Interview with Fay Chiang
By Jennifer Tan, Staff Writer

"I had this weird, internalized inferiority complex because I grew up without any Asian role models," confessed stand-up comic Margaret Cho to a journalist when asked about the role appearance has played in her career. "I just didn’t look like anyone else in Hollywood, no matter how much weight I lost or what I did to myself."

Unlike Cho, I have had the exact opposite problem all my life. There are unspoken rules in the California Chinese community where I grew up. Desirable traits in young women include porcelain white skin (dark skin is an indication that you must, God forbid, go out and work for a living), large double-lidded eyes (many born without them have surgery done to correct nature's mistakes), and above all, a slender, waif-like figure. I am not, nor have I ever been, anywhere remotely near this ideal.

Think Cho, not Lucy Liu.

For twenty years, my figure has irritated my mother. Quite slim in her youth, she had difficulty comprehending what had happened to her only offspring. Although I earned high grades, never got pregnant or thrown in jail, and had lots of friends, she was never satisfied. It was the one thing that bothered her, and in return, she bothered me - constantly.

"When I was your age, I weighed a hundred pounds and told my doctor I wanted to lose a few more. He looked at me and asked where I was planning to find the weight to lose," she mused, pondering the quirks of genetics while I sat at the kitchen table doing homework. "I didn't gain weight until my pregnancy."

I resolved for the thousandth time to ignore her not-so subtle hints. In addition to fueling my feelings of inadequacy, they made me feel directly responsible for every ounce mom gained since my birth. I should have taken a hint from my father. In conversations having to do with appearance, particularly his daily attire, he had learned to tune my image-conscious mother out long ago.

My mother forgot that she grew up in a different environment, in the tiny Portuguese colony of Macao on China's south shore. She had six siblings who squabbled over food at the dinner table. Finances were tight, so money for treats was rare. On the other hand, I was raised in fast-food filled suburbia California. I was brought up over-stuffed with won-tons, egg rolls and pork dumplings she wrapped herself, three or four different stir-fried meat and vegetable dishes and countless bowls of white rice for dinner every night, and "after-school snacks" consisting of leftovers served over huge portions of steaming noodles. School lunches were never simple affairs. My mother packed Tupperware with sushi or put hot pasta soup in a thermos, making me the envy of classmates. Going out for soft-serve ice cream and sundaes at McDonald’s after dinner was not uncommon. Mom complained all through my childhood about my size, but when I didn’t eat, she would freak out. She never caught the connection between my weight and her obsession with my eating habits.

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