By Megan Thomas
I was very eager to read this memoir by former actress and personality Jennette McCurdy and I won’t pretend the provocative title wasn’t part of my initial curiosity. I was thrilled to learn, on listening to McCurdy narrate the audiobook, that this was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what this insightful, heartbreaking and funny memoir had to offer.
McCurdy is perhaps best known as Sam from Nickelodeon-sensations ‘iCarly’ and ‘Sam and Cat’, but she started her acting career, somewhat unwillingly and in a desperate attempt to please her mother, aged 8. What followed was an intensely abusive mother-daughter relationship, where McCurdy’s mother not only taught McCurdy her eating disorder and purposefully overlooked her obsessive compulsive disorder, but micromanaged every element of her life, to the point where she was showering her and performing full body and vaginal routines on her until she was 16. As such, when her mom died of cancer in 2013, she felt some rather terrifying emotions, which led to her writing this book.
Aside from the really unique abuse that McCurdy suffered, there is also a very relatable theme of disordered eating and the obsessive lengths women in particular are expected to go to in order to remain appealing. The media is fiendish, and this is particularly clear when presented through the experience of a child. I truly hope that this open, honest dialogue will help anyone with even a much less dangerous relationship with food realise how much more important health is than dress size.
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