MOM By: Seung Won Park
My mother is fifty-four years old now, though she barely looks forty. This is not the compliment of an adoring daughter who believes her mother will forever be the most beautiful woman in the world— to her, of course— but a clinical, unflinching testament to the hard work put in by the matriarch herself. My mother has gleaming skin that should have begun to wrinkle decades ago. She is noticeably slight of frame: not in the stark Didion manner where its ascetic, acerbic core, fueled by cigarettes and salted almonds, undercuts its fragility even as the body continues to hurtle toward the physical limits of its own frailty, but softer. Arms nearly devoid of muscle, almost cartoonish in their refusal to widen from wrists to elbows to shoulders. Narrow waist, precariously balanced atop wider hips than one would anticipate for a woman of her build. Protruding collarbones and a neck seemingly overflowing with tendons, though 6
the pearls hung about them ensure they never jump too far out of place. Flesh draped gentle and thin over the bones, like the black Rick Owens and Issey Miyake garments she likes to wear: always flowing, always smooth, never rigid nor, god forbid, harsh. Softer. As if she had never looked any other way; as if she had existed since 1967 merely to defy our understanding of fifty-four— whereas you, Cho Yeo-Jeong—who just starred in Bong Joon-Ho’s international blockbuster, Parasite, not two years ago—you’re only forty yourself. But you, too, look far younger, as many South Korean women do. You and my mother are beautiful in the same way. In fact, you two could quite reasonably be assumed to be sisters. And when I watched you in Parasite for the first time, playing that comically naive Mrs. Park, I found myself so immediately reminded of my own mother; not in your gleaming complexion, though, nor your wide, fawn-like eyes,
