You matter. You are worthy of love. You are fine just the way you are. If you’re not feeling this way after you finish “Eat, and Love Yourself,” you’ve missed the message.
(This book contains a trigger warning for depictions of bulimia and body dysmorphic disorder.)
Cover by Sweeney BooWritten and Illustrated by Sweeney Boo
Colored by Joana Lafuente
Lettered by David HopkinsFor fans of Seconds and Wet Moon. Mindy is a young woman living with an eating disorder and trapped in a battle for her own self-worth. When she accidentally discovers a magic chocolate bar that will give her a chance to revisit her past, she thinks she has a chance to put her life back on track. But will she be able to find a way back to her present, and just as important, a way to treat herself with love and kindness, at any size? Join writer/artist Sweeney Boo (Marvel Action: Captain Marvel) on a journey of self-discovery, self-acceptance, and just a bit of magic.
If you or a loved one is dealing with an eating disorder, help and resources are available at www.nationaleatingdisorders.org.
Quarantine or not, everyone’s talking about keeping off the pounds. (Case in point: my knitting guild’s board meeting I attended via Zoom earlier this week spent 45 minutes discussing everyone’s various walking routines.) Whether it’s embracing the Quarantine 15 or looking to shed a few pounds so you get out of a high risk group for COVID-19, staying home doesn’t mean neglecting your weight.
For many men and women, the desire to stay trim and fit crosses the line into eating disorders, an illness both mental and physical. They don’t discriminate, they touch people you may least expect – – and in our time of isolation and lockdown, may even seem harder to treat without a loving community by your side.
There’s many factors that cause eating disorders. For Mindy, the protagonist of “Eat, and Love Yourself” it was a childhood full of well intentioned but less than supportive people, and some who were downright nasty. Now in her mid-20s, she hasn’t shed the traumas of her childhood. A late night trip to pick up snacks finds her with a chocolate bar that brings her back to those past moments to try and change history and find self-esteem lost so long ago. But if she can’t talk to her past self to change the past, what’s the point?
That change, Mindy realizes by the end, comes from her present self. She can’t steer her teenage Mindy away from a trip for soft serve after an appointment with her psychiatrist. She can’t beat up the mean girls who made fun of her and high school boyfriend Elliott (himself on the outskirts of high school society after a gym class accident left him with a black eye). She can’t shout in her parents’ ears to stop it with the moody fat teenager comments. What she does learn is how little things – – a comment here, a disapproving glare there, a decision made instead of another – – come together to build the larger puzzle that is her current 27 year old self. That puzzle, though, is not complete. Those final pieces are that acceptance that she is a person of worth no matter what she looks like, and by the end of this story, those pieces start moving into place.
“Eat, and Love Yourself” is from the all-ages imprint at BOOM! Studios, so this is a short and breezy read. It doesn’t shy away from showing Mindy bingeing and purging, viewing it from a third person: retching noises from the bathroom, Mindy exiting the ladies’ room wiping her mouth. You know just what she’s done without seeing the actual act, all written and drawn in an age-appropriate way.
The other characters in this book – – Mindy’s parents, her friends, potential love interests, co-workers – – are developed so that you know them only through the lens of Mindy’s world view. Her parents are of the well-intentioned but problematic type, the ones that say things that they think help the situation but make it worse. We don’t get any context as to why that is the case, which if present, would endear us to Mindy more. Her friends are kind, but only interact and encourage on a superficial level. If the intention is to heighten Mindy’s isolation within herself, then it works, and when she starts to break free of those chains and stand up to her family, you have to cheer. But an eating disorder does not develop in a vacuum, and a little more development of those relationships would have added a deeper level of understanding to Mindy’s world.
Continued belowIf you’re a fan of “Ghosted in L.A.” or any of Jen Bartel’s work, you’ll love the art of this graphic novel: calming pastels and soft lines that adjust based on the life Mindy wants to have (the bright and bold tones) and the one she presently has (the more muted palette). The opening scene of Mindy out with her friend Shae at a club sets the tone of Mindy’s character superbly. She’s alone at the bar with a soda, while the dancing crowd around her are clones of herself: happier, freer, the person she knows she wants to be but has no idea how to get there. Often it is those moments when we’re surrounded by people that we feel the most isolated, and Boo amps that up to 11 in this moment, illustrating how isolated Mindy is within herself. It endears you to her from page one, invests you in her story – – and perhaps even resonates a bit with your own self.
Boo uses subtle cues as well to show the passage of time, changes in seasons, chapters that open by the disappearing squares of the magic chocolate bar. This is not a story over a matter of days, but months, underscoring that this is self-actualization by baby steps, not leaps and bounds. Changes in wardrobe also depict the changes in Mindy’s mood. You first meet her in that club in baggy jeans and a loose t-shirt. By the end when she reunites with high school flame Elliott, she has a form fitting top and leggings, exhibiting some confidence in her own body. An artistic touch that really stayed with me is Mindy’s oversize glasses. There’s that old saying of the eyes being the window to the soul, and with these large glasses (like her baggy clothes), are another way Mindy hides her true self from the world.
It’s also very important to note that Mindy is not thin, often the body type that you think of when you think of those with an eating disorder. Eating disorders do not discriminate based on size; plus size men and women struggle as much as thinner men and women. Such representation is extremely important and can help those who struggle (but don’t look like the typical anorexia and bulimia patients conventional media portrays) see themselves and seek help.
“Eat, and Love Yourself” doesn’t end as much as it stops, emphasizing that while this book ends, it doesn’t meant the end of Mindy’s journey. And that is the final coda of this story’s stunning, well-crafted, and effective authenticity: the complicated and ever-evolving journey to self. You are the savior of your own story, and you will find your way, however that will look.
You are worthy. You are loved. You are enough. Just the way you are.
