Big Beautiful Female Theory

by Eloise Grills

Part feminist manifesto, part comic book, big beautiful female theory is a carnivalesque exploration of the ways identity is formed through culture, relationships and the weight of society’s expectations. Without falling into a simple recovery narrative, these essays also resonate with humour, which gives a sense of delight and optimism in defiance of difficult circumstances and unfair patriarchal structures.

With breathtaking honesty and fierce wit, Eloise Grills turns her life, her body and her mind into art, confronting what it means to grow up in an increasingly unfathomable world.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir, Australia, Essays, Graphic Novels

304 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 2022

About the author

Eloise Grills is a writer, poet and comics artist based in Footscray, heavily invested in the intersection between art, writing and having too many feelings. In 2018 she received the Felix Meyer Scholarship and won the Woollahra Digital Literary Prize for her Scum Mag column, Diary of a Post-Teenage Girl. She was a finalist for a Walkley for visual storytelling (the only queer naked punk lady to ever be shortlisted for a Walkley) and won the Lifted Brow/ RMIT non/fiction Lab Prize for Experimental Nonfiction, also in that year. She tweets and grams as @grillzoid.

https://eloisegrills.com/

https://twitter.com/grillzoid

https://www.instagram.com/grillzoid/

Reviews

[Krystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's going to be difficult to put into words how greatly this affected me and why, but I'll do my best!

This is part poetry, part comic, part picture book ... but mostly 'word-blurt'. Just a random assortment of words thrown together and labelled as art.

Now, normally that's the kind of 'literary' work that does my head in completely and frustrates me to tears but somehow there was such a profound meaning to these thrown together words that I suspect maybe they were thrown together with intentional exactness. A logic to the nonsense that hid so cleverly I felt it more deeply once I understood. This was, in my humble opinion, actually art.

Accompanied by an assault of naked portraits from a self-proclaimed fat woman this should have greatly offended me and yet I absolutely delighted in the raw honesty of it all. I adored this brutal self-reflection that almost brought me to tears. I languished over the words and enjoyed teasing out the meaning. And the meaning I was able to draw from these words and images made such an impact on me that I spent almost the entirety wanting to hug this woman or high five her or just nod and say, 'I understand.'

This is absolutely not what I was expecting from this book and I'm thrilled by it. More than a 'feminist manifesto', this spoke to me most because of the accounting of a fat woman. For the detailed experiences caused by a woman's body and society's negative connotations with the idea of 'fat'. SO MANY of the experiences she details are ones I've experienced myself and for that alone I was moved. I felt so much compassion, yet was somehow also inspired. Something about the way she relates her experiences speaks to me of a willingness to heal; a secret positivity that lurks behind even the most self-deprecating words.

With the personal reflections, an accompaniment of women and feminism from many angles - many of which I had to Google. I actually learned a lot reading this, and I enjoyed the delivery immensely. It scratched the surface of an awareness I've only recently felt springing to life so I enjoyed chasing all the leads and learning more about these other women and their stories.

Raw, brutal and utterly captivating.

It shouldn't have worked for me, but it absolutely won me over wholeheartedly.

[Isla · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is fabulous, gross and sad. i love it so much! it is messy and weird and so australian its jarring. the way grills combines the work of many revolutionary feminists before her (donna haraway, laura mulvey, judith butler) and trivial facets of popular culture to cleverly comment on how fat/chubby/plus size/chunky/curvy etc women are treated within western society and are ultimately demonised for their bodies is beautiful. she has also introduced me to other fat women artists through her poetry, whilst demanding for more fat women to enter the elitist space of art. her work is for the big girls of all types, the ones who want to be skinny, the ones who want to be fat, the ones who are getting bigger, the girls who have always been fat and the formally fat girls. i loved this memoir, although some parts were very cheesy, as it is so refreshing and satisfying to read the work of a woman who is accepts her body and being as it is without having to love all of it or hate any of it, just letting her body be her body. clearly grills work has greatly impacted me and has provided much needed comfort to me with my own attitudes and imagery i hold surrounding my own chubby body. a beautiful collection of poetry that is a love song to the fat girls of the world and i cannot wait to read more of her work <3

[Lucy · Rating 1 out of 5]

yeh…. No, clearly not a fan. I got this book last year at the Melbourne book store ‘hill of content bookshop’. So in my mind I got this book to be trendy or cool or quirky, creative. Yeh I’m not sure what I was thinking, I don’t think I even read the blurb or anything, I just grabbed it to be the things I listed above. The only positive of this book and giving it a star is its drawings and illustrations, I loved the style of them for sure. However, everything else I didn’t much related to - this book was a series of essays to make a manifesto and I think if I read this on the book I wouldn’t of bought it… it talks a lot about femininity and body image in a way that comes across a little vulgar to me so I couldn’t quite identify with. It got to the point where I was literally skim reading because I couldn’t get it or it just sort of irked me. But I can see that this book for someone else would be a four or five star for them, but for me it didn’t hit.

[Selma June · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was vociferous in the best ways - spirited, horny, vulnerable, colourful, uninhibited, tragic, painfully funny, relatable. I feel lucky to have been able to indulge in something so personal and raw. Parts feminist manifesto, comic book and cruel teenage diary - Eloise’s work is (a word I despise using) brave and self exploitative. Big Beautiful Female Theory will undoubtedly have you addicted, I could barely put it down between the blistering writing and insanely beautiful, previous artworks splattered throughout. It’s an absolute delight and makes me excited for what Eloise will give us in future.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a book written in/around Melbourne this feels two generations of feminism gone by. Someone will love this, but I felt reading it, that I had grown past it.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grills’s central question is if she shines a bright enough light on her body, her ugly truths, her darkest thoughts, her shame, her contradictions, will we still love her. (The answer of course is YES! These things are the reason we love her work.) Her words and her art felt so honest and raw, at times uncomfortably so (but I love some discomfort). I don’t know enough about art to comment but my favourite pieces had echoes of Mirka Mora I felt. Grills’s prose is electric and muscular. A manifesto, a memoir, a graphic novel, a poem, this book is so many things. I have avoided essay collections this year (I will finish ROOT AND BRANCH though) but Grills breathes new life into the possibilities of the form. I must confess to one essay, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Disgusting Cyborg Fantasies, not fully coming together for me or me failing to grasp it but perhaps I need to read it again.

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Despite all of the essays in this collection being on the topic of having a complicated relationship with one’s body and mental health, it somehow felt fractured as a book and I’m still not sure what the author was trying to convey. It seemed as though there were some points being made, but the stylistic choices muddled the message and made it seem like a chaotic string of half-formed ideas - the kind of conversation you have while completely drunk with your quasi-intellectual mates around a backyard brazier at 2am. In the harsh light of day, none of the threads make sense in the way they seemed to in the wee hours of the morning..: and yet here they’ve been published into a book that is shortlisted for the Stella Prize for some reason. Perhaps I am not the intended audience of this book and it has some merit that I am missing? Either way, this didn’t work for me at all, unfortunately.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

felt like I was getting waterboarded… but like in a slay cunty way

[Alexandra Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible.

[Saskia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to write about/ comment on, but has left me with much to think about in a really exciting way ☺️ enjoyed the structure and juxtaposition between streams of consciousness and poetry and quite academic/ engaged writing and how maybe these are all the same thing. Loved the art and how it could move from being quite casual/ silly to illustrating the point of nearby text to being its own narrative within the book. I especially resonated with the themes of confessional writing, honesty, and vulnerability, and the complexity of engaging with ~ expressing yourself ~ in art and on the internet and in life. I haven’t engaged that much with ‘feminist literature’ but this felt like a contemporary and exciting contribution, especially in ‘Australia’. Made me want to write ! Made me want to spill my guts on the internet ! Made me grateful to be able to borrow and share books with friends (thank you Uma 💝)

[Hollen C S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unique! Fabulous! Addictive!

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

2023 Stella Longlist
I really enjoyed this work that is part fierce rant, part art, part cry from within. Enlightening but also universal at times. I read it in stints, when I was in the right mood for it. So pleased it made the 2023 Stella list or I would probably have not been drawn to it. One to make you think.

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Fucking loved this. Hook it into my veins. I wanted to take a photo of nearly every page as I was reading, so I could come back to savor it. So beautiful honest raw and real. I inhaled the book in one sitting during a weekend when I was feeling really vulnerable, and it broke me further and put me back together again. I wish my teenage self who hated her body (and everyone at school) and would hang out at Sticky reading zines could have read this book.

Sometimes people ask me why I never give anything five stars on goodreads - it’s because I’m holding out for when I get hit in the face with something that opens my heart and mind, that makes me feel, makes me think and, ultimately, moves me. Something like Big Beautiful Female Theory! Five fucking stars.

[Zoe Thorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

wowoowwowowow wow wow. every human being needs to read this... wowowoowwwwwwoowwww

[cushscanlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been writing these little reviews in the hopes of becoming more articulate again with my thoughts-- but i don't even know where to begin with how much I love this book??? It's like an accessible piece of art that needs to be kept in every one's living rooms or on their bedroom shelves-- it's insane !!
The watercolours are astounding for one, but to then make the words next to each appear as their own works of art too just makes me so excited for the future of hybrid literature. And then the conTenT of it all-- the final essay on confessional writing and this trend of mining oneself for stories with grit and grime pushing for feminist shame-- only to realise real feminism is accepting the self by the self-- acceptance from others isn't really it--
Anyway I'm obsessed. So many discussion points. I'll be flicking through this book every now and again for the rest of my days, a) bc it's so beautiful and b) bc it asks those really chewy questions I don't know the answers to myself
Love love love !!!!

[Ronnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Eloise Grills’ work so much, and her first book is a stunning collection of art, poetry, memoir and prose that excavates the deep, personal, sometimes painful corners of women’s experiences as bodies, lovers, art-makers. There is such generosity and tenderness in Eloise’s depictions and embodiment of her own and other women’s lives.

[Natasha (jouljet) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A graphic novel of essays, collage, paintings and feminist quotes. An outpouring of inner most thoughts on body, body image, sexuality and sensuality, body acceptance, and the constant struggle to maintain one's mental health when the world is hell bent on shaping our body concept into one size.

Working through fat shaming, fatphobia, external and internalised, on self doubts and insecurities. A commentary on fat bodies and our place in the mix of the human condition.

"Why must women hold such softness for others
while being so hard on ourselves?"

A fierce feminist manifesto on self love, self care, and a very personal, generous sharing of one woman's work on herself, her art, and her being.

[Penni Russon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read my review on The Conversation.

https://theconversation.com/big-beaut...

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Defying genres, Big Beautiful Female Theory by Eloise Grills is part graphic memoir, part essay collection, part poetry, part comic book. The theme that runs through the illustrations and text focuses on self-image and the female body and its depiction in art and popular culture.

The book opens with two powerful essays - Big Beautiful Female Theory and Elo. In each, Grills lays bare her darkest thoughts, her deepest shames, her long-held secrets.

I'm laid to waste
I'm not getting laid
I'm wasting away             but not in the conventional sense
in the sense that I'm wasting my life thinking my body's all wrong
and if I spent less time hating it I coulda been a female astronaut

She picks over the 'milestones' in her relationship with her body,

Age twenty-eight, after a depressive episode I sleep on Mum and Dad's couch
Dad asks if I'll come with him to a lifestyle and exercise centre
It sounds somewhat cultish but I know he means well
who doesn't in this day and age
My father runs around the Tan instead of taking lunch
He eats stone fruit, he says, to keep himself skinny
He says this yet he is kind to me
The road to the gym is paved with positive affirmations
The road to hell is paved with wellness memes

It is these sections that resonate most strongly. I know my own 'milestones', as much a part of my memory as significant life events, good times and bad. I know what age I was when I felt my body was 'right' and doing what I wanted it to, and I know the times when I felt the opposite, dissatisfaction (but never hate, now that I really think about it). I don't know any female that doesn't have complex thoughts about their body - Grills gives voice to the complexities and I'm sure, for many, will normalise what they might have felt at some stage.

And in amongst this self-questioning, emerges Grills's challenge to the reader - do you like me, despite knowing my truths? I think the answer to this will depend very much on the reader (and their own self-image) but yeah, I do like Grills and it's because of her honesty and her forthrightness. And it's not about her body. Or is it? Because would she be honest and forthright if she had a different body? I guess there's no perfect experiment to answer this.

The final essay returns to the same line of questioning, when Grills describes her mum telling her how to get rid of warts -

...you should rub it on a coin and give it to someone, like you’re selling them your wart, but don’t tell them, otherwise the magic won’t work. Does it work the same way with shame?

Perhaps this final chapter is a magical way of handing over her shame. Shame is incredibly complex and generally the one emotion that people will do anything to avoid feeling. But when we do feel it, the usual response is to either over function, shrink back, or lash out. What is Grills doing with this book? Lashing out?

Parts of this book didn't work as well. The essay about cyborg fantasies was out of sync, as was the academic tone of the essay about 'the fat bitch in art'.

I'll call you Rubenesque but WE ALL KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS

And although the illustrations are not my cup of tea, I appreciate them for their artistry (she's certainly good at drawing boobs!).

3.5/5 Some bits thought-provoking and some bits weird.

[Libby · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s taken me a few days to digest my experience of this book. I read it for a book club over a few weeks. I’m interested to hear what the other women in the book club will share about their experience. I will share mine here.

Disclosure. I have fluctuated between a size 14 to 18 my whole life. I'm also currently writing a memoir. It is nothing like this memoir. In fact I’ve never read a memoir like this one and I like that. I loved Eloise’s art throughout the book. I also particularly loved her idea of The Museum of Fat Bitches Art. I had just watched the ABC Compass program on Bob Weatherall and his lifelong struggle to bring home aboriginal people from museums in Australia and around the world. I really had that sense of “fuck museums and their mausoleum bullshit” (p.117). I want to see the Museum of Fat Bitches Art for real.

The undercurrent I felt in the authors raw sharing was not something I found enjoyable. I don’t think it was meant to be or perhaps it doesn’t really matter what the reader thinks…except that the self expressed theme of wanting to be loved and appreciated runs heavily through the book.

What was the undercurrent I felt? It was a passing on of pain. On page 251 Eloise describes her mum telling her how to get rid of warts, “you should rub it on a coin and give it to someone, like you’re selling them your wart, but don’t tell them, otherwise the magic won’t work. Does it work the same way with shame?” And then on the last page the book ends with a description of her desire to be a great artist who is loved by others…even herself... and the book as a disturbing cartoon of a piano falling from a cliff inches from the readers skull saying, “This was mine but I’ve handed it over a gift, a wart I’ve sold you yours to deal with.” The next page a picture of her and her dog walking into the light with the caption, “now watch me walk away."

Will the magic work now the author has told us she was selling us her warts? Maybe but at least not on me. I've spent a long time healing my own warts in such a way that they hopefully aren't transmitted to others. I don't want and won't accept the authors falling piano of anxiety or metaphorical warts. As much as I refuse to hold the authors warts I hope that she finds a way to hold herself warts and all and heal herself...to find that love of self that stops the endless external search. Perhaps, perhaps this book was a step on the way to do this through sheer transparent exposure, through look at me warts and all, love me unconditionally, despite my filthy heart, my imperfections and flaws...somewhere in the book she says she is afraid that people will stop looking at her portraits she paints and what will happen when she is through -being for others-and gets round to being as and for her own self - I want to see that way more than any searching for love through performative vulnerability. Maybe this is the next step.

As a reader I am willing to witness Eloise's confession but I cannot be a sin eater, I will not take the piano or the warts, nor can I absolve her of anything. Despite what is written on the last page it is not mine to deal with. I respectfully hand it back and would be happy to read the future book where she gets around to being of and for herself.

[Kate Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

LIKE A HUG THAT SAYS IT'S OKAY TO HAVE THE MESSIEST MOST EMBARRASSING THOUGHTS EVER

It was a great read to overcome my reading slump. The art is great. Some of the poems I didn't get but that's okay. My main pet peeve is that some of the handwritten text was really hard to read.

THINGS THAT SPEAK TO ME:

- "I just want to sit around in Swarovski earrings and let old men decide my literary merits" - Hera Lindsay Bird

- "Here lies Eloise she gained 15 kilos in 2016 and went downhill from there, but she also used antiperspirant to stop her things chafing"

- "objectification theory posits that girls are typically acculturated to internalise an observers perspective as a primary view of their physical selves. this may help account for an array of mental health risks that disproportionately affect women"

- "TFW you accidentally push your tampon out like a baby, TFW you accidentally push your baby out like a tampon. Life is like every time my vibrators battery dies right before I cum".

- "how does my psychologist say things will get better when every day is more or less the same or worse, how many calories does a panic attack burn, how many creme eggs is too many creme eggs, will I have a fat skeleton, will archaeologists in the future say I let myself go"

- "Why do we blame mothers when the problems are so much bigger than that? Why must mothers do everything and dad just have to be there"?

- "I love you mum, I promise I really do, my mother noursihed and fed me in so many ways, why do I focus on what I lacked? why must mothers do and be everything filling in the gaps of the universe like gap-filler"?

- " when I was 14 i wanted to wear all my pain on the outside, even though I hadn't felt that much pain yet anyway. now I am 31, I wonder what that might look like"

- "when I was 15 my body was a project I was failing it. when I was 16 my body was a rubiks cube, a problem to be solved, when I was 17 my body was homework, the dog ate it"

- "now I am 32. I used to think becoming an adult was learning to sit through discomfort but now I think you learn it sitting through being a teen girl"

- "All the real thin bodies trapped inside my fake fat one"

- "what if picasso was a 21st century woman? would she sit on her fat ass all day feeling sorry for herself" or would he have " painted geuernica but made it all about his tinder dates who fucked him and tried to choke him without asking"? I love this imagery for how hard living is in the 21st century with phones, capitalism etc

- " why do art historians care more about architectural ruins, fragments and vases, sculptures of naked bodies, and descriptions of destroyed paintings than they do about tapestries, tunics, togas, and banners? if men had done sewing, would underwear be hanging in the Louvre?" LOVE

- Write what makes you want to tear your skin off like tissue paper, write what makes you want to die, but then don't die, and write some more. write what embarrasses you, write what embarrasses you about what embarrasses you.

- what if you're a serious writer but your words would sound better as weird al yancovich lyrics? Art is supposed to ask all the hard questions, but I'm preoccupied with the dumb ones

[Steph]

Did not finish. :(

I really wanted to love this. It’s innovative, genre-breaking, so clever and very witty.

But as the book progressed, I found the style tricky to sustain, and myself getting… defensive, I guess?

The assertion that communities of queer women were just as judgemental of bodies as the rest of the world didn’t ring true for me, and I’m not sure it would hold up in the world outside these pages. (I think for example of comedian Bec Shaw writing about how as a curvy woman, lesbians are more likely to find her attractive than men are, and joking that curvy heterosexual women should consider jumping the fence to the side where their bodies are most appreciated.)

I also felt frustrated that women who strive to comply with narrow definitions of beauty, and people who enforce and/or financially benefit from those definitions, were grouped in together with women who wanted to be physically strong, or were drawn to an androgynous or butch aesthetic for themselves and/or their partners, or women like me who will never be skinny but find it fun to do aerial circus (or football or rockclimbing or hip-hop dancing or whatever) and are happy to plank and run laps if it helps us learn the funnest tricks (or funnest moves, or how to climb the tallest cliffs) for the sake of pure enjoyment, or as part of working towards bigger dreams relating to artistic or athletic accomplishment. I’m not saying those groups need more attention, I’m just saying that I disagree that we’re the enemy.

I know this makes me sound like I’m staying #allbodiesmatter or something equally shit. Maybe I am being crap by centring myself rather than working harder to understand the experiences of others; saying so would be fair. It’s just that, as a queer feminist woman who bursts out of button-up shirts, I assumed Gills and I would be on the same side, but she positioned me and my communities in opposition to her.

Maybe that was intentional, but still… ouch.

[Emmaby Barton Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

such a unique book - not quite sure how to feel about it. written in such a raw and honest way - there were parts that i adored, but other parts that i ended up skimming - especially the middle third. appreciated the integration of other feminists, the intersection of racism and fatphobia, the gorgeous drawings, and the honesty throughout

some quotes i liked
- i’m wasting away in the sense that im wasting my life thinking my body’s all wrong
- sometimes i think the world was made up to torture women and then i remember it actually kind of was
- if i become famous which thin celebrity in a fat suit will be hired to play me
- i flick back to a past where i was sadder but skinnier
- wake me up when my body type is fashionable again
- now i am too much in general. nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. nothing feels as bad as perceived parental abandonment
- my mother nourished and fed me in so many ways. why do i focus on what i lacked? why must mothers do and be everything filling in the gaps of the universe like gap filler?
- why must women hold such softness for others while being so hard on themselves ?
- if i could stack up all the horrible things ive done and said to other people and flak the horrible things that been done and said to me, which would be heavier?
- when i was fourteen i wanted to wear all my pain on the outside even though i hadn’t felt that much pain yet anyway
- write what embarrasses you … write till the blood bursts its banks and be ashamed of the bursting
- all my shame is about being a bad feminist, bad girl, bad selfish tacky, spoilt, stupid, not good enough not bad enough. all my shame about not being loved enough by people who should have loved me could be better directed into something else made more productive (but then why am i so obsessed by productivity? why am i only happy when life feels like work?)

[Declan Fry]

Part comic book memoir, part prose poem, part manifesto, big beautiful female theory is about the idea of size in almost every conceivable sense: about letting in and withholding, giving in or concealing, being too much, or being a woman "who could fit through whatever hole you have to crawl out of to get onto The Bachelor".

Grills, a Melbourne-based artist and writer, is combative in her examination of ideas, such as fatness as costume (celebrities such as Demi Lovato, Eddie Murphy, Courtney Cox are called to account, but Grills also interrogates herself), fatness as choice; fatness as condemnation or moral failing, as inescapability of genes or of personal preference; as an exercise in transformation and redemptive before-and-after narratives.

She explores the idea of the body as an instrument or collection of doll parts ("I could hate my body more be the girl with the most ketosis"); as a site of measurements and evaluations, approbation and (in)validation; as a container for commentary and macro counts.

Read more:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-2...

[James Whitmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's something joyful, powerful and free about Eloise Grills's collection of illustrated essays and memoir. Across nine distinct pieces, Grills vivisects her life while dissecting size and beauty, fat women in art, the internet-beauty-industrial complex, her childhood, mental health and self-care in the age of planetary collapse and hypercapitalism, all the while wrestling with what exactly she's trying to achieve by flaying herself open so unsparingly. One frame for Grills’s essays is Barbara L. Frederickson and Tomi-Ann Robert's objectification theory: "girls are typically acculturated to internalise an observer's perspective as a primary view of their physical selves". big beautiful female theory shoots that perspective through a prism, throws it back, embraces it, lets it slide off like old skin. It’s a vital examination of the way women, and particularly big beautiful women, are looked at. Read more on my blog.

[Deb Chapman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, big powerful book and disturbing at the end. I learnt stuff, Eloise pushed me. Took me a while to figure out there were sections in the book which made it a bit more, digestible? Comprehensible? I needed the map to follow. Also some of the writing across some pics was really tiny and I found that hard work! But wow, what a read! I really liked the section ‘the fat bitch in art’ and the later sections. Some references to other writers and artists that I took the time to look up so learnt even more (eg Laura Aguilar, a Chicana photographer) and about Khoikhoi woman, Sarah Baartman. Some whimsy and some acerbic, both in pics and texts. It’s a wild ride and was well worth taking for me.

Eg ‘there is a thigh gap in everything, that is how the lite gets in’
‘I want to write about women who devour the world like half-off Cadbury family blocks’
‘A man on tinder once told me I looked like a dropped pie. He taught me that beauty is fleeting like the train-replacement bus’
‘One million typewriters squealing like a Phillip Glass choir’

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

When this all comes together it is fantastic. Grills' illustration skill is a real highlight, and the dreamy, painted, ambiguous sections work really well. The section at the end, perhaps the most reflective and the most distanced3 was the strongest in the book. For much of it, however, this just didn't entirely work for me. The zine format, while gorgeously executed, felt a little too much in full book length. I have been reading more memoir recently, and maybe I'm just getting over the format, especially from those emerging into a sense of self, but the introspective content seemed to spiral a bit too much for me. For older eyes, this could also be challenging to read/view, although that eased as I got used to both the font and the style.

[Kashmira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contained in these pages is a beautiful, sprawling, witty blend of graphic storytelling, poetics and personal essay. Grills brings her world to life and invites us to (re)consider experiences of the female body so often relegated to the sidelines. I've always loved confessional writing, and I love it even more when an author questions why one writes confessionals at all. This book is brutal in certain ways, but a total treat at the same time.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was recommended this blind and devoured it. Thanks Coco. Funny, witty, real struggles with identity and physical identity. A beaut and cohesive mish mash. "Huge like a landslide. Hungry like a vampire."

[Michelle Sims · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book explores what it's like to be a fat woman via the writer/artists perspective. I found value and relatability in some of what this author wrote but also felt lacking and honestly a little bit of waffling on it it too. Don't read this if you were previously in a good mood.