Cross-posted at Pink Scare .
For one thing, I don't know if I have. On my best days, I could say I really don't care if I did lose weight. Other days, I can at least be honest and tell you I don't keep a scale around so that I can't obsess about weight, and honestly, I don't know. On my worst days I could at least say I'm not sure because knowing things like that becomes too consuming and I don't want to be consumed by it.
For another thing, while I know you think you're making me feel good, you're really just letting my sick mind know that you thought I looked fat before, enough so that now you think I look different enough that it bears pointing out. It feels like a back handed compliment, whether you wanted it to or not.
For another thing, you say it with this proud grin on your face, which immediately reminds me how much you value thinness, and how hard it is for me to make myself not care about it, when I've grown up around people like you and in a culture that makes you seem so normal. And, no matter how strong I was feeling that day, it immediately makes me question whether I should be valuing thinness just a little bit more.
For another thing, you have that proud grin on your face when you don't even know how I've lost the weight (if I even have lost any). One time my cousin went to a family Christmas party where everyone, so impressed by her drastic weight loss, inquired repeatedly about how she got to "look so good." Each time she'd say, "Oh, I got really really sick this Fall. Honestly, didn't know if I'd make it. But I couldn't keep anything down. I had to be hooked up to a feeding tube. Dropped like 20 pounds in a month. I've never been so miserable." And the relative would walk away, embarrassed to have been so happy about something so awful, to have celebrated what was tragic and unhealthy, to have called something sickly, "looking good," to have betrayed that they might consider someone happy, healthy and curvy to be, on first glance at least, less adequate than someone sick and malnourished and miserable.
I always wondered if one of the millions of women with eating disorders were so honest when asked how they manage to look so good, if people would feel the same shame. "I haven't been eating. What I do eat, I purge later on. I also exercise obsessively, to the point I throw up. I spend more time counting calories than I do doing my homework. It consumes my whole life, and I'll never be satisfied with my weight, even as my tactics get more and more extreme." So why do you assume this isn't how I've been losing weight? It isn't. But how would you know? It is how a great percentage of young women lose the weight. So why assume it's okay to act impressed by default, when something so ugly could be behind it?
But most of all, don't ask me if I've lost weight while my younger sister is standing nearby. When she hears you pay me this compliment, how can she not want to seek the same reward?
She doesn't eat breakfast before school. And she refuses to take a lunch with her, or even take money so she can buy something there. If she leaves the house with no means to a meal, it's that much easier for her to resist eating when she gets there. When she comes home she might be forced to nibble at a plate of dinner that was prepared for her, and this can only be enforced occasionally through guilt and constant harassment from concerned people like me.
And she's only 14. And her body is growing. And she needs nourishment. But at school she knows thin is in, and then when she sees you, it gets set in stone.
Why would she want to stop that, when she gets such frequent reminders that you admire discipline and ambition to be thin? And how can I ever possibly convince her that weight is not important, health is important, when you and the rest of the world keep praising weight loss? And how can I ever convince her that weight is not important, health is important, when I myself have trouble believing that, every time I see that proud grin on your face?
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AMEN thank you for posting this
Wonderful post. Thank you for talking about this. I'd never considered the "compliment" that deeply before, but I totally agree with you.
I have never agreed with anything more in my life.
Double amen!
I also wish people would stop talking numbers when it comes to their public discussion on weight. Like when people talk about how they were a "whale" at XXX lbs until losing some weight - Yeah, that *really* makes those of us in hearing distance who weigh that amount or more feel absolutely wonderful about ourselves.
I get this alot at family functions, usually only when I am required to give the initial hugs to relatives I would rather just ignore. And usually it's because I can never find well fitting pants (due to a small waist/large bum/short stature... never understood why not only is thin the norm but being tall is apparently the norm too... -_- ), so everything either looks baggy on my lower half or I'm-gonna-die tight. I generally choose baggy on the basis of comfort. And the comment never ceases to amaze me. Kinda just wanna go "Maybe, but have you gained weight?! You look marvelous!" Just to see the looks. Would start up the all to familiar family drama, but would be totes worth it. :P
Well argued point of view, I must say. I have a question though.
How is one expected to react if someone has made the effort to lose weight, for whatever reason? Not say anything at all? Maybe, just maybe, that person feels good about losing weight and people noticing would boost his or her ego no end.
Being complimented on one's achievements is actually quite nice.
Ignoring them sounds like inverse snobbery, no?
Perhaps instead of commenting on body weight or thinness, we could say a general compliment, e.g. "Hey, you look great. [Place] has been good to you," or something. Even if they're not feeling their best it could help boost some self-esteem.
I think the right thing to do is let the person in question bring it up, rather than making assumptions. Kind of like congratulating a woman on being pregnant, and then finding out she isn't. ...awkward.
I agree with EmberNight that a general compliment is unlikely to be taken amiss.
That and being appropriately supportive when someone does say that they have lost weight. I remember the one time in last few years where I had made an effort to work out, trim down and build a little muscle, telling my parents about being pleased about my progress, and getting the reaction "Well, don't get too attached to it, you're getting older."
If you must comment, you could always give a simple "you look great" without explaining why you think so. The person will apply whatever qualifiers they think are behind it (i.e. if they've lost weight they'll think it's because of that, ditto if they've just gotten a haircut or new glasses or something).
EmberNight and Liza,
Yes, you are right. Good idea!
I get this too (as a guy). "Look at you, you've lost weight!"
Actually, no, I'm probably within four ounces of the weight I was last time you saw me. I've been within plus or minus three pounds of this weight for the last fifteen years, including the last six times you've made the exact same mistake. But thanks for letting me know that your internal concept of me is fatter than I actually am.
Sometimes it's really tempting to tell them exactly that.
*stands*
*applauds*
*sits back down*
Excellent post. Thank you for saying this.
I've recently been told this numerous times while at work because I have stopped eating anything with processed sugar in it, and as non intentional result have lost weight.
The reason for the sugar ban is my anaemia, and everytime i try to combat the lethargy with sugar i just feel like shit afterwards because of the massive peaks and troughs of energy. So i find it funny that people compliment me on being thinner, like it's a good thing, when i sure as hell would rather be a couple of kg heavier and have the ability to eat a piece of yummy cake without feeling ridiculously crap once the sugar wears off.
Great post. Loved it.
Oh, boy, do I hear you.
I often get the, "You look so great" or "You're so beautiful" or "How do you stay so thin" or "You could afford that doughnut more than I could" comments.
I'm a size 0. My thighs don't even touch when I stand together. But I'm also 28 and have two children, and my low body fat weight is the result of a MEDICAL PROBLEM related to a thyroid disorder and a vitamin processing problem. THIS is what people think that women should look like? Like a stick-figured adolescent with boobs?
And I had to be sick enough to go see specialists in order to get this way. It makes me feel nauseated every time I think about it.
Thank you. Seriously, thank you.
I hate when I hear people talking about their weight, their diet - it's all negative negative negative.
Like the other day at work, while I was preparing my soup, felt the need to say "Oh soup. That's how you stay so thin." Look lady, I don't even know you - what makes you think you have the RIGHT to comment about my body.
It's like bodies are public property - no one thinks about the soul and spirit behind them. Anyone can say anything about any 'body'.
You can take your standards of weight and beauty and shove them. I am smart, sometimes funny, ambitious, and refuse to be judged by my weight.
It's easy to feel empowered like that in small moments when I'm alone. But the minute I step out into the public world, I immediately feel bad about my body. Come on, that's not right.
Makes me feel like screaming.
This is so true. Props on the awesome dissection of the "compliment".
I'm Russian, which means I interact with a culture that is (in my experience) even more obsessed with thinness than the US is. Since I am outside the Russian standard of thinness, my teenage years were kinda miserable. Anyway, last fall I lost some weight - mostly through stress - and the response i received from Russians I knew was absurd. Suddenly, all manner of compliments, congratulations, encouragement. I was stunned with how important this change seemed to everyone else. Personally, I'd been fine with how I looked before that, so all the newfound compliments seemed to be saying, "Oh great! You don't look ugly anymore!" Mrgh.
I was honest about why I'd lost weight - stress and unhapiness - but even this didn't stop people treating it as some wonderful thing I'd done.
So yeah, this post outlines the problem wonderfully.
I have an eating disorder that cycles between binging and restricting periods. It always amazes me how free people are with compliments when I'm in a restricting phase. In all this time, maybe eight years since this all started, I've only had one person express concern for me while I was losing weight. (It's not gradual and I'm bad at hiding my fear when I'm around food. My skin fades to an even more ghostly pallor and I wear too many clothes because I can't stay warm.)
But everyone comments on how good I look or even how much better I look (than when you were fat, when you were so ugly, Nepenthe). They praise my willpower when I skip meals and exercise twice a day.
I'm so much happier now. I weigh almost twice what I did then, but I'm so much happier. No one compliments me anymore though, although sometimes my friends say how much happier I seem.
I lost a lot of weight when I got sick. Once I was better it was all "you look great!" "how did you lose the weight, you look awesome!" and all that. I always answer honestly with an "I had gotten really sick. Just hasn't come back yet." Which comes with the usual backpeddling of "not that you looked bad before, you're just so small now!"
and I HATE HATE HATE when people ask me if I'm on a diet. I've been changing my diet slowly for SEVEN YEARS so it becomes habit and I eat healthier overall. So, yes, I am on a diet -- but it's actually more like a lifestyle change, thanks.
So, in short, thanks for this.