Not much makes me want to disappear more than when someone says “you look like you are losing weight.” I’m not a fan of body talk anyway, especially not about my own, but this particular comment makes my entire body cringe, my chest go tight until I can barely breathe, and every thought in my mind turns into “let’s get the hell out of here right now.” Words like those make me feel naked, and not in the sensual or sexy way with a lover naked, but a nightmare of being in the halls of high school naked, or actually more like all my skin is stripped away and all my deepest darkest secrets are on display kind of naked. All the echoing voices from my past, from childhood, from adolescence, all the criticisms and my own self-hatred, they all come screaming in. It feels like bathing suit shopping at fourteen, or a time when a smaller sized friend tried to loan me something to wear, or the time a doctor suggested dieting when I was sixteen and was there in his office because of a sore throat. It makes me feel terrible and vulnerable, and full of an oppressive sense of shame.
Today I got one of those comments. I was walking back from my lunch hour, content after time away from my office, time sitting outside in the beautiful Southern California February day reading a book and eating and just being apart from the stress of working. I was relaxed and the only thing on my mind was the music I’d been listening to while reading, Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, which is mentioned often in the book I’m reading. I was thinking how I never remember hearing the album before, yet the music seemed so familiar. I was not so much lost in thought, but happy in thoughts and then it happened. Our receptionist, an eccentric and warm and truly lovely woman, shouts (yes shouts) from behind me, far enough behind to require shouting, “you look like you are losing weight, Laura. I’ve been noticing.” I felt like I’d miss a step on stairs and had that jolt happen when your body is unexpectedly forced downward, or like a door had shut on my finger before I could move it out of the way. I felt physically stunned by her words.
Immediately it felt to me that the room shrank and grew uncomfortably silent, as if everyone were holding their breath waiting for my response. In reality, this was not happening. This was my freaked out perception and sudden self-consciousness that was both making me burn in embarrassment, and freeze in panic. My mouth felt dry as desert sand in the middle of July, and my feet felt too heavy to move, though all I wanted to do was move. I wanted to be away, far away, quickly.
She came up closer and said “did you hear what I said? You look like you are losing weight.” She said it with a mix of confusion and happiness, like she was baffled that I wasn’t full of smiles and thank you’s because this was happy news she was delivering, and she was happy to be saying it, to be noticing it. For me, though, I felt violated. I know its irrational, but its how I felt – violated and ashamed. I tried to smile, through gritted teeth and clenched fists, my palms still red and indented to where my nails pressed into my skin, and I said “thank you.” After the words came out I felt the tears sting my eyes, and I felt like I was going to be sick. I got back to my office and shut my door, and tried to breathe.
It is three hours later and I’m still trying to breathe right. I’m trying to stop the negative thoughts. I’m trying to not be so irrationally angry and hurt. And, mostly, I’m trying not to let it trigger me into a self-harming reaction. So, instead I’m listening to Ryan Adams, I’m reading an email from my best friend about The Walking Dead, and I’m reminding myself that I am not defined by my body, not negatively, not positively, not at all. Its hard though. This is hard.
My Wrecking Ball (live) :: Ryan Adams
at the starlite diner 
Now-a-days you’d think people would hold off on those comments even when they mean to compliment. What if it’s a trigger(for you it is), what if you’re ill, what if’s can go on and on it’s just weird to say anything at all about a person’s appearance like that. I hope people stop saying things like that in our lifetime. I will never forget when an acquaintance I hadn’t seen for a few months came up to me and said “Hey! You look like you gained some weight, probably because we didn’t take all those bike rides like we did last summer!” Um. Then another acquaintance once told this story in tears: She was working in a deli when a friendly customer asked “Aw when is your baby due?” but she was not pregnant. She finished helping her and then went in the back to sob. People should think before they speak about that stuff & shut the F up. This is not nearly as bad as weight remarks at all so I don’t think it’s equivalent to what you went through today but it reminds me so I’ll mention if you don’t mind: Almost every single time I’ve gone barefaced to work, any job, people assumed I was sick or asked if I was sick or had a cold or mentioned that I looked different, sick, what was the matter? That sort of thing, and it’s hard to say “I’m not wearing makeup?” No comments people!!
I love to compliment people on their gorgeous makeup, skin, style/clothes, whatever but even that makes me think twice and I’ve been trying to get out of the habit because you never know what it means to other person and even though my intentions are good it’s somehow diminishing that person when they don’t appear that way, if that makes sense…UGH it’s hard to be a woman.
The same woman did the same thing again today. I reacted better, at least, perhaps I’m building up a tolerance.
Thing is, I don’t mind compliments on make-up and clothes and style and hair, its just body issues, and they are that – body issues – that I know that I have. Sometimes I can walk it off, let it roll off my skin, but other times not so much.
I remember so vividly one day when I worked at a record store, back in like 1988, and I was wearing this adorable mini-skirt that I LOVED, paired up with dark tights and boots and a band tee-shirt. A friend – a good friend actually – made a comment to a co-worker friend of ours – that she thought I could not hear saying “she’s brave to wear that skirt. I couldn’t do it if I had hips like hers”. Maybe it was a compliment, or a veiled insult, or I don’t even know but it shattered me. I remember wanting to run home and change and burn that adorable skirt, a skirt I never wore again. Thing is, I looked good in it, and yet this stupid comment got so deep under my skin that I remember it like it was yesterday even now – 28 years later! How insane is that?
What an awful comment to have heard, whichever way she meant it. YOU weren’t the issue, she was the issue, she was judgmental and careless even if she was trying to compliment you but you paid the price all these years never forgetting about it. I remember being in the girls’ locker room and everyone crowding around the mirrors trying to see if they had “girl mustaches” and my friend was horrified because she could see a light blond fuzz on her upper lip. Everybody was pointing out something similar to each other. I looked and didn’t see anything on my face. For once I felt “okay”…I was always the pale as a ghost girl, the freckle face, wrestling my curly hair, the shortest one and I didn’t see a “girl mustache” in sight so I proudly(with no bragging intended) said “I don’t see anything! I don’t have one!” thinking it was a great thing and I’ve never forgotten Jen’s nasty “Yeah well you have other flaws” as she looked me up and down and everybody laughed. I know she was just being defensive but I was maybe 12 and it hurt my feelings because I took to mean “you’re ugly anyway” and I never forgot it! So it’s insane but I’m there with you…I hate giving power over to these people from so long ago.
I always write too much-that was a long long comment & I apologize if I took away from your own venting there a bit-Argh!!
Hope you’re feeling better by this time though.
I love your comments…it is never too much. Don’t stop.