Comments About Weight from Passerby

[Kaypeep]

I usually ignore and don't engage the crazy.  But last year I was walking and some drunk woman (a male friend was holding her up, helping her walk, she was so drunk) stopped and pointed at me and said "YOU NEED TO CALL JENNY!" (Jenny Craig.)  I stopped and looked at her and said "You need to get a life, and a punch in the face." She was kind of stunned and just shut up.  I kept walking.  I know it wasn't e-hell approved, but I felt pretty good as I walked away.

[hollandoates]

I wish I knew why some people do this.  It seems that if people would simply remember the old adage "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" we'd never have to have this type of discussion.

DH has struggled with weight loss these past few years.  I actually had a stranger at a party ask me how I could stand to play scrabble with an overweight man.  I was dumbfounded!  Who asks such a question?!  I wish she had been drunk.  It would have been easier to brush that off.

All I could do was stare and blink.

Aside from the general rudeness of commenting on weight, she asked how you could stand to play scrabble with an overweight man?!? A game that requires absolutely no physical exertion? (Besides which, weight is not much of an indicator of a person's fitness- my SO is one burly man and he is crazy strong/fast etc). That's just downright baffling- as if a low weight is somehow conducive to a strong vocabulary??

This discussion is really interesting, I appreciate the feedback. It could be my studies in feminism coming out, but I'm really tempted to start responding with, "You have no right to police my body".

[Yvaine]

I wish I knew why some people do this.  It seems that if people would simply remember the old adage "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" we'd never have to have this type of discussion.

DH has struggled with weight loss these past few years.  I actually had a stranger at a party ask me how I could stand to play scrabble with an overweight man.  I was dumbfounded!  Who asks such a question?!  I wish she had been drunk.  It would have been easier to brush that off.

All I could do was stare and blink.

Aside from the general rudeness of commenting on weight, she asked how you could stand to play scrabble with an overweight man?!? A game that requires absolutely no physical exertion? (Besides which, weight is not much of an indicator of a person's fitness- my SO is one burly man and he is crazy strong/fast etc). That's just downright baffling- as if a low weight is somehow conducive to a strong vocabulary??

This discussion is really interesting, I appreciate the feedback. It could be my studies in feminism coming out, but I'm really tempted to start responding with, "You have no right to police my body".

No, Scrabble as a euphemism for the blanket tango.  (Which I have also found to have no correlation to the person's weight.)

[hollandoates]

Ohhh. Well, I feel silly- maybe I should re-read the lingo thread!

Well, playing Scrabble or "playing Scrabble"--really! What an insanely rude and invasive thing to say.

I think another thing that's bothersome to me about this kind of behavior is that it really doesn't acknowledge that people are diverse, in both appearance and preferences. It angers me that they think I should feel bad, which I guess is why I'm tempted to say the "no right to police my body" bit.

[Calypso]

O/T, hollandoates, but I love your moniker. 
(Calypso, she's a rich girl, and she goes too far but she knows it doesn't matter anyway.... )

[Moonie]

Wow.   I'd probably be tempted to say , "I'm fat, not deaf.  Was there a reason you thought my weight was something to comment about?"

[poundcake]

Another fatty here. I've lost a lot of weight, and am very healthy, but am never going to be small. Usually I can brush off comments as the other person announcing their sickening insecurity, but it still hurts. A few times I've looked at them, genuinely puzzled, and asked "Why would you say something like that to a total stranger?" (sort of the "Why would I want to do that?" approach) and keep pushing the issue:

Them: You're fat! It's unhealthy! You need to go on a diet!
Me: I'm aware of what I weigh. I just don't get why you would go up to a complete stranger and make comments like that.
Them: You should eat healthier and you wouldn't be so fat!
Me: But why would you go up to someone you don't even know and start making comments about their weight and physical appearance?

[Emmy]

My guess is people make rude comments to show off to their equally Neanderthal friends or because embarrassing or hurting another person makes them feel powerful.  Either way anybody who does such things is a small, inadequate person.  The drive-by insults are the most cowardly.  It takes a really big person to shout an insult to somebody walking down the street and drive away without hearing a response.

On more than one occasion I have a had a car load of boys shout things at me.  I guess I'm lucky I never understood them.  On another occasion, I had mini-van load of pre-teen twits give me the finger. 

[Isometric]

This makes me really sad and angry. How dare people treat others this way! 

I have had this happen too, I'm short & have a small frame, but team a snug dress with a deliciously over proportioned meal and I got "don't wear that dress, it makes you look fat" yelled at me from across the street - it cut right to the bone. I can't imagine having that treatment all the time - disgusting.

In other instances where people have been cruel I have just said "that hurt my feelings" - unless the person has no soul it generally reminds them that you are a human with real human emotions.

I'm new to the forum so I don't know how to quote yet, but I also like the "I can lose weight, you'll be ugly for life"  Don't think I'd be brave enough to say it though!

[Flora Louise]

Could you do a double take and fake a look of recognition and say something like, "Oh, hi! See you Friday night!" while hurrying off. IOW make them think they've just been rude to someone they actually know? Let em stew.

[FizzyChip]

As someone who has struggled with their weight all their life, I can certainly empathise with this situation. 

I think "fat jokes" are one of the last bastions in this PC world in which it's still perceived as ok to make fun of a group of people.  I mean race jokes are not ok, sexual orientation jokes are not ok, so why are weight jokes ok?  Weight issues are at the forefront of people's minds and for some reason it's still "ok" to ridicule someone for being over or under weight.  They're everywhere - even on prime-time tv and my own opinion is that they're a cheap laugh and I tend to switch programmes.  Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't find them funny at all.

I don't normally care about these sorts of comments too much as I've heard them all my life.  But recently a friend and I (both of us are trying to lose weight) were doing a power-walk along an area in our city which overlooks the beach - it's a lovely walk and the views distract from the burning feeling in your legs!  While we were walking, a group of people drove passed and hollered out something about "whale-watching".  My friend really took it to heart and was extremely upset about it.  But at the end of the day, we both took heart in the fact that we were the ones exercising and enjoying the view and they were the morons in their car getting pleasure out of screaming insults at complete strangers.

[MassachusettsMomx4]

Years and years ago when I was in college, in order to get to campus, I had to walk up the street that was bordered on both sides by dorms.  The dorms were multilevel.  As I was walking on my side of the street, past the neighborhing guy's dorm, I heard someone yell out the window "LOSE WEIGHT!"  I was not particularly overweight at the time but I was offended to be shouted at like that.  I could pretty much pinpoint where the yelling was coming from and these particular guys were jerks anyway.  I continued up the street and they start oinking like a pig really loudly.  I just happened to glance across the street at that moment, hoping that no one heard this stupidity, when I saw who they were harrassing.  There was a local young lady who worked in the dining hall for the dorms in that pod.  She was very large, yes, morbidly obese.  More importantly, she was a human being and such a kind and pleasant one at that.  Sometimes I would go for breakfast and she would be working the line with always a nice greeting for everyone. 

I felt so bad for her.  Here she was, walking to home or the parking lot, minding her own business and she gets yelled at.  There was no place for her to duck into, so she just had to take it.  In front of everyone nearby.  I can still see her, thirty years later, just walking on, trying to ignore this yelling, coming from people who were supposedly mature adults. 

I hope that they finally grew up.  More importantly, I hope that she forgot about it. 

[MissRose]

It seems that making fun of people's weight seems to be okay even if its not okay to do so for other reasons.  I know my mother still likes to say stuff about my weight, my nephew's and my dad's.  We try to ignore her comments but it is not easy, and often gets us stressed / emotional to the point we may eat a lot of food to make ourselves feel better.

[Ginger G]

Ugh, so sorry that happened to you.  As another who has struggled with weight my whole life, I've been there myself - more times than I care to remember.  Sometimes I've retaliated verbally back and sometimes I haven't.

One of the more bizarre incidents that I recall happened when I was in college.  This was actually one of my "thin" periods, I had lost quite a bit of weight that year, was about a size 8, and thought I looked pretty good.  On this day, I had gotten off work from my waitressing job after a long exhausting shift.  I was walking towards my dorm and a group of guys passed by me.  One of them looked over at me and said, "You're ugly as s##t"  in this really cold, mean way.  Of course the others all laughed like it was the most hilarious thing ever.  I was completely stunned by this, but did turn around and yell "Yeah, well so are you!"  Not one of my finer retorts I admit.  I went up to my room and cried.  I had been insulted by strangers (and non-strangers) before, but no one had ever flat out called me ugly.  It bothered me way more than the fat comments ever had!  That was the only year I lived on campus.  That incident (and one other) sealed my decision to get an apartment with friends the year after that.

Of course I realize now that he was just a jerk that was  looking to hurt someone's feelings and that was the only thing his simple brain could think of.  Anybody that feels the need to make hurtful comments to a stranger for no good reason just has some kind of personality disorder in my opinion. 

[TurtleDove]

It seems that making fun of people's weight seems to be okay even if its not okay to do so for other reasons.  I know my mother still likes to say stuff about my weight, my nephew's and my dad's.  We try to ignore her comments but it is not easy, and often gets us stressed / emotional to the point we may eat a lot of food to make ourselves feel better.

I think some people rationalize this because they reason that an overweight person can lose weight by modifying her lifestyle, while things like gender, race, etc. cannot be changed (insert extreme examples of exceptions, but generally speaking).  And I don't think "fat bashing" is as accepted as some posts on ehell would indicate.  It happens, but I don't think it is accepted in mainstream society (anymore than racism or misogyny is accepted in maintstream society).