As a teacher, I have heard of stories like this one so many times. I can easily see Malena struggling with a sunburn get reprimanded by teachers and administrators. I really enjoyed this book and could see it being a good conversation starter in a book club.

Thank you Netgalley for the E-Arc in exchange of a review.
I started listening this one but didn't hold my interest. I thought the concept was good but I wish I could have connected with the characters and plot more.

I use this text in my multicultural, literature, and composition course! I love it because it has so many diverse themes and strong feminism vibes.

This was a fierce dissection of gender binary and sexist expectations with some intersectionality included in a very readable story format that invited the reader to analyze their own experiences. Well done.

Stop everything and read this book! It's a powerhouse that tackles all the big issues head-on and doesn't hold back. From the moment you crack it open, the story grips you and takes you on a wild ride. Meet Malena, a brave young Puerto Rican refugee who finds herself in Florida after a devastating hurricane. Then there's Ruby, who recently moved from Seattle and befriends Malena after a hilarious (and slightly awkward) incident involving panty liners. Together, they take on the unfair treatment of Malena and spark a movement for change.

This YA Contemporary novel is a masterpiece, covering crucial social issues that impact women, minorities, and the LGBTQIA+ community. You'll be moved to tears and feel your heart swell with every page turn. The characters are fleshed out and feel like real people, but it's the growth of Ruby and Malena that will leave you cheering. If you're a young adult or an adult looking for a book that will inspire you to make a difference, look no further than Does My Body Offend You?

Does My Body Offend You? contains some important messages which would make this book a great choice for a book club discussion. It is also a quick read. Although there were parts of this story that just didn’t work for me, there were many things that I loved about it. I especially enjoyed all of the different friendships, how they were so supportive of each other and how they could be honest with one another.

This is the ultimate book in self-acceptance, self-actualizing, friendship, and community. I was shocked by how empowered I felt after reading it! I think the authors did their job and did it beautifully. I’ve recommended this to a few teacher friends!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

Malena is a Puerto Rican refugee that moves to Florida after hurricane Maria devastates her hometown. Ruby moves to Florida from Seattle, WA. Both teens attend high school at Orange Grove HS and become fast friends after Malena is forced to put panty liners on her nipples when she doesn’t wear a bra to school after getting a bad sunburn. Does My Body Offend You? follows both girls before, during and after they decide to protest the unfair treatment of Malena.

Holy moly! This is quite possibly my favorite YA Contemporary book ever! I applaud the authors for writing about these important social issues that surround marginalized groups including women, minorities, and LGBTQIA+. I got emotional several times throughout the book. The character development for many of the characters was done well and very realistically, but the growth for Ruby and Malena was excellent! I highly recommend this book for young adults and adults.

CW/TW: Sexual assault, sexism, classism, racism/xenophobia, white savior complex, body shaming, and alcohol.

I waited a long time to read this one, but I’m glad I got around to it. We’ll written for the YA crowd and is clearly from the 2 advantage points with varying cultural bias/perspective/pressures. Puberty/teenage years are hard enough without having to worry about how your progressing womanhood is going to be perceived by the world around you. It felt true for me (at least if my memory of that time).

In 2017, amid the devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Maria in the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico, more than 135,000 Puerto Ricans left the island, moving to the United States. Many were students, assimilating into a different culture and daily routines and expectations.

Malena, an honor student, is one of those displaced by Maria. She now lives in Miami with her mother, close to other family members that have lived there long before the upheaval in Puerto Rico. Her father stayed on the island, helping with the restoration of basic necessities such as power and water.

Life is different, but Malena is an honor student trying to learn the culture and assimilate as best she can. Things were going pretty well until the day she was so sunburn she could not wear a bra to school. Her mother insisted it would be fine to go braless, but one of the teachers thought differently. She was sent to the principal’s office and the nurse’s office. Eventually she was humiliated by the nurse insisting that she wear panty liners taped to her nipples. She was given detention because they said it was against the dress code to go braless – which eventually is found to be false. When one of the popular girls, Ruby, finds out about what happened to Malena, she begins the rebellion. Standing up for her rights was not what Malena bargained for, yet she ends up being the poster girl for the revolution.

Does My Body Offend You? Is an interesting coming of age novel for teens and adults. There are situations that would not be appropriate for younger readers. That being said, it is beautifully complex. The melding of cultures is interesting and informative. The characters are fully developed and complex. Both authors have created a seamless collaborative novel about difficult situations that will make you think of the characters and situations long after the last pages are read.

Author Myra Cuevas was born in Puerto Rico and is a professional journalist and fiction writer. Does My Body Offend You? is her second novel, the first, Salty Bitter Sweet, is a YA aswell. Award winning author Marie Marquardt is an author of young adult novels, a college professor, and an immigration advocate. Marquardt’s second novel, The Radius of Us is also a novel of Latin American teenagers seeking asylum in the United States.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: I have a material connection because I received a review copy for free from the Author and Netgalley and the author in exchange for a fair and honest review. Copyright © 2022 Laura Hartman

Does My Body Offend You? by Mayra Cuevas and Marie Marquardt is about two girls from very different backgrounds attending the same school who team up to fight to make changes to the school's dress code. One girl is white, moved from Portland a year prior, and is trying to find her voice and step out from her sister’s shadow. The other just moved from Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria and doesn’t want to be pitied and mostly just wants to blend in. The dynamic and differences between these two characters makes for some unfortunate misunderstandings and missteps, but these lead to important conversations.

This book covered a ton of weighty themes and framed those issues well for a teen audience. The characters were flawed, and they grew and learned from difficult experiences. While there weren’t clear resolutions to all the issues that were presented, that made complete sense, especially taking into account that these were teenagers who were still trying to find their voices.

Content notes: brief depiction of sexual assault, its aftermath, and conversations around sexual assault, body shaming, fatphobia

4 stars

For once I find myself having a lot in common with both of the main characters, even though they come from diametrically different backgrounds.

Malena is a curvy young Puerto Rican woman who has been endowed with a very large chest. This is what actually gets her into trouble at school one day when she decides to go braless because of a bad sunburn. I was likewise blessed and know what it is like to receive unwanted attention for my body, no matter how "well-meaning" it is.

Ruby is the liberal and privileged white girl who wants to strike out injustice when she sees it. But sometimes her good intentions backfire because she doesn't understand how the consequences will impact others. And she often forgets to listen. That's something I have been working on in myself. Ruby holds up a mirror for us well-meaning white people.

Their overall crusade to fight unfair dress codes is a familiar battle that has been raging for a long time. The body shaiming that Malena endures is reprehensible and yet happens more than we would like to admit. I applaud this younger generation for working even harder to rise up against all of this. This book shows a right way and a wrong way to go about productively fighting the system.

It's a story of feminism, fighting against old-fashioned ideas about how women should dress and behave. It's about finding your power as a woman and embracing who you are. Malena and Ruby are both on this journey as young women in high school. I wouldn't say that they have it all figured out by the end, but they do learn a lot about themselves and are well on their way.

It's a story of friendships and what it really means to be a friend. I think the key takeaway is really LISTENING to and not just hearing someone or what you want to hear. I still think the key to finding peace and harmony is really listening to each other and having open conversations.

This may be a book listed for young adults, but I think even adults need to read it to give themselves a clue about some of their own behaviors. Some older middle grade children will also enjoy it. And I think this one provokes a lot of important conversation topics that we should be having.

I received a requested review copy via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This fun, intersectional feminist novel is exactly what I needed!

I love the way that this book shows that good intentions are nowhere near enough.

The message and the overall concept is meaningful and seems very sentimental. I just hate that i struggled reading this. I had to DNF at 39% just because it feel flat for me. I loved the two girls and how they were becoming so close and establishing a relationship, i love the feminism, and stepping up to the patriarchy but Reading this became a chore, sorry.

As a high school teacher constantly dealing with dress code issues, I really loved the way Cuevas and Marquardt tackled this subject in Does My Body Offend You? The characters were realistic and their fight against an unjust dress code real and appropriate. Would recommend!

“All I know is that even though no one physically touched me, I’ve never felt like a victim in my own body- until now”

Synopsis : Malena Rosario is starting to believe that catastrophes come in threes. First, Hurricane María destroyed her home, taking her unbreakable spirit with it. Second, she and her mother are now stuck in Florida, which is nothing like her beloved Puerto Rico. And third, when she goes to school bra-less after a bad sunburn and is humiliated by the school administration into covering up, she feels like she has no choice but to comply. Ruby McAllister has a reputation as her school's outspoken feminist rebel. But back in Seattle, she lived under her sister’s shadow. Now her sister is teaching in underprivileged communities, and she’s in a Florida high school, unsure of what to do with her future, or if she’s even capable making a difference in the world. So when Ruby notices the new girl is being forced to cover up her chest, she is not willing to keep quiet about it. Neither Malena nor Ruby expected to be the leaders of the school's dress code rebellion. But the girls will have to face their own insecurities, biases, and privileges, and the ups and downs in their newfound friendship, if they want to stand up for their ideals and––ultimately––for themselves.

Personal review : 3.5 stars

Strong YA feminist vibes in this novel! Ruby and Malena have such different social and economical backgrounds but find common ground to stand up for each other. This author worked in many issues such as privilege, body shaming, and misogyny. The trope of girls standing up for girls had me wanting to join in and fight the patriarchy! Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion!

Out of the two narrators, Malena was definitely my favorite. Her discussion of how she's taken less seriously as a Latina girl than her white classmates isn't present in many other feminism-centric YA novels, and it's something feminists who are white (not even just White Feminists) should definitely hear. While the party scene seemed really out of character for her and shoehorned in, the point it made was also an important one, about how a girl with her body type is viewed as "asking for it." Ruby was a decent character, even though I'd probably hate her if she was real. She had good intentions, but she was willing to go behind Malena's back and share her story, giving her attention she never wanted. I liked that she was called out about this, though. And her storyline of getting sexually assaulted at her organized protest was also an important one, as she and Malena have very different body types, yet neither are safe from the actions of predators. The other two major points in her story are her hate-to-love relationship with Malena's cousin, Carlos, and her fear of disappointing her parents and overachieving older sister. I could see the Carlos storyline coming as soon as they first met, but I'm not complaining about the predictability. I liked them together.

A dress-code-revolution novel perfect for fans of Moxie, The Nowhere Girls, Watch Us Rise (which I didn't actually like, but this is like a better version) or Dress Coded.

Even if this were just a story of girls going up against their school's dress code, this would be a solid read. Dress codes have become the symbol for teens making measurable change in their worlds and the ways that systems can be inherently biased. If it were a straightforward dress code protest it would be ultimately forgettable. Cuevas and Marquardt have really elevated this story, though. In taking us through the growth of a grassroots movement we explore many kinds of bias, how we have a hard time seeing issues that don't directly affect us. Even more than that, they take on white saviorism,the importance of letting an affected population drive their own change. While the ultimate conclusions are predictable, the nuance in the journey makes this worth reading.

Does my Body Offend You? is an important commentary on the state of the world today. Not only does it explore the sexism created by school dress codes, but it also touches on racism and body shape related biases. This novel was great because it shows several points of view and how each could struggle, but also how each might not understand or be able to relate to the other's struggles. I absolutely think everyone should read this novel!