"Food. Me. Food"
by Hyejin Lee
I set the table for one. A bowl of rice, fried eggs, and some Korean side dishes. Or fresh arugula, chicken breast, eggs, and tomatoes smooshed in between wheat bread. If I’m feeling up to it, I’ll toss a pound cake into the oven in the evening. Or bake some sable cookies on the weekends. A DoorDash or UberEats driver, maybe both, drops off my poke bowl delivery with salmon, more salmon, and extra mayonnaise at the door for the third time that week. I don’t know if you’ve caught on, but I love food. My doctors actually told my parents my will to eat was probably the thing saving me from dying after getting pneumonia over 10 times.
On trips to the city, my itinerary revolves around the restaurants I’ll be going to that day. Instead of cool places to visit, my to-go list on Google Maps consists of cafes and restaurants verified on food blogs, travel sites, and social media. My definition of a successful adult is someone who can treat themselves to American, Korean, and Japanese food all in one day. To me, food is more than just a necessity, something that fills up my body with nutrition.
Food has always been how I share intimacy and love, especially because of the significance of eating together in Korea. As I have learned, relationships are formed and sometimes centered around food. “Have you eaten?” is a common greeting, and “I don’t even want to see you eat” is a sign that something huge has gone wrong in the relationship. Korean meals are usually large, with a center dish like jjigae or meat accompanied by rice and two to twelve side dishes. Thus I always looked forward to breakfast, lunch, and dinner that my mother created with care every day.
However, as much as I love to eat and savor the taste and moment, my craving to be thin and “beautiful” often overshadows my desire for food. Strangely enough, as much as eating well is emphasized in Korea, the beauty standard is disproportionately harsh and scary. Most women will aim for the ideal weight of 45 kg despite the average height being 157 cm. Calculating their BMI, this weight and height would place them in the underweight range. While I live relatively free of the strict Korean beauty standards, I am not completely unaffected by it. My mom passes thoughtless remarks about my stretch marks on my legs, and although I know it’s only the result of living in a society that prizes a woman’s body more than her mind and strength, it still hurts. And although I know I’m wrong, I, too, associate skinniness with beauty, secretly crave a more slender body, and admire people who seem to have the perfect amount of fat on their stomach—which is none.
So the cycle of guilt and love continues. I love food—bingsu, spicy rice cakes, sushi, burgers, pasta, cheesecakes. But the idea that being skinny is good, that being skinny is pretty, is so deeply ingrained in my mind that it feels wrong to eat the food I love.
My love for food is my identity. So is my body. I still haven’t found a way to reconcile these parts of me together. I will continue to struggle in accepting my body, but I know I won’t be the only one. This cycle will continue for everyone, regardless of their age and gender, as long as beauty standards continue to contradict and deny basic human needs.