Hello, I'm Cindy

I’m a doctoral student at Monash University (Clayton campus, Australia), originally from Singapore. Before this, I completed both my bachelor’s and master’s (of arts, by research) degrees in Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore, where I also taught, researched, and learned the art of juggling deadlines with one too many teh c kosongs.

My research circles around women, beauty, and body image — with a special focus on how femininity is shaped, challenged, and reimagined in everyday life, particularly within the Singaporean context. This means that my work sits at the intersection of feminist, media, and cultural studies. At the core of my work is a simple but powerful idea: beauty is never neutral. It is labour: something we work at, for, and negotiate — but it can also be resistance, a way of pushing back, reshaping norms, and claiming space for ourselves.

When I’m not teaching or writing, you’ll usually find me baking a sweet treat (I make a mean butter pound cake!), running after community cats to pet them, or getting too acquainted with TikTok and Instagram trends (I call it research).