Comparing your last sentence to the beginning, Noora, I cannot help notice: the subject changed!

I am guessing many of us experienced that kind of anxiety you voice at the beginning, this overly self-conscious fear of being judged - by THEM. That fear on the plane, that's your fear. The "they" you're afraid off live in our head. Our parents put it in us at an early age, "mind how you eat," "say please and thank you", and "don't," "don't," "don’t". Our parents didn't want them to think they're better than us, but that's because they lived in our parents' heads. Our parents' generations drew many wrong conclusions from the West's "success" in dominating our lands, e.g., the primacy of a science education. Among those wrong lessons is the feeling of inferiority, passed down generations, and assisted by a colonial educational system and "mission schools" that drilled their presumed "superiority".

So "the West" in your last sentence, is the West that lives in our heads. The good news is that "They" are completely under our control. The first step to freedom is to send them an eviction notice.

Quoting the wisdom of once-colonized philosophers who often are ignored by the Western academy:

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind."

-- Bob Marley