What Nilla wafers taught me about body image and womanhood
By: Melody Hahm
Tags: Childhood, Asian American, Body Image, Food, Adolescence

Our complicated relationship with weight begins the moment we’re born — conceived, really. From the very first ultrasounds we’re sizing up babies — “Ah, she’s an avocado pit right now, perfectly on track,” the ob-gyn says. A mom rejoices painfully while pushing out an above average, slimy mess. The first check up, couples beam with pride to hear their plump, Michelin-armed baby is in the 99th percentile in chunkiness. Then, in what feels like a flash, things start to change.

I remember jumping into my friend’s swimming pool the summer after our sophomore year, hoping to God I appeared carefree, but was really all too aware of the gazes of my girlfriends. There was a two-week window when the eight of us (the 8-track, as we called ourselves) were home in Connecticut, before heading our separate ways for internships in NYC. And we soaked up every single minute of it. We lived at Courtney’s place — mostly bumming by the pool but also circling the kitchen counter.

There we would observe the bodies around us, clay-like in both texture and essence. We were all trying to grow into ourselves, figuring out our own figures, not knowing if this was the mold of our future or if we were still in transition. I was the only Asian girl in the group. I remember we openly marveled at one of the 8-track…she wasn’t skinny, but she had a certain fitness, firmness to her. Her stomach was thick but flat — no rolls, or ‘samgyupsal,’ as my mom used to call my tummy, which literally translates to ‘three layer flesh’ — the most delicious, juicy bits of Korean pork belly barbeque.

Huddled around her speckled midnight blue granite countertop, we’d devour 100-calorie pack Oreo thins, slices of maple-glazed turkey cold cuts, hunks of Challah bread, carrots with globs of red pepper hummus, but perhaps the most iconic centerpiece were the Nilla wafers. The bright yellow box with the old-school, comforting red writing was our perennial favorite. It was there at that counter I tried Nilla wafers for the first time. I found them quite bland, but still I would munch along. What a sneaky snack, I thought, they gave the illusion of healthiness, but they’re really just cookies masquerading as a skinnier friend.

I was a slender teen. After emerging from my 108-pound mom at an unbelievable 9.8 pounds, I grew into a pretty chubby kid until I had my growth spurt and thinned out in sixth grade, right in time for the pressures of adolescence to kick in. It became a point of pride that I was ‘blessed’ with a fast metabolism. Any skinny girl who eats a lot most certainly falls in this category.

In between those ravenous snack binges, my friends would comment about how I was so lucky to eat everything and still have a bony collarbone and gaping thigh gap. How I, as an Asian, got tan so quickly and didn’t have to shave my legs on a daily basis. And on and on the conversation would go. We’d eat, self-criticize, throw twisted compliments around, and so our own images were warped and shaped by our own perception of how others perceived us.

I’ve carried these 8-track conversations with me throughout my college career and young adult life…and often wonder if I would be loved or appreciated just the same…if I had chosen to abstain from choking down that extra Nilla wafer — just to prove that I was able to.