Karen Meisner
"Future Perfect" author Jen Larsen.
If you could talk to your teenage self, what would you say? Author Jen Larsen would show her teenage self an alternate universe where she was happy with her weight and where she had the strength to resist the pressure to conform to other people’s ideals about body image.
That alternate universe comes to life in Future Perfect, Larsen’s first young adult novel. Ashley, an overweight biracial girl, has a grandmother who attempts to bribe her with increasingly large rewards to lose weight. The final offer is four years of college tuition in exchange for weight loss surgery. Will Ashley give in to her grandmother’s demands?
Larsen writes from her own experiences. The blogger and author of the memoir Stranger Here underwent bariatric surgery in her 20s after struggling for years to lose weight. “I caved in. I bought into the fairy tale that all my problems would go away if I just lost weight,” says Larsen. “But here’s what I discovered: You can hate yourself at any size. Being thin didn’t fix my anxiety or my food issues. I still had to work on being happy on the inside.”
In Future Perfect, Ashley has “happy on the inside” nailed. A high-achieving student on the fast track to college, Ashley has friends, a boyfriend, a job and confidence to spare. What she lacks is money for tuition. Larsen offers nuance by allowing the grandmother to justify her demands; she believes Ashley won’t reach her full potential in a society that dismisses overweight women.
On Oct. 9, at A Room of One’s Own, Larsen hopes to continue the conversation about body image. She plans to talk briefly about her book, which is being published this month by HarperTeen, leading into an audience discussion. She’s reached out to UW women’s groups such as the Campus Women’s Center and says she “wants to make it a conversation with other women about how we can help ourselves and the girls in our lives redefine what ‘beautiful’ really means.”
Future Perfect
By Jen Larsen, HarperTeen