I saw this manga either late last year or early this year recommended on Tumblr. It's been sitting in my cart for months. I finally found a library in my state that had it, and was able to have it sent to my local library to check out.
First; let me start with some trigger warnings. This is a series of short essays in manga form where the author, Hara, talks about her experiences being plus sized in Japan. She does talk about her struggles with fatphobia (both external and internal) and eating disorders. Eating disorders come up several times throughout this manga, and may be triggering. She does go into decent detail, and numbers are mentioned at times. I remember her mentioning the exact amount of weight she gained/lost. I know there is calorie talk too, but I can't remember for sure if she mentions exact numbers there. There is also a chapter where she talks about the way she diets now. Throughout the manga she uses the term "plump" instead of "fat". (I know some people, myself included, prefer the term fat over "cutesie" words, but it didn't bother me much)
With that out of the way, I'll get to a brief summary. Embrace Your Size is, like I mentioned, a collection of short essays in manga form. Most of them are about Hara herself and her struggles with learning to love her body and to see a place for plus sized people like her in the fashion industry in Japan. I believe these stories were possibly published on their own and that this manga is a collection of those stories? There are often times that she repeats stories that she told earlier, and there is not a lot of flow between chapters.
Growing up, Hara had a hard time finding good looking clothing that fit her. She was interested in fashion, even from a younger age, but she thought fashion wasn't for girls like her. About the only clothes she could find her sweats/track suits. Even as she grew older she still loved fashion, but has made up her mind that she could never be fashionable. When drawing, she would often draw women who looked like her, until she was bullied out of it. She would only draw skinny bodies and became more and more trapped in her eating disorder until she discovered a LaFarfa magazine, the only magazine (at that time) dedicated to plus sized fashion in Japan. This opened up Hara's eyes to a world she never thought she could be a part of.
The rest of the manga goes over Hara's journey to learn to love her body. She goes back to drawing women that look like her in cute and fashionable outfits. LaFarfa helps her learn where she can shop for and how to style her clothes. Later in the manga she reviews a couple movies that featured plus sized main characters (She had never seen these movies until she was older and after she learned to love her body). She talks about the #BodyPositive movement a little bit, and ends the manga with three chapters of her and one of the models from LaFarfa revisiting their struggles with past eating disorders and how they feel so much better about their bodies now.
It was a good read! Many times I had tears in my eyes. As someone who has been fat pretty much all their life, I related to how Hara felt many times. It was so sad to read about her struggles and remember the struggles that I had too, but it also gave me a lot of hope. It was amazing to see how Hara feels about her body now and how excited she is to use her talents (art and fashion) to help spread body positivity to others. I would give this a solid 4/5. Really my only complaint is how repetitive some of the early stories can be and I wish there was a warning when she talked about eating disorders, but that's about my only complaint.
