Matcha, the vibrant green Japanese ceremonial tea, has officially taken over the aesthetic beverage gam.
You’re either on one of three sides. On one, you genuinely enjoy matcha and consume it with appreciation when you can. On the other hand, you find it disgusting and think it tastes like grass. If you’re on the final side, however, you only enjoy matcha because you think it makes you look cooler.
Most people around the world find themselves on the final side, thanks to the exposure matcha has received from social media. Performative matcha, because yes, it’s a real term, describes the phenomenon of a person who only consumes matcha for the aesthetic, rather than the enjoyment of the drink.
So, how did we get here? How did matcha go from a culturally significant ceremonial beverage to a performative status symbol for people who don’t actually like it? Let’s rewind.
For those who may not know, matcha can be traced back all the way to the Tang Dynasty in China. While the drink is largely synonymous with Japanese traditions and customs, it wasn’t introduced to Japan until the Song Dynasty. A Japanese Buddhist monk, Myōan Eisai, brought the tea seeds and Zen Buddhist ways of preparing the tea with him. He planted these seeds around the temple in Kyoto, and matcha was produced in extremely limited quantities and regarded as a luxury beverage and status symbol.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and it seems like we can’t escape matcha.
It’s everywhere. Western culture has plastered and advertised matcha as the new hot commodity, adding all sorts of flavors and variations to fit the taste of its consumer base.
This is where, in my opinion, the problem ultimately begins.
Let me make something very clear: you can genuinely enjoy matcha. Many people do, including myself. But when matcha, a drink that for thousands of years was a luxury and something to be appreciated, turns into another pillar of overconsumption, that’s when we need to reevaluate our approach. I’ll break this next section down into two parts; the first will be my opinions on how accessible matcha has become, and the second will be my opinions on why matcha has become synonymous with the word, performative.
It’s in Starbucks, in Krispy Kreme, in Dunkin’. Go to any small cafe or coffee shop, and you’ll find matcha on the menu. Open your social media platform of choice, and you’ll see influencers making their daily matcha, the West Village girls of New York going to pilates and matcha, or countless “clean girl” images of matcha. Matcha, whether you’re consuming it online or in a cafe, has become too accessible, in my opinion. It feels deeply wrong to get a “venti matcha latte with vanilla cold foam” from Starbucks, mostly because 95% of the time, you don’t even taste the matcha itself.
In addition to this, matcha should be prepared in an incredibly specific way to access all the flavor and health benefits. But when we get matcha from a food chain, it’s often cut with sugar, preservatives, and other artificial ingredients. Most of Western society says “matcha tastes like grass,” but when you add in milk, sugar, and flavoring, suddenly we can’t get enough of it.
This leads me to my next point: there are a lot of people who buy matcha for the picture. For the aesthetic. For the acknowledgement and assumption that they’re deep and mysterious because only they can stand a drink that most Western society demonizes.
“MatchaTok” has increased the rampant consumption of matcha, with hundreds of millions buying the drink for the cute video and to say the appealing phrase “Just grabbing a matcha”. This has increased global demand for the bright green powder, which manufacturers of matcha have been struggling to meet.
It’s quite ironic. We associate matcha with performative energy; we judge those who purchase it and assume that they don’t actually enjoy it. And then, we turn around and buy it ourselves, all for the mental realization of “Oh, I’m participating in an aesthetic activity.”
Many traditionally Asian activities, habits, foods, clothing, and more have been systematically discriminated against by Western society for so long, and with the creation of the “consumer”, it’s clear we have turned these sacred rituals into a hypercommercialized version to serve our own mindsets. The best example of this? Sushi.
Whether it was in movies or IRL, people have been condemning sushi since it was first brought into Western cuisine and media. No one wanted to eat raw fish and smelly seaweed. I’m sure we’ve all seen that clip from The Breakfast Club, where Molly Ringwald shows her peers she’s eating sushi for lunch. Judd Nelson follows this up by saying, “You won’t accept a guy’s tongue in your mouth and you’re gonna eat that?”
Nowadays, we see people chowing down on sushi like it’s going out of style. People can’t seem to get enough of a dish that was once (and still is) deemed too disgusting for human consumption. Sushi equals status now.
Matcha, in itself, is still a beverage of status today, although for much different reasons. In the past, if you could afford to consume matcha, you were considered important. If you purchase the iconic iced matcha latte today, you are considered cultured and elevated, you can enjoy a drink that many others can’t, and you’re deemed a “matcha girlie.”
I don’t want you to stop drinking the matcha latte from Starbucks if it genuinely brings you joy. I don’t want you to stop buying matcha powder and making it at home if that’s your way to treat yourself.
But I do want you to stop participating in trends, like buying the cutesy matcha latte, if it’s something you’re only doing for the approval of others. The process of buying matcha simply because of the aesthetic is a sign of conformity. You don’t need to participate in every trend.
Maintaining your unique interests and tastes is one of the smartest and coolest ways to show the world that you know who you are. Matcha will always be there, so try it out, and if you like it, that’s amazing! But don’t give yourself FOMO just because you think everyone else around you wants you to drink something that tastes like grass.
It’s never a good look.