I turned on the TV one morning to find the Live with Kelly and Ryan show with a guest chef demonstrating creative lunch ideas in a bento box. In the 10 minutes I tuned in, she had filled only 2 of the 5 tiny boxes, taking her time to create perfectly manicured food items.
One month into the school year, this had already been a sore subject for me, as you’ll read on to see.
The topper was this episode that left me thinking, who has this kind of time?!
I admit I was drawn into the seemingly life-hack-esque appeal of Bento boxes at first.
But today I’m convinced Bento boxes only exist to make parents feel inadequate.
It must take superpowers that I don’t have to ensure the animal creations or cheese cracker combos I see floating around online don’t mold to each other from moisture.
The review I got from my 6 year old when I tried to replicate a mock lunchable cheese-cracker combo was simply put as “bad.”
We are made to feel we are helping the environment while simultaneously crafting fun lunches, but in order for the fun to feasibly work, most items need to be pre-packaged or placed in a plastic bag first anyway.
After multiple fails, now everytime I look at this box, with these empty compartments staring at me, I feel like I’m trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
A self-proclaimed “creative-type” I still caught myself searching through the world wide web to gain inspiration for making lunches my kids would be in awe of.
A task a “good mother” would do.
I began this school year determined – to make lunch-making for my elementary students fun – for myself, and for them.
Only two weeks in, the overwhelmingness I felt let me know to let it go.
What with my kids each liking something different, crackers getting soggy from the cheese that created the cute, little images or DIY lunchable. Some food not being eaten, eaten up at home before I could pack it, and all the time and energy I was putting into this seemingly simple task.
It reminded me of the beautiful images of raw or fake food on TV food commercials. They look delicious, they’re beautiful, but they’re inedible.
That’s when I stopped this nonsense. Realizing organizing things – lunches, refrigerators, closets – was simply a trend. A trend that I had been exposed to enough times to finally attempt to mimic.
These weren’t my goals. They were simply someone else’s agenda. Some aspiring influencer’s desire to have likes and follows, and sponsorships.
I also felt justified upon reading an article a fellow writer, (and teacher as well!) posted about the pressure teacher’s today may feel to be insta-worthy. To post content about their teaching, and to use the plethora of ideas on their newsfeed. Read that here.
The same applies to this desire parents seem to have to post perfect lunch boxes. And for us layman to feel as though we should be making them.
My K-8 lunch experience involved a bologna or peanut butter sandwich, a quarter to buy chips with, a milk card and a cookie. The middle child of 7 may have made my lunch more simple than others, but I didn’t feel any less loved and I don’t remember feeling deprived.
And what if these efforts we make to send our kids with star cut-out sandwiches and ham wrapped cheese bites, car-shaped pancakes, and apple slices with eye balls, just takes away their own creativity because we are forcing our own on them?
And, worse, what if they are seeing the iphone camera out in the kitchen, learning that showing off perfection is the goal of everyday things like school lunches, and first day of school photos?
I, myself, did the same in the first 2 weeks of school. I rummaged around the refrigerator, finding the perfect pieces to combine into perfect shapes and images. Only to find my children ate the simple things that took no time to make.
So, today I decided I was done being pulled into one of the parenting spells of the digital world. Done believing that my children will only feel loved if they open that box at school and find a picture perfect, or better yet, insta-worthy lunch.
I’m realizing that the extra minutes it takes me to think about, search for, and create it, are minutes that I could be playing kickball, card games, or teaching them to make their own food creations.
Finally, I’m accepting that, like many things posted online, that sometimes make me feel bad, or like I should be doing more or different, have intentions that have nothing to do with me, so are better left ignored.
Perfectly crafted lunches in tidy little bento boxes are of course just representative of the larger problem of social media; which is this picture perfect skewed reality disguised as inspiration that doesn’t actually fit so perfectly into the real world. It is essentially a filter.
So, I’m taking one step closer to ignoring the ways the online world make me feel like looking perfect is more important than just being ourselves, and saying go f yourself perfect bento boxes.
Those lunches don’t even make sense anyway.