Character Analysis
Perfect is a book in which appearances aren't what they seem, but in the beginning, it seems Kendra is the narrator who has the most issues. Cara hasn't met Dani yet, Andre hasn't met Jenna, and Sean hasn't started taking steroids, but Kendra's already well on her way to an eating disorder. Plus there's that disturbing plastic-surgery business.
"I grew up knowing I was/pretty and believing everything/good/about me had to do with how/I looked," she says. "The mirror was my best/friend. Until it started telling/me I wasn't really pretty/enough" (2.3-4). Oh man. For Kendra, being pretty means being perfect, and being perfect means being thin. At any cost.
What It Looks Like
Like Cara, Kendra's a cheerleader, which means she's popular. She says, "[…] I figured out Rule Number One/of the Popularity Game—looks trump/brains every time" (2.23-24). Sad, but unfortunately often true, especially in high school.
Speaking of looks, she's arguably the best-looking girl in school, and she's been winning pageants and modeling for catalogs since she was a baby. But what she really wants—or rather, what her mom wants for her—is to be a runway model. After she has her nose job, which is scheduled for spring break, they're sure she'll be smizing for Tyra Banks in no time.
And guys think she's hot, if too skinny. When Cara dumps him, Sean goes to the movies with Kendra, hoping that Cara will hear about it and get jealous. He asks her to prom, too, but she turns him down. Perhaps the guy who thinks she's hottest of all is her sleazy agent Xavier, which brings us to…
How It Really Is
Kendra's dad left her mom for a younger woman named Shiloh. Now Kendra and her sister Jenna live with their mom and stepdad, Patrick, an orthodontist with the bucks to fund things like nose jobs. Real dad's a racist bigot with alcohol and violence problems, while stepdad's pretty hands-off until he suspects Kendra and Jenna are dipping into the narcotics and benzos in the medicine cabinet.
He's right—they are. Kendra's discovered that if you're living (or dying, as the case may be) on two hundred calories a day, a little prescription pain medication makes you not care. And if you're starving, diet pills (a.k.a. speed) can take the edge off. Plus she has a direct line to diet pills, thanks to Xavier. After all, if he can help her get really skinny, he can get her gigs—you know, if she sleeps with the casting directors, too.
A girl whose parents had her best interests in mind would no doubt step in here. They might get her, say, inpatient eating-disorder treatment. However, when Andre's mom cancels Kendra's nose job because she's too thin for anesthesia, Kendra's mom pooh-poohs hospitalization and says they can handle an eating disorder at home. (Note to Mom: Denial is not a river in Egypt.)
Get a Life—Literally
When Cara sees the emaciated Kendra at Conner's funeral, she says, "We hug, as we're supposed to do./I watch her go, leaning on her mother,/wonder if she'll be around next year, or/if she might wind up starved, in a coffin" (57.9). Super sad, right? We can actually see how unhappy Kendra is.
The other narrators have epiphanies at Conner's funeral. They realize life is short—cliché but true, especially when you're standing over a seventeen-year-old's coffin—but Kendra's too starved and devastated to think straight. After all, Conner was the one guy who ever really loved her, the one who didn't make her feel like a prostitute when she had sex with him. At the end of Perfect, Kendra's head is just as messed up as it was at the beginning, and her continued drug use and anorexia makes us agree with Cara: There's a good chance her funeral will be next.
Kendra's Timeline