“I want the world to know how diverse and multifaceted Asian men can be,” he tells Dazed. In a photo series entitled Younglawa (which means ‘(someone) that is beautiful’ or ‘the beautiful’ in Malay), Badaruddin (with help from stylist Naazira Rahim) seeks to address the gap of representation where Asian men are concerned. I don’t see anyone who looks or is like me portrayed in media.” “As a queer brown Asian, who is also Muslim, I’m ticking all the boxes of being a minority. “Instead of playing with action figures, I would be found in the aisle playing and combing the hair of a My Little Pony toy.” In addition to feeling alienated by conventional masculinity, the sense of his own otherness was compounded by the knowledge that he was a minority even within a minority. “I knew from a young age I was not like the other boys growing up,” he recalls.
Growing up in Singapore, photographer Hidhir Badaruddin was always conscious of being different.
