My Perfectly Imperfect Body

Tung (Everything Is OK) looks back with compassion at her teenage struggles with body image in this achingly resonant autofiction. Growing up with a mother who makes comments about her weight (“First you tell me to eat and now you’re calling me fat for eating,” Debbie snaps at a family meal), a supportive but naturally thin older sister, and piggish male classmates, Debbie begins to fixate on her looks. The hyper-skinny aesthetic of the early 2000s doesn’t help; watching Bridget Jones’s Diary with friends, she panics that she’s shaped like “fat” Renée Zellweger. Debbie begins to starve herself, and her interest in athletics changes from enjoying sports to punishing herself with grueling exercise regimens. Her extreme weight loss causes exhaustion, skin problems, and hair loss—ironically triggering even more body anxieties. “I felt invisible but also extremely visible,” she recalls. “My failures were magnified.” Tung describes how she pulled herself back from disordered eating while reflecting on the toxic messages that mass—and, now, social—media sends to teens. Her cute, accessible art softens the painful edges of the story and makes the cartoon Debbie feel like a trustworthy friend. This empathetic work offers an accessible introduction for younger adult readers to a persistent social issue. Agent: Laurie Abkemeier, DeFiore and Co. (Sept.)