Review by Booklist Review
Before it was this graphic memoir, author/illustrator Elovic's Cheeky project began as a blog and Instagram account for the joyously naked self-portraits and other cartoons she painted in an effort "to accept and love my body and myself more wholly." Body part by body part, Elovic takes readers on her journey to reclaim the confidence she had as the little kid who argued for the biggest slice of cake, because her tummy was biggest. Typed text accompanies Elovic's smiley cartoons, which are rainbow-bright, energetic, and busy with patterns, with fun interludes on topics like Elovic's dream bra inventions or the foods her favorite women would choose to bathe in. Unlearning body shame is a tough job, and Elovic couldn't do it without her fellow "Yentas," a group of best friends she met at sleepaway camp who appear throughout with cheering declarations like, "We think your arm hair is cute!" From boobs and body odor to pimples, pubic hair, poop, and periods--it's all fair game, treated with openness, humor, and love. Many readers will be inspired by Elovic's fantastically liberating exercise.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Elovic navigates her relationship with every inch of her body in her spirited debut. Lamenting that she spent her teenage years putting off enjoying her life because she didn't feel attractive enough, she vows to see her body as something other than "a never-ending project with countless areas to wax, shrink, tone, or hide." Comics arranged in sections such as "Girls Don't Poop" and "The Weirdest Places I've Found My Bra" dish about sweaty armpits, periods, body hair ("Can I still feel like a feminist and bash the bush?"), as well as delving into hang-ups around food. Elovic's cartoon--alter ego sports an unruly mane and a wide, toothy grin, and cheerily dramatizes mishaps and taboo toilet-humor, with a circle of supportive friends called "the Yentas" serving as a Greek chorus. In addition to explicit and celebratory portraits of herself and tips on beauty products, Elovic draws colorful flights of fancy (the Yentas imagine bathing in their favorite foods). Elovic's bold, chunky art carries personality, but doesn't break new ground. Even so, this chummy memoir will appeal broadly to comics readers, as well as any fan of lighthearted feminist memoir. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, DeFiore & Co. (Dec.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In this graphic memoir, feminist/illustrator Elovic rebels against body shaming and all those beauty strictures that clinch women tight and examines her body, part by part, accepting it for what it is, imperfections and all: "We are all just (gorgeous) piles of skin rolling in our own (magical) filth." With a 75,000-copy first printing.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A New York City--based illustrator's graphic memoir about the "head-to-toe reboot" that helped her "recalibrate and reconnect" to her own body. In her debut, Elovic transforms what began as an Instagram project, which she undertook in order to combat the way women "reject our own bodies," into a refreshing story about corporeal self-love. She dedicates each chapter to a single body part and recollections of her changing attitudes about that part. The author begins with happy childhood memories of her face and how she loved contorting her features in the mirror for fun. As she grew older and watched pimples erupt on her skin and hair thicken above her mouth, the mirror became a "black hole of critique." Other bodily changes--e.g., the development of her breasts--were both "thrilling and shocking." But those changes also forced her to contend with social conventions, like the bras that were supposed to "make me more of a woman" but only made her feel entrapped, and her stomach also became a source of humiliation. As a child, she boasted that her stomach could hold massive amounts of cake, but by adolescence, she became painfully aware that "weight and size" would determine her worth in the eyes of others. She joined Weight Watchers, which "sucked the joy out of food." Elovic also struggled with the supposed unfeminine act of defecation ("according to teen magazines, pooping was the most shameful thing a girl could do") as well as her menstruation, which often went "fucking rogue." Eventually, the author found support among "the Yentas," a group of young Jewish women that "encouraged me to take joy" in every "gross" part of her body. Featuring colorful folk art--style paintings that transform uncomfortable bodily facts and functions into charmingly humorous images, this book encourages women to help each other accept all their "hairs and jiggles and bumps and smells" for what they are: essentially human. An entertaining, jubilantly body-positive memoir. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
