by Charlotte Bellows
FREEHAND BOOKS
2023/$21.95/208 pp.
There are many roads into Charlotte Bellows’s memoir, The Definition of Beautiful. Anyone who’s used the “touch up my appearance” feature on Zoom, or lamented the ways unrealistic beauty standards threaten self-worth, or simply felt ashamed by the number on a bathroom scale may be curious about this keenly observed coming-of-age story. Bellows wrote her memoir between the ages of 15 and 17, while a high school student in Calgary, tracking her recovery from an eating disorder that surfaced during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Much has been reported about our pediatric mental health crisis, which disproportionally affects teen girls. Not only is Bellows’s story a personal account—from a member of the first digital generation—of the impact of pandemic isolation, but the book’s skilful, evocative structure makes anorexia’s enticements and distortions relatable to readers regardless of their personal experience with disordered eating.
The narrative toggles between Bellows’s daily realities (school, friends, family) and a liminal world she names “the Deep,” where she encounters an alluring, lanky boy with a sharp jawline. The young man, ED—a waifish manifestation of her eating disorder—lays the groundwork for their secret bond. These dreamlike sequences illustrate the initial attraction to beauty and perfection, and the gradual escalation toward an unhealthy obsession with exercise, food and Charlotte’s physical body.
In a poignant early scene, Bellows evokes the specific ache of adolescent loneliness, when 14-year-old Charlotte recognizes her dire situation before the adults in her life realize what’s wrong. At this important juncture, an authority figure advises Charlotte to “eat some nuts,” a laughably inadequate intervention against anorexia’s hold, driving her deeper into isolation.
Fortunately, ED is not the only inhabitant of the Deep, and Charlotte also meets a mysterious girl whose friendship offers an alternative to ED’s increasingly terrible bargain. Charlotte’s family and medical team take strides toward aiding in her recovery, and as her real-world friendships shift and change, Charlotte must ultimately decide where her alliances and resources lie, and in which world she will choose to belong.
The story’s framework critiques the structural and societal failings that make body dysmorphia and disordered eating such prevalent and sinister problems. Simultaneously, the narrative engenders compassion for everyone involved. We see the unconsidered impact of body-shaming, and the relational uproar of trying to control what someone eats. With courageous, honest writing, this young author reminds us that healing and resilience may come from forging one’s own definition of beautiful.
Jessica Waite is a debut memoirist in Calgary.
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