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.

I normally finish with a quote and a recipe but instead I’m taking a leaf out of Madame Bibi’s book and finishing with a song (because Carpark by The Buoys – at 3.04m in clip below – pairs so perfectly with this quote):

Now I am thirty-one, I wonder if I ever occupied his imagination in the way he poured through mine.