Disclaimer: Ignore how you feel about the words in the title—this book is written for you. This twelve-chapter personal narrative in which Phiona Stanley recounts her experiences living and working abroad between 2002 and 2004 is for any person who has ever wrestled with building a life based on “Other People’s Approval.” In this reflexive autoethnography, Stanley recounts her time spent living and working abroad from 2002 to 2004. In a time where travel and “road status” were performed through clothing, exotic stories, and artifacts as opposed to photos and geotags across social media, Stanley navigates the social norms of gendered expectations in different cultural contexts. Using various feminist theories, she confronts the ways in which people, especially women, perform to other people’s approval. Other People’s Approval is both the ghost that Stanley chases and the panopticon in which she finds herself trapped, taking different forms as she moves from...

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