Life history, personality profile, and print Media portrayal of Ali Saleem

Abstract

fYiLlThe present idiographic study on the "Life History, Personality Profile, And the .... Media Portrayal of Ali Saleem : A Case Study of a Drag Queen" employed pragmatic approach to exp lore the drag queen genre of transgenderists. Firstly, it aimed at the investigation of those significant social events that contrib uted to his non-congruent gender and sexual identity formation in add ition with the identification of the precipitating and the perpetuating factors leading to the selection and maintenance of his drag career. Ali Saleem is a famous Pakistani drag altist. Life history comprised of life stages i.e. childhood, adolescence, and the adult hood. Each life stage was taken as a unit of analys is. Contents of the life history of the subject were analyzed. A pane l of judges selected the units and categories of analys is and enumerated the intensity of the categories on a 7-point Likert scale with reference to his drag career. Results indicated social experiences and the fundamental identity components leading to his drag queen appearance. While the motivation for sustai ning the drag career is both intrinsic and extrinsic in nature. Secondly, personality profile of the subject was constructed on the parameters of two psychological inventories including Neo-Five Factor Inventory, and California Psychological Inventory. Results show the subj ect to be high on all FiveFactor domains, and 16 subscales of the California Psychological Inventory that include Dominance, Capacity for Status, Sociabi lity, Social Presence, Self Acceptance, Independence, Self-Control, Good Impression, Well Being, Tolerance, Achievement via conformance, Achievement via Independence, Intellectual Efficiency, Flexibi lity, Empathy, and Femininity/Masculinity. The subject scored lower on Responsibility, Sociab ility, communality, and Psychological-mindedness. Finally the media portrayal of the subject was explored by selecting six national and seven international press releases on Ali Saleem as Begum Nawazish Ali . Five themes were derived through content analysis method. The results through the enumeration system included the frequencies and the percentages of the themes. Life experiences, his unique personal ity profile and the media portrayal of the subj ect are di scussed with reference to his showbiz persona.