born with a silver spoon in my mouth

what i talk about when i talk about fashion, part 1

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This is part one of my three part series on fashion. 

Initially, this piece began as a braindump on what style means to me. After jotting down some ideas, I realized that it would be impossible for me to talk about clothing before discussing jewelry, for reasons that will become evident as the series progresses.

As I was clacking away, breaking down interesting stories about my jewelry collection, I accidentally fell into the stream of consciousness and washed up on the other side of the river with paragraphs upon paragraphs of feverish output regarding… silver spoons.

So, here we are today, talking about spoons and the importance of silver in my life.

Trust me, it’ll all make sense soon.

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If you’ve ever been to a Korean restaurant, perhaps you’ve realized that the chopsticks and spoons provided are always metallic.

There's a reason for this. Korean royalty used silver utensils as a way to detect poison in their food—rapid tarnishing of the metal was a sign that it had made contact with malice. Ever since, silver in Korea has been inextricably linked with health and wealth; a defense against toxins which, in the past, could only be afforded by the rich.

Thus, the metal silverware used in restaurants is a symbolic ode to tradition.

For similar reasons, my family has been using silver spoons my entire life.¹ Each member of the family has their own spoon; Korean silver spoons are long and are ornamented at the end with subtle yet unique designs and colors. When it was time for dinner, my mom/dad would call me out from my room and ask me to set the table with banchan and appropriately match each person’s spoon with where they usually sat at the table. A chic crane-like design drawn on my mom’s, a cool blue and green pattern on my dad’s, a regal Victorian-inspired pattern on my sister’s, and a deep purple cloud-puffs on mine.

In a way, each individual’s personality takes after their spoon, quite perfectly.

I hate to break it to you—despite our silver spoons and devilishly handsome cheekbones, my family does not come from Korean royalty. This is undoubtedly a huge loss for me, but, to be fair, probably also a blessing in disguise for all of us. Koreans are already pretentious and snobby enough at base-level; if I were rich I would 100% develop a god-complex, though these days this usually manifests itself in the form of cringey TikTok influencer accounts, so I think I dodged a bullet there.

Growing up, I hated using silver spoons because of two stupid reasons. First, if I left my spoon inside a bowl of hot soup, it’d burn my hand when I picked it up. Physicists call this phenomena metal conductivity; Darwin, always a charmer with words, coined it natural selection. Both are conspiracy theorists and cannot be trusted.

Secondly, for some strange reason, my silver spoon would rapidly tarnish if I ate Korean steamed egg with it. Whenever this happened, I would always hold the spoon up to my mom, as if I were interrogating her: did you accidentally sub sesame oil for cyanide? Through the process of writing this piece, I looked up for the first time what drives this color change: the sulfur in egg yolk oxidizes silver. Feel free to use that as a fun fact to kill time when you accidentally join a work meeting on time instead of a nonchalant, sixty seconds past the hour.

Even when the egg would tarnish my silver spoon, I never bore the consequences of having to restore it to it’s natural, sparkling state. My mom took care of all that. And so whenever I visit home and realize our spoons are clean to the point where I can see my own reflection, I think not about status, or health, or wealth. I think about how my mom must have noticed the spoons were unacceptably tarnished and meticulously scrubbed them down with toothpaste over the running sink.

Inside my brainspace, this image of my mom is juxtaposed with the American phrase “born with a silver spoon in your mouth”. Strutting along my Ivy League campus, I’d hold my chest up high, giving a polite nod to the crew team whenever they passed by me. Ah yes, I too was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I may not have been born into a wealthy family, but I inherited something greater—a loving family.

While silver was intentionally employed by my grandparents and parents as guardians of health and indicators of wealth, I’ve simply come to associate silver with family and love. Every single Korean meal I’ve had at home has been consumed with silver spoons, and almost every meal I’ve enjoyed with my spoon has been in the presence of more than one family member. Food, silver, and family, to me, are all just one degree removed from spoons. How cool is that?

Unlike gold, silver tarnishes even when you take great care of it. To me, this is not a flaw, but a part of it’s natural beauty. The more you use a silver spoon or wear a silver necklace, the quicker it tarnishes. The more love you give, the more it oxidizes.

Something about that really comforts me.

instagram: @wry.mood

podcast: leap years pod

goodreads: what i’m reading

1. not metal chopsticks though, because metal chopsticks suck. unless you're trying to diet and want to rely on food slipping out and your fingers cramping, then by all means, leverage the craftsmanship of metal chopsticks.