Why I'm Uncomfortable With "Neurospicy"

Growing up Indian, being called spicy never felt like a compliment.

It wasn’t playful nor was it endearing. It was a warning. Passed between aunties and uncles, teachers and neighbours, wrapped in a laugh but really, never quite funny, but a joke we were meant to endure nonetheless.

Spiciness, in our context, was often linked to the chilli padi, the tiny, potent seed of the chilli. Small, but deadly.

It referred to a temper. A sharpness around girls who spoke too quickly, reacted too loudly, felt things too strongly; a sharpness that implied it needed to be tamed and softened in order to be more ladylike. In hindsight, I can see the traces of ADHD in that fiery reputation, but back then, it was simply a sign that I was trouble. Girl like me were expected to tuck those parts of ourselves away, applied especially if you were Indian. Anger, in this patriarchal society, wasn't allowed to belong to girls, who were raised to be marriageable, easygoing, and never the source of discomfort. Spicy was the worst case scenario - that...... we wouldn't find a partner. We were taught to be demure, agreeable, softly spoken, and self-contained, and cover our mouths when we laughed. A girl who spoke her mind might have been celebrated when it was within family, yet met with embarrassment when it occurred outside of the family. Spicy was used as a descriptor of too muchness.

“She’s such a chilli padi.” “Watch out for that one! She’s spicy.”

When I moved to Australia, spicy took on a different meaning. It became a shorthand for different. Brown. Foreign. From elsewhere.

It meant you weren’t like the others. Not quite Australian, never Australian enough, no matter how hard you tried. Immigrant, not expat.

And over time, the message sank in, that there was a right kind of girl to be and a right kind of home to grow up in. If your kitchen smelled like cumin and cardamom, people might smile politely, but they’d remember. They’d talk about it later, in hushed tones or offhand comments, talking about how the smell lingered. The smell may have clung to the clothes and walls and their noses, but those comments...... clung to my sense of belonging. A compliment was passed and I realised what a model migrant was and that I just had to become it. “Your kitchen doesn’t smell weird, like Devi’s does.”

So I began to sanitise. First slowly, then all at once.

I stopped cooking with spice if guests were coming. Eventually, I stopped cooking our food altogether. The foods that reminded me of home, the foods Granny made every Sunday. I stopped opening the red-lidded plastic jar of murukku in the pantry. I avoided the sizzle of mustard seeds in oil, the frying of curry leaves. I stopped reaching for the recipes that made my home smell like my childhood to make meals like chicken and three veg.

And I miss it. I miss it deeply.

ID: A brown hand adorned with gold jewellery eats rice and curry off a green banana leaf. There is a variety of curries, sambar and chutney around.

I miss that smell when I eat with my hands on a banana leaf, when I suck curry off my fingers, when I mix raita with rice and press it into a soft mound before lifting it to my mouth. That smell that was once a source of shame has become a quiet act of reclamation.

For so long, whiteness taught me that smell belonged only in the confines of my community. That if I wanted to live and work and move outside of it, I had to neutralise myself. Become less flavourful and less pungent, and more digestible. Integrate, please. This was the way to be in Australia if you wanted to have friends outside of the community. This is the way it continues to be in Australia that talks about their immigrant problem and the "disgusting habits" we bring with us that taint the Australian way of life. It sickens me to see these conversations, where we should be celebrating what multiculturalism brings to the table. They take our food..... only on condition.

So when I see the word spicy now used with pride whether it be on T-shirts, in bios, on mugs and stickers, I feel conflicted because this term came from the White community....the very people who told me I couldn't have spice. The very people for whom spice is conditional. To them, it was a neutral term that they got to take and spin into something positive. I understand the intent, to make something heavy feel lighter, more joyful, and even cheeky.

ID: This is a screenshot from Reddit. Mikeman7918 says "I think it's funny. The word "spicy" doesn't really have any negative connotations and it comes off to me zoomer slang term of endearment. _TheGudGud agrees, saying "This is how I feel as well. It seems like innocent playfulness and that's about it". Lysss777 then adds in a BIPOC perspective, saying "Unless you're Latina, then spicy can have a negative meaning" This was used to exemplify the differences in meaning across different cultural subgroups.

But I also can’t ignore the dissonance. The weight that they were trying to make lighter was weight that was never theirs to bear.

I watched the same word used to label, isolate, and warn others about girls like me, and now I watch as white peers now wear it like an accessory. They get to take it on and off as they please. They get to decide when it's fun and when it's too much. It reeks of a power dynamic that they don't know they're even wielding and when they continue to wield it even when they do know, it unsettles me.

When the very people who taught us to suppress our spices begin to celebrate the concept, the power imbalance remains. They still control the narrative and it feels like colonisation all over again. They still get to set the standard for what is acceptable, for when spicy is playful and when it is problematic. They giveth, and they taketh away and we still sit..... powerless.

And so I sit with the term neurospicy with some discomfort. Okay, a lot. Not because I don’t love language or playfulness or the ways we try to find each other through words, but because I think we need to pause and ask where these words come from, who they were once used against, and what they still carry for some of us. Particularly when we're being neurodiversity affirming and unpacking social justice concepts and privilege, this is a salient argument to consider in terms of giving power back to marginalised communities, and to recognise white privilege in the everyday use of language.

Consider this an invitation to consider that your version of a word might not be the only one, that there are layers beneath it with an important cultural context, and that just because you don’t think something is harmful doesn’t mean it isn’t.

It is a privilege to learn about racism, rather than live through it.

  About the Author Sandhya Menon is an Autistic/ADHDer Psychologist who grew up in Singapore and moved to Australia for university, where she now lives with her husband and children. Her father's side of the family is of Keralan descent and her name is very typical for a Malayalee. This is a longer form version of a post first published on Instagram in February 2024. Sandhya can be found at: Instagram: www.instagram.com/onwardsandupwardspsych Facebook: www.facebook.com/onanduppsych LinkedIn: Sandhya Menon | LinkedIn