Mmmmm hollandaise.

So three posts into starting a new blog and resolution I decide to display my greatest talent to the world: procrastination. It doesn’t really reflect well that it’s been about two months (oops) since my last post but better late then never, right? 

To be fair, it’s been a pretty hectic period, with the second round of midterms hitting like a hurricane just after the false sense of security that the completion of the first round brings sets in. So no pseudo-introspective thoughts today, I spent them all in my (kill me) ten page soci paper last night, and any remnant brain juice was fed into today’s stat midterm. 

One thing I never compromise on when I’m busy, though, is food. I know some people tend to stress to the point where they forget to eat - I can’t do that. My studying style is based on a technique of bribery where I feed myself as a reward for the completion (or incompletion) of a topic. Which is probably why I’m a third of my way done to accomplishing freshman fifteen. 

Another reason is the general state of euphoria that eating good food can automatically let you into; it’s like getting high off smoking weed, except it’s the meat that’s smoke and that can be even more expensive. I get hangry when I don’t eat; by contrast after I’ve finished a good meal I’m goofily smiley for at least the next fifteen minutes before I slip into my food coma. 

Either way, food is necessary to function and if we have to work, we might as well be round and satisfied while we do it. 

Kimchi waffles with roasted pork shoulder, Asian salad and pickled chilies. I’m not sure how it works, but it does.

Tea-smoked salmon, spinach and poached eggs on toasted sourdough with yuzu hollandaise. Yuzu? And hollandaise? Can I buy a tub? 

Big Brekky – two eggs (poached, scrambled or fried) on sourdough toast with tomatillo beans, cheery tomatoes, smashed potatoes and button mushrooms

Public | 210 Elizabeth Street | 212.343.7011| public-nyc.com | [4/5]

Oreo cheesecake, Rose Pistachio cupcake , Pumpkin Spice cupcake. Hands down some of the best Western-style cheesecake (I’m sorry but my number one is still Japanese cheesecake) that I’ve ever tasted. Service isn’t great though.

Little Cupcake Bakeshop | 30 Prince Street | littlecupcakebakeshop.com [4.5/5]

Japanese Curry Beef, Sapporo Braised Short-rib, Chipotle Shrimp and Spicy Tuna Tacos. Who would’ve thought Jap-Mex works so well? 

Chelsea Market | Takumi Tacos | takumitacos.com [4/5] | Doughnuttery | doughnuttery.com [3.5/5]

Red velvet ice cream sandwich with cream cheese ice cream filling

Melt Bakery Cart | The Highline (original at Orchard Street) | melt bakery.com [4/5] 

And these are only the first half of them. No wonder my jeans feel tighter. 

Midterm stress made my hair turn white.

Just kidding, if only it’d been that cheap. 

My initial plan was to go platinum blonde: think Yana Shmaylova or Vanessa Hong of The Haute Pursuit. After deciding to keep my roots dark to avoid scalp bleeding (yikes) from the double bleaching, and confessing to my hairstylist that yes, I had dyed my hair a dark colour before (which would make it harder for the platinum blonde to show through apparently), I settled on a silver-grey tone, more Eugenie Grey of Feral Creature than Soo Joo Park. 

The day before my appointment, I had butterflies in my stomach, swooping around those chocolate chip pancakes that had seemed like a good idea at breakfast. It seems kind of stupid if you think about it - I was going to dye my hair, not getting brain surgery done. Nothing would change by the end of the day except for the colour of the dead skin cells on my head. And it’s not like I’d never done a drastic hairstyle change before, I’d chopped my long hair off into a pixie a few years ago basically without blinking an eye. But I guess those butterflies were getting comfortable, because images of myself with Einstein bedhead (minus Einstein brains) kept flashing through my mind. I can’t fry an egg but I can fry my hair. 

Part of the insecurity came from trying to imagine myself with pale hair. I’d never really realised how large a part of my identity black hair had been , and practically speaking my photoshopped selfie was in no way any accurate representation of how I’d look. Maybe part of it was that my Asian-ness has actually become an identifier here that not being as obviously Asian seemed like it might relegate me to the realm of not-Asian-but-not-white limbo. It wasn’t just about the aesthetic, it was about where I’d stand with reference to other people and if their attitudes towards me would be any different than before. Just because of my hair colour. Isn’t that odd? But it happens. 

For my latest sociology class, I was supposed to read three separate readings totalling about 50 pages and pick a concept to write a short reflective essay on. I skimmed through one and a half pages of the shortest reading and googled the first idea that was at least half comprehensible, which turned out to be Cooley’s concept of the social self and self-reference. 

Cooley used the analogy of a mirror to explain self-reference, which he said was based on three principles. The first was looking at yourself in terms of how you think others see you, the second was pre-empting others’ judgment based on this projected perception, and the third your own emotional response to this projected judgment. We do this when we think about how our hair or outfit looks, because after that ‘looks’ comes the silent ‘to others’; we do this when we don’t want to eat lunch alone in the dining hall because we feel shame or self-consciousness in response to how we think others will judge us for that. 

It’s not so much our reflections that we fear facing, as much as the emotional baggage that comes with it; we probably wouldn’t consider ourselves so lacking in appearance if we didn’t have a basis of comparison. In that same vein, my insecurity probably came from no longer knowing how others would see me and hence where I stood. This uncertainty is what makes us feel hyper-conscious of people’s judgments because we don’t think that we already know what they’re thinking. (Did that make sense?) That baggage weighs a lot heavier on the scales in our minds than that helping of carbs at lunch actually did. 

So I’m not really sure what I expected when I came out of that hair salon with light hair. I guess somewhere when my imagination was having fun dancing in circles I thought I’d either be a showstopper or some kind of sophisticated punk rocker. But then again let’s be real - it’s New York, people don’t really care if your hair’s white or bubblegum pink or in a mohawk that scrapes the ceiling, and there wasn’t really that much change especially within the first couple of days before it started getting lighter. People didn’t react that differently but I did get a couple of compliments from strangers and it can be a conversation starter. Most of the projected reaction was basically just that - projected and imagined and largely in my own mind. 

I like it though. It might not feel like the earth shattering change I thought it might, but it’s still a different sensation. And I like the feeling I get when I look at myself in pictures. 

I feel like a unicorn. 

Photos | Jennifer

Models | Monica, Yeon Ju

On an unrelated note, these photos are from behind the scenes for ACE33, an annual NYU-based fashion show in the spring, the organising committee of which Jen and I are a part of. Check it out at https://www.facebook.com/NYU-ACE-547670032029685/ and watch that space for updates!