Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When Mother Knows Best, What's a Daughter To Do? A Memoir (Sort Of) by Elaine Lui

of my appearance. I was ashamed of my body. So Ma shamed me to stop me from shaming myself. It seems counterintuitive and it’scertainly not consistent with the nurturing, supportive techniques child psychologists in North America might recommend to parents hoping to build their kids’ self-esteem. But there’s a saying in Chinese that goes
Yee duk gung duk
—“Use poison fight poison,” the Chinese equivalent of “fight fire with fire.” Ma fought my body shame by shaming me, publicly.

     

     
    What could be more mortifying than bra shopping for the first time? I was ten. My body was being weird. My breasts were growing and I started becoming conscious of mynipples showing through my T-shirts. Jennifer, the blond girl who lived across the street, a year older, had already started wearing a bra and loved showing off her bra strap. I decided to wait until summer to get a bra because I didn’t want to introduce one into my life in the middle of the school year. My parents were living apart then and I was staying with my father. Ma was in Hong Kong and I went to see her for the summer holiday. As soon as I met her in the arrivals area at the airport she was all over me about not standing up straight. I told her I needed a bra and that I didn’t want people to see my body. She told me that if people had a problem with my body, it was their issue and not mine. The next day she took me to the department store.
    Right away, Ma went over to the saleslady and started asking about training bras. I slowly moved away to hide in the far corner of the intimates section, trying to figure out how I could strangle myself with panty hose. All of a sudden, it was like an announcement coming over the PA system, only not. Just Ma, with that goddamn voice, calling me over. And in English, because Ma liked to show off in Hong Kong that she had a daughter who spoke English.
    “ELAINE, I FOUND ANUDDA BLAH FOR YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU!”
    Every head turned. Every shopper on that floor knew that I needed a bra. I was the girl with the situation comingout of her chest that had to be taken care of. I rushed over to Ma, took her hand, and pulled her into the dressing room, begging her to be quiet, pleading with her not to publicize my junior breasts and bra requirements. She was so angry at my reaction, she spat out the following lecture, in English, just to make sure I would understand her in the language I used in my mind: “Your body, this natural. What you need, bra, this natural. Why you shame for something natural? Why you shame your body? If you shame your body, you shame yourself. When you shame yourself, everyone shame you.”
    Ma was urging me to confront my own body and its changes to confront the truth about puberty. Over and over again, through my adolescence, she used shame to help me accept the reality of what I looked like, to
see
what I actually looked like so that I would stop trying to look like something else.
    The summer after Grade 8 I returned to Hong Kong for summer holiday with copper hair. I’d been spraying it with a product that lightens hair when you apply heat to it. It’s supposed to make you blond. Since my hair is naturally black, the closest I could come was orange. Still, I did it so that whenever people would ask me about it, I’d lie and say that one of my parents was white. Ma shamed me for weeks like she did with my Barbara Yung teeth and the retainer.She kept calling it “red hooker head” because the prostitutes who worked in the clubs always dyed their hair. Everywhere we went: “Do you know why Elaine has a red hooker head? Because she thinks she’s a
gwai mui
[white girl]! I spent a night with Alain Delon and she’s our secret love child!” And they all laughed.
    Looking back, of course it was humiliating. Ma’s relentless shaming was difficult to endure. But she wasn’t shaming me for sport. It’s not like it was a good time for her either. As a Chinese girl growing up in North America, I was