Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna / She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat by Yuzaki Sakaomi

At the library, I came across this lovely, wholesome yuri, She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat. In a lot of ways, this feels like someone said, “What if, What Did You Eat Yesterday? but lesbians?!” Except, unfortunately, it turns out that women have complicated relationships with food all over the world.

CONTENT WARNING: Food, Eating Disorders, Fatphobia, Nonconsensual food restriction, Shaming around Food Consumption

SPOILERS

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Nomoto, just like the title tells you, loves to cook. If she has any problem, it’s that, as a single gal, she has a tendency to make way more than she can reasonably eat. One day, on the way home from work, she runs into her neighbor, Kasuga, a big woman who clearly likes to eat.

I have to tell you? I was immediately in love with Kasuga. She’s possibly the butchest woman I have ever seen in a yuri. She’s fucking huge and has a belly, but is not portrayed as “ugly fat,” or even “custesy fat,” do you know what I mean? She looks LIKE ME. Like, I have wider hips, bigger boobs, and am way, way shorter, but this is my body type. I’m just kind of a presence. Big, taking up space, enjoying the fuck out of my sixteen buckets of KFC.

I love her.

And, so does Nomoto. At first, this is a friendship of convenience, ala, “I like to cook, you like to eat, let’s make an arrangement.” But, very quickly, we see Naomoto adore the way that Kasuga eats–she full-body enjoys a good meal.

I could have read pages and pages of these two women just cooking meals together, shopping, and eating, but, early on, we get a hint that there’s a dark cloud around Kasuga’s relationship with food. She refuses to be shamed into eating less, but it’s clear she gets harassed. Part of why she quickly agrees to eating in with Nomoto is not only because it reduces cost, but also because she doesn’t have to put up with cooks and waiters who will short change her and not offer her the portion-sizes she wants.

Which is only the tip of the bullsh*t iceberg.

It turns out that Kasuga grew up in a “traditional” household where it was simply understood that the girls and women of the family got fed second, ate the leftovers that the men and boys couldn’t finish.

What is frustrating about this tidbit of information is that I normally like to corroborate what I read and link to articles to show that, yes, this a thing. But, if you google this idea, all you get are articles on why it’s healthy to eat less and how the Japanese are so GREAT at staying thin, and you can too with portion control! You can put in the ACTUAL WORDS ‘food abuse in Japan’ and what you get back are 10 great ways to stay thin, the Japanese way!

It’s enraging.

Because this is abuse.

And THANK GOD that is how it’s framed in this manga. Kasuga still gets pressure from her family to return home and be a dutiful daughter, they even pull the “you need to care for your aging mother,” but she simply refuses. She’s like, look, you fed the boys, let the boys do the work for once.

They later get a new neighbor who has been shamed about her inability to eat much. I’m less clear about what’s going on with her (she reads to me as someone with a fairly serious eating disorder, but it’s presented as ‘just her way of being,’ which it very well might be). Regardless, both Kasuga and Nomoto find ways to include her in the fun without the pressure to partake.

Nomoto also does something you don’t see as often in yuri, too, which is that she has that scene that I’ve talked about in yaoi, where the main character suddenly decides that ‘maybe gay?’ and actually does research into it. Nomoto’s is very natural, actually? She does some Googling and gets some information, but what really makes her start to understand her own lesbianism is connecting with a fellow food blogger who retweeted a link to a lesbian movie.

What I love about this manga is that I was briefly worried that the new blogger was going to become a rival love interest, and be the thing that pushes the two women together… but no. The mangaka doesn’t go there. Women don’t exist to tear each other down. Instead the blogger becomes a confidant immediately, someone for Nomoto to have as a sounding board for her new feelings.

And then the blogger comes out as ace/aro, and I’m like, IS YUZAKI-SENSEI TRYING TO MAKE A PERFECT MANGA FOR ME??? Because they have succeeded.

Anyway, if you can survive some of triggering food related stuff, this might also be a perfect manga for you. I love the art. Everyone is drawn cute, but real. Like, our new neighbor also looks like a traditional lesbian? It makes me very happy. I will recommend it heartily to anyone who can read about food.

Or watch…. as there is a live-action tv series, although finding a version of it that’s not riddled with spyware may be difficult. It looks cute as f*ck, though.