Selina Kao
As I sat at the kitchen table delicately picking at some fries, I recognized the sound of my mother’s slipper-laden footsteps as she crept into the room.
Trying to ignore the palpable judgment, I tentatively reached for another fry as she casually remarked, “你太胖了.” You are too fat. Concern undergirding her voice, she cautioned, “你不能吃那么多.” You can’t eat that much.
And the phenomenon of Chinese parents habitually commenting on appearance is nothing out of the ordinary.
Although the West negatively characterizes fat-shaming, my mother’s remarks are banal in many Asian cultures. Thus, I don’t blame my parents for galvanizing my struggles; the uncontrollable pressures to conform with the socially acceptable mold of beauty, as well as internalized racism that drives so many Asian Americans to cater to Eurocentric ideals, are the roots of these issues.
Sociocultural expectations compounded with popular rhetoric of getting fit over quarantine compelled me to change my lifestyle for the “better.” These alterations began small. For one, so many of my favorite foods, such as boba, mochis, and cakes were all off-limits, but I wasn’t seeing any progress. As someone who has always depended on material indicators of accomplishment as validation, revisiting the scale only to see the same numbers was discouraging.
I panicked. My diet extended beyond deserts; I disavowed rice from my daily meals, a component foundational to Chinese cuisine, framing the carbohydrate as devoid of substance. Cutting out meat vastly limited my food selections, especially given how protein-centric my cultural fare tended to be.
Food was no longer a source of enjoyment. Food was a calculative subject, and every bite needed to be scrupulously arranged. Subconsciously, I noticed myself obsessing over meals, even going as far as to internally bargain with myself as I attempted to justify certain foods under conditions of additional exercise. At times, when I indulged myself, I grappled with residual, gnawing guilt.
As a daughter of first-generation Chinese immigrants, food means so much more than nourishment. Sharing meals means more than sustaining yourself. It means forging familial and communal bonds. For someone who has continuously wrestled with the urge to integrate into mainstream Western society by severing ethnic ties, for as long as I can remember, folding dumplings with my mother and carefully crafting 汤圆 (glutinous rice balls) next to my father constituted my primary, most accessible form of self-reconciliation and cultural engagement. Between my fragmented strings of Chinglish, the names of Chinese dishes I’ve grown up experiencing are some of the remaining shards of Mandarin I can still enumerate.
When I began submitting to my chaotic thoughts, I constantly resigned from the family dinner table early, announcing that I was full, even though I no longer genuinely understood what fullness meant. The guilt threatened me at every turn: should I eat or should I forsake my parent’s love language of home-cooked meals?
Under the general ambivalence and dysphoria over my cultural identity, portion regulation became a mode of preserving control I didn’t realize I desperately seeked; when I felt isolated and uncomfortable, I held onto any sense of agency over my life that I could. Chinese food progressed from steamy, mouth-watering dishes to grease and overindulgence; it was the antithesis of this sense of control I needed. My American apps never told me the calorie counts for my mom’s home-cooked dumplings. My culture no longer provided me with comfort food; instead, it was fear food.
I didn’t notice it then, but as I gradually drifted away from Chinese family food rituals, I became increasingly untethered from my culture and sense of self. For months, I never registered there was a glaring issue; amidst the ubiquity of fat-shaming in Asian cultures, my eating disorder cultivated under a justification of cultural emphasis on discipline. I believed I could channel these values throughout my endeavors into ameliorating my appearance.
Many Asian cultures lack a lexicon for eating disorder awareness, which are often perceived as symptomatic of personal failure. When my mother noticed my almost-skeletal frame after weeks of “dieting,” her solution was to criticize me into eating more, as if I was a Build-A-Bear that could easily be customized.
However, while most rhetoric concerning body positivity includes neutrally viewing food as merely sustenance, I don’t necessarily agree. I believe that binaristic conceptions of specific foods as “healthy” and “unhealthy” should be deconstructed, but food should be seen as so much more than just nourishment. Although I did not seek any medical treatment, I found my solution through cooking.
Cooking offered me an alternative; it allowed me to reaffirm my power over food rather than letting it consume me. Over time, I began reintroducing Chinese cuisine into my daily life too, reconnecting with my cultural identity that has inextricably sculpted my character. Gradually, cooking dismantled the narcotic control food had over me. Although my journey of reconciling with parts of my identity I didn’t realize I lost isn’t over, sharing cong you bing (Chinese spring onion pancakes) I cooked with my family to celebrate Lunar New Year has allowed me to discuss food in a generative light, as opposed to one laden with guilt.
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