeup there, and it, this was in South India, and they had, like, maybe five shades for the foundation by a popular brand out there, and the color was maybe the color of, like, in between, like, my pond, the side, so when we, when I put it on with the back of my hand, it was like this pink, pasty brown, and the girls, like, oh, this is your color. I was like, but that doesn't match me. It's like, clearly evident that it's not my color. She's like, that is your color, that's the darkest we have. I'm like, I know, but I was

Shawna  24:30  
a girl, just because it's the darkest you have color,

Speaker 1  24:34  
and she

Teressa Plammoottil  24:34  
was darker than me, right?

Speaker 1  24:38  
She's and,

Teressa Plammoottil  24:38  
but I remember feeling defensive, right, because I'm obviously having this conversation with her from Western raised perspective, and I'm not thinking about how most of India is brainwashed into thinking this is your color, you just then apply it and then blend it down to make it look like you're this one color all over, when really what. And swipe, and then you see your actual true color underneath, right. And I grew up with, like, one of my family relatives when I came visiting once, they applied, you know, this fairness cream, fair and lovely. Every,

Shawna  25:13  
oh, like the lightning,

Teressa Plammoottil  25:15  
every Indian knows this product, it is so bad for you, and they use like popular Bollywood, you know, actresses on the cover, or whatever, and they just show them going from like one shade lighter, you know, over time, but there's also like the tan remover, but really it's like some sort of like chemical skin bleach, and it's called a face pack, so basically it comes in a little container and you apply it to your arms and your face, and I was in my heavy, like, California sun tanning ears, you know, and just didn't care for any sort of sun protection, and I, like, I was like, I don't care, but you can still apply sunscreen and still get darker, right, and that's also, anyway, a whole other conversation, but there's this unfortunate mindset that is ingrained in people's minds for generations on how we're supposed to look, and not just make up, even to the point of my family asked me why I'm not married, and once I am married, to make sure I marry a white man, so I can have beautiful, lighter-skinned kids. kids

Speaker 1  26:30  
and

Teressa Plammoottil  27:08  
I want to shift gears a little bit, because Theresa, you told me about how some other things in your life kind of shaped who you are today. What makes you you? How some of your life experiences in childhood or in adolescence shaped who you are. Would you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. I think the idea of identity is much beyond our physical appearance, right? I think the idea of being like racially ambiguous or whatever, I think it has a lot to do with how we present ourselves to the world as well. I think if I say, for example, followed the different styles that, like South Indians might, where they oil the errands, like about tie it back and stuff, and dress whatever way, I think I might be more easily identifiable as, you know, Indian or something. But when it comes to my upbringing, I did leave home at 16, and my parents were separated, and then we had a blended family, because my dad remarried. That's how we moved from Chicago to the Sacramento area, and before that, in my little family with my dad and my biological mom, and myself, and my younger brother, my first grade through fifth grade years, I got to live in India, so there is also the heavy what I call my molding ages. I'm around different religions and at the same race. You still ask people if you can't easily identify what your religion is, like there isn't like a hi, nice to meet you the American way, but it's still, are you Hindu, are you Muslim? If you can't identify their by their name, so, like, Theresa is a very Christian name, right, whereas another name would be more Hindu or Muslim sounding, and that was our way of relating to each other, or just understanding what boundaries are what to be more respectful of, or what to be aware of, because Hindus might be having whatever holiday coming up soon, or Muslims might be having whatever holiday coming up, so they're faster. Eid is coming up, you know, Ramadan, sorry. And then Catholics have, like, Lent, you know, they know that Lent is being observed, and there's heavy presence at churches and stuff like that. So, and I bring that up because that's how I understood why people might be asking similar questions now in a country where there's not just different religions, numerous different ethnic backgrounds, right? Yeah. Now, fast forward into my teen years, I did leave of home because of the, you know, some family dynamics, and I was homeless for a day. Then I lived with my friend and her family, and went to school with her. And then at some point lived with other friends. And then after high school, I was also like couch surfing or living with other people. And at some point I moved back in for a little while, trying to work things out, and then left. Them again, because it wasn't, but as I'm living with different friends, mind you, by this point I, in my mind, didn't have a good relationship with the Indian community, because I felt abandoned by them.

Shawna  30:12  
Why did you feel abandoned?

Teressa Plammoottil  30:14  
Because when we lived in Chicago, I was the divorced couple's kid,

Speaker 1  30:22  
yeah,

Shawna  30:22  
that was your label,

Teressa Plammoottil  30:25  
that was the label. And divorce is so taboo, especially in Malayali. So, like, a South Indian Catholic community, and it's such a tight-knit community, you know. These are people that I still like, keep in contact with, like, through Instagram, or whatever. I see them, like people who grew up with each other, are married to each other now, like people from church, so they've all kind of stayed within their own community, and there's a couple who haven't, but it's so taboo, it's almost like stay away from that kid, and I was an overweight kid, I was a chubby kid, you know, and then during the divorce, both my parents were taking us out to eat all the time, because there's no like home-cooked meals anymore, right? So we're just eating out all the time, so you're the kid of a couple that's divorcing, which is against Catholicism and very taboo in the Indian culture.

Shawna  31:12  
So yeah, another marginalized identity

Teressa Plammoottil  31:15  
within our own, it's not

Shawna  31:16  
even you, it's just the result

Teressa Plammoottil  31:18  
of right. And then comes with I was a tall and overweight kid, right. So there's this, the stuff that comes with that, where you like girls don't want to include you in stuff, or there's like this whole mean girl thing, or they might even hear it from their parents, like it wasn't a very inclusive mindset. At least that's what I experienced. I can't say that's what everyone else's experience is.

Teressa Plammoottil  31:41  
Sure,

Teressa Plammoottil  31:41  
and then obviously just just, you know, hearing how my dad felt isolated by his supposed friends, you know, there's like decades-long friendships that suddenly were not associating with him anymore, and he was pretty prominent in the community. He was a social butterfly, he was a real estate agent, an engineer, and he loved socializing with people, and all these church events, and hosting parties, and suddenly you're just getting dropped by everybody else, you know, all this networking, you know, people are dropping because they don't want to associate with this person, and then that trickles down in the kids too, and not being able to play with kids, or whatever it may be, so moving to California, and then not wanting to, wanting to, but not also not being able to participate with the South Indian community here in the Sacramento area, because it's hard for my parents or my dad to get into a community explaining how this person was not his first wife,

Shawna  32:38  
so you're saying he got remarried, but they're like he didn't want to have to give the backstory.

Teressa Plammoottil  32:44  
People talk, and within our culture, your background check is by word of mouth. So, even in India, when someone's getting married, your reputation is everything. Are you being married into a good family? When my cousins are being married off, these moms or aunts will call whoever they know to ask around, what do you know about this family? Like, is there financial hardship? Is there family like dysfunction, history, whatever it may be, and that carries over here too. People talk, whether you call it gossip or trying to be informative, whatever it may be. And because South Indians are such a small community amongst Indians, the Chicago South Indians are connected to the Houston South Indians, to the Dallas South Indians, to the Sacramento and San Francisco South Indians, and then the New York. These are our main hubs, and we're South Indian Catholics, right? So it's a very

Speaker 1  33:35  
small,

Shawna  33:36  
more niche, keep getting,

Teressa Plammoottil  33:38  
yeah, yeah. So all of that played into why I didn't even pursue or befriend other Indians, and then just finding I was relating more to my friends that I was just, I happened to be friend, right, and they're a like Hispanic background or they're black, and that was the closest ethnic background I can be near that's not Indian, like within like my school demographic, or whatever it may be, or within Sacramento, and Sacramento is pretty diverse, and because of this void, right? I don't have close family members here. Most of my dad's family is in India, so my friend's aunts and uncles were my temporary or adopted aunts and uncles, because now I'm living with my friend and her family in high school, so I'm going to quinceaneras with them, or I'm going to cook outs with them, I'm going to whatever family event it is, depending on the friend that I'm living with, and immersing myself into that culture, and bonding with the woman there, because mind you, by this time I was estranged from my mom, who I used to be close to, I don't have a good relationship with my stepmom, and I am subconsciously seeking a maternal or nurturing role or mentor in my life, and it came from the aunts and moms and grandmas, whoever it may be, that were related to my friends, and that's absolutely sg. Me, what did you learn about yourself? About myself, man, I learned that my mindset on family and community was very jaded, that I had actually, for some time, given up hope on the idea of family, and it was such an isolating time as a, as a teenager for me. So, even now I'm 35 and I'm still working on forming my village or community, and finding that safe space, and it doesn't have to be blood, right? Because I felt abandoned by my own blood relatives from my mom's side, and then these people that I grew up with in church that you've known for so long, they're basically family, aren't really like that anymore. So then you end up forming your own family outside of that, and my identity came from, like, cooking with my friend's mom, and you know their home remedies for skincare and hair, and and then hanging out.

Shawna  36:09  
What did you call that stuff? Fair and lovely, is that what you called it? Fair

Teressa Plammoottil  36:12  
and lovely. Yeah,

Shawna  36:14  
you go from fair and lovely to shea butter.

Teressa Plammoottil  36:16  
No, but that's exactly it, right? Like, and this is a time where there wasn't like early 2000s to mid 2000 there wasn't a whole lot of products for curly haired folks, right? So, like, I was using like Garnier and Herbal Essence, and

Speaker 1  36:29  
oh,

Teressa Plammoottil  36:30  
and then there's that.

Shawna  36:31  
Well, that could, that might work better on your hair than my hair, that's why I went like that, right? Yeah,

Teressa Plammoottil  36:35  
but, but then I was like, okay, my hair isn't straight, and then I was in this weird phase where I'm like, is my hair curly, is my hair wavy, and I then decided to, for some reason, try relaxer on my hair, because someone recommended it. Oh, I think might have been a hair stylist that recommended, they're like, oh, you have textured hair, they're automatically just looking at my hair and saying, you've got textured hair, you need to use this biggest mistake for my hair at that time, it fried my hair, right? I have very fine hair, it's almost feathery, just a lot of it, it's not meant for it. So, anyway, there is this lot of trial and error when it came to not just physical appearance but my identity, just as a person, but I learned a lot from my friends' moms, and so, like, my friends who are black, or if they're African, from, like, Nigeria or Ghana, or from anywhere else, you know, everyone has their own cultural take on different skincare routines or hair care, but them telling me, like, you don't need products for shrinkage, because that's not a thing for you. You might have, like, you have to look into what kind of what was it, like, the hair density, no, wasn't density. Thank you. Yes, how your hair absorbs water versus not. So I'm like, oh, there's like a test that you can do,

Shawna  37:58  
you put in a glass of water

Speaker 1  38:00  
and see whether

Shawna  38:00  
it floats or sinks.

Teressa Plammoottil  38:02  
I'm learning all this because, yep, my mom, like, there wasn't a maternal figure in my life anymore, right? So I'm learning from my

Speaker 1  38:11  
friend,

Shawna  38:11  
be fair, I didn't learn that from my mother either. I learned, yeah, from the internet,

Teressa Plammoottil  38:15  
and I probably wouldn't have learned it from my mom, because my mom didn't have curly hair. I got the curly hair from my dad's side, so

Speaker 1  38:21  
gotcha,

Teressa Plammoottil  38:22  
and then if they did have curly hair on our side, or like, what, whoever, whatever family member, they're assimilating to European standards, right? They're constantly doing the keratin treatment and straightening it, so yeah, do

Marcel De Jonghe  38:55  
You've referenced, obviously, being South Indian and being Catholic. Now the two for most people really get confused by, hold on, you're Indian and you're Catholic, because, like, we said, you know, the most common faiths are Sikh, Hindu, or Muslim in India.

Speaker 1  39:15  
So, do

Marcel De Jonghe  39:15  
you have to explain yourself far more than you probably should about being Indian and Catholic,

Teressa Plammoottil  39:22  
yeah. So I was actually just having this conversation with a connection yesterday, and it was like, oh, my dad's in India, I'm this and that, and she's like, you're Indian, it's like, yeah. And then I think at some point I mentioned Catholics, and she's like, you're Indian and you're Catholic, and I was like, oh, this might be a good conversation to bring up during the podcast, but my name itself, Teresa, right, is traditionally a Christian name, or it's like a saint's name. There's Mother Teresa, but then my last name, for non-Indians, it is not easily identifiable as, like, what religion or what background, right? So, like, from explaining my. A Catholic background is usually, yes, a surprise for many people, because the prominent religions in India are Sikhism, Hinduism, and Islam. But then you come down south, there's all sorts of Christianity. We also have Judaism down there. I learned of one denomination called Mennonite a couple years ago,

Shawna  40:22  
yeah, yeah, Mennonites,

Teressa Plammoottil  40:24  
yeah, I had no idea there's a small, small population of Mennonites in South India, or like mid-India, and like her dad is a pastor, I was like, I'm like flabbergasted, because I was like, I had no idea there's like this entire denomination that existed. Christianity came to India when St. Thomas came to India. So, there is, like, I wouldn't call it a shrine, but there is, like, this holy site in South India that is dedicated to St. Thomas. And apparently, going generations back, our family converted to Christianity when St. Thomas came to India. For the longest time, I had the assumption that we were forced into Christianity by the British or something like that, because there is that as well in India, but particularly to a lot of South Indians it wasn't that it wasn't from the British influence, it was by choice, and I wish I knew more, like how far back, but my dad's like, oh, you know, for 5000 years we've been Catholics only, but Jesus was around like 2000 years ago, so I don't know if that's factual, but

Marcel De Jonghe  41:28  
I'm

Teressa Plammoottil  41:30  
not arguing my dad, because

Teressa Plammoottil  41:32  
that is funny,

Teressa Plammoottil  41:34  
I wouldn't dare question him, you're always right,

Marcel De Jonghe  41:38  
Dad, you don't often hear of South Asian individuals being Catholic or Christian, or of any other denomination other than being of Hindu, Sikh. We have a large Sikh community in where I live as well, and like you said, once you know someone's name, it's very easy to work out what faith they are.

Teressa Plammoottil  41:58  
Yeah,

Marcel De Jonghe  41:58  
and again, like that comes from exposure, so I've lived in predominantly Asian areas, so I can tell straight away by someone if their surname's core, right? They're Sikh immediately, because that's a Sikh surname, same as like Sing. It just comes back to that more exposure you have, the less surprised you are.

Teressa Plammoottil  42:20  
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Shawna  42:21  
absolutely, and that's how we can build more empathy too, and understanding of other, other groups. I agree,

Teressa Plammoottil  42:27  
other groups, yeah. So, coming out to California, I noticed that the difference was there's a lot of Pacific Islanders here, right, the people from the islands. So, there's a lot of Samoans here, there's a lot of Fijians here. I never met a Fijian until I moved to California, and so meeting someone with the last name Sing, then learning that they're Hindu threw me off, because I'm like, I just assume Sing is a Punjabi last name, very Sikh last name, and turns out, though, some of them were Hindus from the Fijian Islands, and it threw me up, and then also there's a big Punjabi population here in the Sacrament area in California, so that helped as well. Again, exposure, right? There's so much even about the Indian descent that I'm still learning, and the intersection of the cultures of, you know, like Africans and Indians being taken to the islands, and them having their own culture there, so like Guyanese and Trinidad and Fiji and places like, or even Australia, right? So very, very cool stuff.

Shawna  43:40  
Okay, well, we've moved to the point in the show time for the mixed messages archive. So, here we go. I'm randomly picking one, got one. This is what it says. I feel like I am more self and socially aware. I just wonder if it's because I'm aware of my differences in the world. So, what comes to mind for you when you hear that

Teressa Plammoottil  44:03  
I can relate to that, and I would say that I almost agree, because I think a lot of my need to be more aware, and my curiosity.. I learned a.. I don't know if I heard it from your podcast or someone else, but there was.. they were talking about humble curiosity. Does that ring a bell? We did talk about that. Yeah, and it stems from me realizing my own differences, right? But more, instead of differences, actually, how more alike we are than anything else. So, I'm like, a lot of times when I'm out in the world, yes, I am aware that we all have differences, but we also have so much more that we can relate over, and I say this to people all the time, especially when I meet someone that is of, like, an ethnic background, like we are kinfolk, and the divisiveness is unfortunate. It, but yes, I think me being aware of my own identity and navigating that is what's helped me be aware of other people's identities and positionalities in life, and the way that they think, and what our conversations might be stemming from.

Marcel De Jonghe  45:16  
I love that. For me, I find myself being able to traverse multiple ethnic minority groups. I'm invited, and maybe not be the heart and soul of the party, but I find, especially where I live, I think my ambiguity of people not quite understanding who I am, but just knowing enough that because I'm not white, I have gone through some hardship, we have a connection through, right. Okay, your life hasn't been easy, or at least it wouldn't have been easy as the majority of people. So, yeah, do you want to come round? We're having an Eid celebration, or it's important to recognize that we have this gift to an extent, but it doesn't mean that we are the specialists in that. Just because you've been given a little bit of insight into someone's, like, community and their faith or their ethnicity, you don't suddenly become a specialist in it. That's the danger, you know. I will go to an ethnic Asian shop, where I'm clearly the only person who is not Asian who's been in that shop for the for the last week, but I will attempt to try and ask for food in it the native way, and they correct me, I love some chana masala, you mean chickpeas? I'm like, yeah, okay, I love a chip pea curry,

Speaker 1  46:42  
I well,

Shawna  46:44  
I mean, it sounds to me like what it comes down to is you're appreciating culture and you're appreciating those differences, and that matters. And I think we can never generalize any particular group. Some people appreciate it when we try, and some people don't. That's the effort, right? I think a lot of times people are like, oh, you can't do that, that's cultural appropriation. I'm like, okay, I understand. There's also a difference.

Teressa Plammoottil  47:08  
There's a big difference, and I think that it's overused in some cases, right, or misused, because there is a place for it, but a lot of times it is cultural appreciation, you're being respectful of that culture, you're making the effort to, you're really going out of your way to speak a language or learn about a language or their food or the culture, whatever it may be. And I think when we, especially when we visit other countries, they appreciate it, but now if we're experiencing a culture within the US or another country where people have been displaced or have some sort of history with their culture being taken advantage of or erased or erased, erased, and then other people are making profit off of it. Yeah, that is where I understand where the animosity or the defensiveness comes from, right? So I think in your case, for sure, that is a cultural appreciation, and that effort really counts.

Marcel De Jonghe  48:06  
I try. I think the last episode I mentioned that I even, because I was around so many Asian females, I was like, okay, I need to learn how to chat an Asian female up. It didn't work

Shawna  48:20  
on Colin Money, no kid. kidding.

Shawna  48:26  
Yeah, getting you in trouble.

Shawna  48:34  
Oh my god. Listen, as always, such a rich conversation. Thank you both for sharing your thoughts, and your insights and experiences as we all just try to navigate, we just try to navigate this life, y'all. Teresa, it was so great. I hope that we will stay in touch. I hope

Shawna  49:00  
so too.

Shawna  49:00  
More about you.

Teressa Plammoottil  49:01  
Thank you for having me. Now, this was the one time I feel like I can contribute to, like, a conversation. When it comes to identity, it feels good to have conversations around how we see ourselves, but how we want to be seen, and then to feel seen as well. Yes, right, there's definitely times that we can relate, and it doesn't have to be from the same ethnic background, or whatever. Like, our experience is really Vonda. So, I appreciate you even having conversations around this kind of stuff.

Shawna  49:30  
I love that, that's the goal, right? Because we do have so much to share, and we can get that feeling of home in different ways.

Teressa Plammoottil  49:37  
Yeah, exactly. Absolutely, it was nice meeting you, Shawna Marcel. It was great meeting you and talking to you as well.

Marcel De Jonghe  49:43  
And yourself, Teresa. Yeah,

Shawna  49:44  
take care, you guys.

Teressa Plammoottil  49:45  
You too till next time.

Shawna  49:58  
You know these conversations. Sgs are always so interesting. I learned so much, and I just can't thank my guests enough for sharing their knowledge with us. Huge thanks to Theresa for showing up with such honesty and vulnerability, from navigating cultural expectations and racial ambiguity to finding belonging outside of traditional family structures. There were so many powerful moments in this episode. I especially appreciated that there was the opportunity for reminding us all, really, that identity isn't just about how people perceive us. It is also shaped by the communities that embrace us, the experiences that challenge us, and also the ways that we learn to create home for ourselves and for others. There's so much wisdom in that. If this episode resonated with you, please be sure to share it with someone who might need to hear it. And, as always, we'd love to hear your thoughts and your experiences. So, connect with us through the show notes and on social media. You can also visit True Culture Consulting to learn more about upcoming projects, appearances, and updates, including my upcoming book, Mixed Signals: The Multiracial Case for Civility and Belonging at Work. It's going to be released in early fall, y'all, so be sure to sign up for news and updates, so you don't miss what's coming next. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected, and keep embracing your true colors. Spread the love, y'all. I'll talk to you soon.

Intro  51:32  
You've been listening to our true colors,

Unknown Speaker  51:35  
you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai