Introduction
I was helping my parents move into their new house this summer when I found my favourite lunch bag from primary school. It was a small, green rectangular bag, patched with two cute cats playing the piano. Although the bag was covered with an unidentifiable stain, I refused to let my parents throw it out. The lunch bag reminds me of the best parts of my childhood with all the things it once held. I remember the sound of my Mother placing my lunchbox on the kitchen counter before the school bus arrived. I remember the soft clatter of glass containers and metal utensils as I walked down the school hallways. Finally, I distinctly remember unpacking my lunch as the bell rang. Every hearty meal leaving me full and content. To me, salvaging this stained artifact was not at all gross, but rather a symbol of surviving years warm home cooked meals.
Mediation
For more than a decade, my childhood lunch bag was a significant part of a daily ritual of nourishment and affection. It is an object that mediates between the self and the social world, serving as a middle ground for the private space of my home and the public sphere of my school. To reflect on the words of Sherry Turkle, she writes that theory enables us to “explore how everyday objects become part of our inner life” (Turkle). By taking a moment to appreciate how we use these mundane objects, we extend the reach of our sympathies for the memories, the people around us, and the world within it. Moving to Canada alone from Vietnam marked the moment I began packing my own lunches for the first time. Although the food in my new glass container was edible, and occasionally tasty, it was never the same without my Mother’s special touch. I realized that it is more than just about sustenance. A meal is a medium through which care, culture, and identity are communicated. We associate food with different cultures, nutrition, health, community, human rights, and so much more. As someone who has migrated a lot, I have always struggled to fully identify with my Vietnamese culture and heritage. Hence, this lunch bag is a testament to my belonging in all the places I have lived in as a child, when I was completely clueless to the gravity of any societal pressures to fit in. The rediscovery of this beautiful object of great sentimental value reminds me of the intimacy of past homes, friendships, and worries that are no longer in my life.
Media Theory
Looking at my lunch bag through a media theory lens, I find that it echoes Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about objects being more just a vessel but the message itself. I vividly recall being in middle school, waiting for my friends to pick up their lunch bags off the shelves at the cafeteria table. I watched the abundance of colorful lunch bags go by, each a unique pattern and shape with the familiar names of my pupils scribbled in ink. The lunch bags are full of personality, their visibility communicating care, tradition, continuity, but also internationality. As I look at my own lunch bag now, I realize just how much objects can communicate, not through words but through materials, textures, and smells. Beyond just communication, the lunch bag can also be linked to Michel Foucault’s theory of the disciplinary society, which discusses how ordinary objects have the power to inscribe social norms into our bodies. Additionally, Bernadette Wegenstein’s chapter explores how the body as a medium of expression, through practices like dieting, can also shape how culture is lived and performed (Wegenstein). The lunch bags in the school cafeteria disciplines appetite and behaviour, as it is where we all learned the socially acceptable ways of eating, making social interactions, and what to subconsciously mask or perform.
Conclusion
To my peers reading this who may also be navigating hybrid identities, I hope my exploration of childhood lunch bags speaks to a shared experience of mediation. Objects from the past are evocative, and often serve as important reminders that making peace with our identity does not only happen through language or policy, but it can happen through small, material gestures. I do not need to know the root cause of the bag’s stains and loose threads to admire its ability to translate love into something edible, something visible. That visibility is doing what Turkle says evocative objects do, “bringing philosophy down to earth” (Turkle). As the lunch bag mediates between theory and lived experience, it becomes a marker of difference, my personal signal of foreignness, and ultimately embodies the distance between my Mother’s kitchen at home and my rental space in Vancouver.
How about you? What do you carry with you when you move between worlds?
References
Turkle, Sherry. “What Makes an Object Evocative?” Evocative Objects, by Sherry Turkle, The MIT Press, 2007, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhg8p.39. Accessed 6 Oct. 2025.
Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Body.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, by W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 19–34.
Kim Chi, thank you for such a soft mix between media theory and a very personal story. And I especially appreciated your conclusion. It feels warm in my heart. Okay, back to media studies now!
I really enjoyed the idea of your lunch bag as “the middle ground” between personal and public, this is a new perspective for me that you unpacked briefly, but clearly. Another topic that you touched on that I find valuable in general is food as a mediator of care and cultural identity: it’s a very rich topic deserving of a whole separate post.
What can you say about your lunchbox’s affordances? Are there any that stand out to you in terms of mediating your identity, for example?
Hi Bara! Thank you so much for your kind words, it feels warm in my heart! And thank you for the question, I think one of the most meaningful affordances of my lunchbox is its ability to carry and contain, both literally (nourishment) and symbolically (memory and identity). Being a small object, its portability afforded me the ability to move between spaces while still bringing a piece of my cultural and familial identity with me and I think that is really beautiful how it mediates who I am across contexts!
Hi Kim Chi!!
I love how sentimental this post was :,))
I thought the way you described the lunch kit as something that travels “between worlds” to be really beautiful. It made me think about how starting either daycare or primary school is many of our first experiences being away from home for an extended period of time. We are left by ourselves with only a backpack and a lunch kit to last during the time away. I think you can view the lunch kit as having taken on a new meaning as you have moved to a different country and are responsible for preparing your own meals. I believe your object really mirrors the childhood feeling of stepping into independence and leaving the comfort of home behind. Awesome post!!
Hi Lucy, thank you so much! I really appreciate your comment on the experiences of daycare/primary school being our first time away from home for long. It can be a transformative and scary time and having an object of care from home can be very comforting in that way. I’m glad you can feel the themes of childhood and stepping into independence through this post. After all, we are always moving to the next scary level of independence, but it’s nice to know that fond memories will not be lost because these objects can hold them!
Hi Kim Chi,
What a lovely post! I’m a sucker for nostalgia so I deeply resonated with your evocative object — I remember growing up that lunch bags were definitely a source of expression and personality, from dinosaurs to Justin Bieber. I thought it was really touching reading your reflection on the lunch bag’s stains representing endurance and evidence of memory. Connecting it to your mother preparing you food was also very sweet and something I resonated with as well. Although I haven’t moved as far as you have, being away from home has incited similar introspection of getting older.
Hi Victoria,
Thank you so much for your lovely words! I’m so glad my post resonated with you and reminded you of growing up. I bet I would have been so jealous of your awesome lunchboxes. Although you haven’t moved across the world, I think being any proximity away from home will always be understandably scary, and such a brave thing to do! It is nice that we can exist in this space together while we are going such similar struggles of growing up.
Hi Kim Chi! This was such a beautiful and heartfelt post, I could almost hear the clatter of the lunch containers and smell the warm meals you described. The way you tied your lunch bag to identity, migration, and belonging really touched me. It’s amazing how something so ordinary can hold entire worlds of memory and meaning.
Your reflection on how the lunch bag mediated between home and school made me think about my own objects that carry pieces of “home.” For me, it’s a small keychain I brought from Palestine. Every time I see it, it reminds me of where I come from, even though I’m thousands of miles away. Like your lunch bag, it holds both distance and closeness at once.
I really liked the way you tied it to McLuhan and how the lunch bag isn’t just a vessel but a message itself. It made me wonder how many “invisible” objects in our routines carry unspoken stories of care, culture, and love. Thank you for such a thoughtful piece! : ) And I really liked the conclusion, it makes us pause and appreciate the small things that keep us connected to who we are.
Hi Maryam! Thank you so much for your sweet comment, I’m so happy to know that you could empathize with the moments I described. I would love to hear more about your keychain from home, it is a beautiful thing that such a small object can hold so much more than its physical abilities. Being thousands of miles away from home can be terrifying, but it is comforting knowing that we will always carry pieces of home and our identity with us everywhere we go, and that we are not alone in this journey!
Hi Kim Chi,
I really liked how you used something as simple as a lunch bag to explore bigger ideas about memory and identity. The way you connect “evocative objects” to your own migration story feels genuine — it shows how theory can actually help us make sense of personal experience. I especially liked your point that the lunch bag mediates between private and public spaces; it made me think about how certain objects quietly form who we become without us realizing it.
Your use of McLuhan and Foucault was also really interesting. It made me see how even caring routines like lunch can have disciplinary effects — how we learn social norms through small, repetitive actions. I think your essay captures that tension between love and control really well.
The question you ended with — “What do you carry with you when you move between worlds?” — really stayed with me. It made me think about the everyday objects that carry traces of our past selves and how they help us navigate belonging.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment! I really appreciate how you picked up on that tension between love and control that I hoped to express. I think part of what makes any of our everyday objects so powerful is the way it operates in that in-between space, and what it teaches us about life!
Hi Kim Chi! I really enjoyed reading your post 🙂 the part about hearing the clatter of the containers in the hallway really stuck with me, it was such a vivid detail. I also thought your reflection on identity and moving between cultures was really powerful. It made me think about the little objects I’ve held onto that remind me of home, even if they seem ordinary to others. I’m curious, do you think the “disciplining” aspect of the lunch bag (like how you mentioned Foucault) outweighs its more personal, comforting meaning? Or do both exist for you at the same time?
Thanks for sharing this! 🙂
Hi Lea! Thank you so much for this lovely comment, I’m so happy to hear that you resonated with the post and have little objects of your own with personal stories attached to them! Would love to hear more about them sometimes. And thank you for your question! I think the disciplining aspect of the lunch bag was a big part for me growing up when I used to take having home cooked meals for granted. But now that I’m living without it, I see the personal meaning outweighing everything else. It just makes you think about how often we only appreciate these everyday objects when they are already gone!
Hi Kim Chi!!
I loved reading your post and how you connect theory to your own memories so naturally. The way you describe your lunch bag as a “middle ground” between private and public spaces really stood out to me, especially how the bag becomes a material site where identity and care exist.
You also mention food as a form of communication, which made me think about how the meals themselves could hold similar power. Do you think the food inside your lunch bag might also act as an evocative object, carrying traces of memory, culture, or even migration in the same way the bag itself does?
Hi Sam, thank you so much! I do think the meals themselves are powerful, which is fascinating because they are such temporary objects! I think it is a beautiful form of communication. Not only does it have the ability to represent one’s culture, religion, and personality, but it also says a lot about the person who prepared the meal. The specific way my Mom cut the vegetables, the seasonings she picked, her intentional placement of what she knows I like, it’s her way of communicating care and love beyond words!
Hello Kim Chi! This was such a heartfelt read! I really felt the warmth and nostalgia in your description of the lunch bag and the memories it holds. The way you connected theory to your personal experience felt so natural, especially when you described food as a “medium through which care, culture, and identity are communicated.” That line really stuck with me!
It actually made me think of the insulated grey thermos I’ve had since kindergarten. I still use it now, even though it’s a bit dented and the paint has chipped. Like your lunch bag, it’s such a quiet reminder of the unexpected things that stay along with us for so long, even where it’s least expected. I love how your post captures that exact feeling, how these small, worn objects somehow hold the weight of belonging and memory no matter where we end up!
Hi Nate! Thank you so much for your warm comment! I love that you were able to resonate with the blog and that it reminded you of your own lunch box from childhood! It is beautiful how these little imperfections can carry so much emotion, memory, and meaning! I wonder what stories your thermos would tell if it could speak!
Hi Kim Chi!
Firstly, I loved reading about your lunch bag and how it has afforded you so much, even being far away from it. It reminded me of when I would carry my massive, industrial-looking, multiple-tiered lunch container to school and on the table itself was a sign for my friends to get seated and wait for me to share what I had for lunch that day with them.
Your connection to McLuhan and how your lunchbox has become a tool for communication resonated with me because of that! I love the connection of food to the body, as I am sure in Asian cultures, the communal act of eating together, cooking for a loved one, and other actions connecting the body to food have certainly become a means of communication (and my personal love language).
I would love to hear more about your interpretation of how the lunchbox connects to Foucault’s theory of the disciplinary society, because I think this is such an interesting and relevant connection! I could totally relate to how lunch box portions or even the contents of what’s in the lunch bag kind of instil norms of stereotypes that I often didn’t even recognise as something that unconsciously controls how we engage with food.
Definitely seeing in the media and experiencing that typical ‘your food smells funny’ comments during lunch leads to some ambivalence personally, but I ultimately love how your lunch box has afforded you with so much gratitude for home and for food!
Hi Ela! Thank you so much for your sweet comment and the beautiful memory you shared that is so vivid to me! It’s awesome that we’ve both had such similar memories about school lunches with friends even though we grew up in entirely different places. About Foucault’s theory of the disciplinary society, I think that to a child, the lunchbox can dictate what they should and shouldn’t consume. Even the dividers in a lunchbox can split up the food groups and ingrain a sense of discipline in that way!
Hi Kim Chi! Thank you for such a beautiful post! This piece really warmed my heart. As a third culture kid, I completely resonate with this post! We often forget that an object is more than just a thing; it’s a companion that carries memories. It often serves as a reminder of our loved ones.
Growing up, my mom would always pack my lunches. As much as I complained back then about the food, I would do anything now to have a home-cooked meal.
You are right, a lunch box is more than just an object, it’s a connection to our identity. The food we eat is often viewed or sometimes judged by others. A lunch is a reflection of someone’s background and home life. As you mentioned, lunch boxes represent social behaviour and societal norms. The food we eat acts as a reminder of where we are or where we wish we were.
I often talk to friends living abroad about how we would do anything to have Costa Rican food. This connection to food is always a reminder that we are not fully complete where we are and how a piece of us will always be tied back to home. Whether through food or an object (lunch box), it serves as a reminder of how much I miss home and memories of who I used to be. I really appreciate this post as it really hits close to home 🙂
Hi Ami! Thank you so much for your lovely comment and for sharing your personal experiences! I love the way you describe evocative objects a companion that carries memories because they really do serve as a reminder of our loved ones, even when we are far apart!
Hi Kim Chi
I love how you started with a simple personal memory and expanded into a reflection on culture, giving a personal touch. Your connection between the lunch bag and concepts from Turkle and Foucalte is insightful. Drawing on Turkle’s ideas on evocative objects and connecting how everyday objects can hold deep emotional meaning. And referring to Fulcault and highlighting how even small everyday objects can teach us social norms. You’re words, “A meal is a medium through which care, culture, and identity are communicate” really stuck with me as it reminds me of how food connects me to my Chinese heritage and how the lunches my mom would carefully pack for me and my brothers also carry the same sense of love and identity. However, I remember how some of my peer would sometimes turn up their noses at what they considered to be a “bad smell” or even stole food from my desk. These reactions shaped my own social norms for a while, making me feel anxious about bringing my lunches to school. Your writing has made me look more closely at the lunches my mom made and how they connected me closer with my Chinese culture, even through the awkward elementary school lunches I endured. Thanks for sharing your writing as a reminder to look around and notice the small things that shape who we are 🙂
Hi Alisha! Thank you so much for your lovely comment and for sharing your personal experiences with school lunches and your Chinese culture. I’m sorry to hear about your peers and how that experience negatively affected your feelings about bringing lunch to school. Food is such a beautiful and significant part of our identities and that is something to be respected and proud of. It definitely shapes who we are and I think you embracing your Chinese culture now is super awesome and inspiring!
Hi, Kimchi! This was such a thought-provoking post! I never thought of the lunch box being an object of mediation between the private space (home) and public space that we bring it out of (school). I think about how my mother sometimes used to pack me lunch where the rice was shaped as a bear, the seaweed was shaped so that its eyes looked like it was closed, the omelette made it look like a blanket, as if the bear was fast asleep in a bed of omelette. I think the idea of the lunchbox that was packed for us as an object of mediation, affection, goes far beyond how it’s used to nourish us and keep our energies replenished throughout the day. It truly is the vessel that represents our personalities via food (whether it’s culture, the diets we partake in, etc.).
Hi Christine! Thank you so much for your comment! I loved the clear image you painted of the lunch your mom packed, it’s adorable. And yes, I agree that objects from our childhood can represent far more than just nourishment. When we see it as a vessel to represent our personalities and culture, we begin to see the beauty and value in other mundane objects as well!