Why do people think its ok to tell me I’m too skinny?

sorry this is a long rant and will be posted in 2 sections

Why do people think its ok to comment on another persons weight? Adults have a lot to answer for when it comes to the body hang ups young girls/women have.

My name is lyn and I’m a 27 year old woman, I’m 5ft 8inches tall and my weight naturally fluctuates between around 8 ½ to 9 stone, sometimes I never stop eating and sometimes I just eat a normal amount of food, the thing is I never gain weight and I am very slight in build, or as other people prefer to say ‘too skinny’. I’ve always been this way and throughout my whole life I’ve had idiots tell me I look like I could do to eat a good meal, and what bothers me the most is that they are basically saying that I look ill, I used to want to die inside when people made nasty comments like this to me, I’ll list a few of the comments I’ve had in a bit, as these are comments will live with me forever, and I remember them word for word,

My question to these sort of people is ‘’what the hell is going through their heads to make them think that this is an acceptable thing to say, EVER!?’’

I’ve learnt a lot over the last year about how the world’s population has been manipulated to be obsessed with the way we look, especially for women, although it seems to be catching up for men too. And the way we judge other people is disgusting and if it wasn’t for media then none of us would ever judge another person because we wouldn’t be comparing ourselves to the celebs or airbrushed models, and because I’ve finally seen the manipulation involved I have finally learnt to love myself for who I am, I just wish I’d damn well seen it earlier.


I was the most painfully shy child, and I’m still very shy around people I don’t know as I still wonder what other people think of me, I’m trying not to care and I’m getting there bit by bit, but all in all I’m happy with the way I am, and in all fairness this is the best way to be as what is the point in spending the rest of my life trying to do the impossible, which for me is putting on weight.

Just a little necessary background info first, sorry to bore you guys, I have 4 older brothers ranging from 29yrs old to 46 years old, I was only close to the younger too as the older 2 had moved out when I was very young

Here are just a few weight related comments I’ve had to deal with before I even got to high school, and I could never understand these comments as I was only a child, and at that point I wasn’t even aware of body image, I was a child for goodness sake, but never the less these comments had an impact on me in my teens,

I can only guess that I was around 7ish when the school nurse weighed me and said I looked underweight, even though my weight was fine, so why the hell would she tell a child of that age that I looked too thin?? What was the purpose of her saying that?

On another occasion I about 8 or 9 ish and I was playing in a friends back garden, and her mum and another mum were there with us and I quite clearly remember hearing them saying to each other, ‘’there must be something wrong with her because she is too skinny’’. so once again I’m wondering ‘what do they mean by that? What IS wrong with me exactly?’

Probably around the same age again my mum had been drinking with the middle two of my brothers and the older brother said that I must be bulimic as I was obviously eating because they’d seen me, my mum and younger of the two brothers got into a heated argument with him telling him he was wrong and the younger brother ended up walking away from the argument in anger.

The above comments were all made by adults, NEVER children, these adults were responsible for me spending the rest of my years until now trying to put weight on even though it is impossible for me, but knowing it was impossible made it very distressing as I knew I could never be what they wanted me to be and that I must just look ill, this made me a million times more shyer than I already was, I must have spent at least 2/3 of my school life and social life with a bright red face (I used to blush so bad), I still blush to this day, but I can laugh it off now, luckily….

These are some of the more recent comments I’ve had in adult life,

I was about 21 and at work, the conversation got onto slim people, someone was talking about her friend who was naturally super slim, one of my other colleagues said, ‘’do you mean like lyn” to which she replied ‘’oh no, not like lyn, my friend has curves in all the right places’’. she didn’t even realise what she said but it hurt me so much,

More recently when I was 25, I was at work, I start at 7 am and decided to have a microwave pizza for breakfast at about 7.30am when my male boss said to me ‘’I can’t believe your eating pizza at this time in the morning’’ that was a perfectly harmless comment, but then one of my female colleagues said to my boss ‘’you shouldn’t say that, for all you know she might have a complex about her weight and she might go and throw up in the toilet’’, once again I was mortified and even my boss looked pretty shocked as he’d only made the comment about eating pizza because of the fact is was 7.30 in the morning.

Last year a customer (who to be honest is a complete and utter dirty creep) told me I needed to get a boob job, and that he has girlfriend who was skinny and flat chested like me and that he’s told her he’d pay for her to have a boob job, to which I responded ‘’you should be ashamed of yourself for saying something like that to someone you’re in a relationship with’’ and thankfully he did actually look a little ashamed of himself, yet he has made many more comments about my weight since then,

Now this next comment occurred only last week and was from a new boss who has been with us for about 2 months, he’s in his late 50’s, he’s seen how much I eat and also heard me talk about the previous comment to this one that happened when I was 25, that’s why this makes it one of the worse comments, as he obviously did it on purpose,

These are his words, and he said it in front of an office of 4 other people ‘’do you throw up after eating?’’, I replied ‘’I can’t believe you just asked me that’’, his reply was ‘’what, I’m only showing concern’’ to which I replied ‘’so then why have you just asked me in front of the whole office?’’ he didn’t answer and I proceeded to tell him how much that comment offended and upset me,

This morning he brought the above back up and I told him that what he’d implied was that I looked ill, and imagine my shock when he replied ‘’well you do look ill, and that’s the truth’’, again, this was in front of the whole office, I told him that he wants to be really careful what he says next and walked off,

If I wasn’t the stronger person I am now I probably would have broken down crying at this last situation but I’m not going to let this pig of a boss get me down,

Now here is how the above type of comments has impacted my life up until now,

Whenever I went out for a meal and drinks with friends I was always scared to go to the toilet in case people thought I was going to throw up, and alcohol always goes straight through me very quickly so I always need the toilet, I always tried to persuade someone else to come to the toilet with me, that way I didn’t have wonder what other people are thinking (although in all likelihood they probably weren’t thinking anything at all as they know me). I always felt the need to eat everything on my plate even though I’m more of a constant snacker type than sit down to a big meal type of person, so if I didn’t finish everything on my plate I felt like people were judging me,

When I’m speaking to someone new I always (and still do to some extent) felt like I needed mention how much I eat and just don’t put weight on, this is a defence mechanism I used to stop people from making hurtful comments although this probably brought my weight to their attention.

I’ve tried eating anything and everything but I’ve finally realised that this is not going to make me put any weight on so now I’ve started to eat healthier, but even when I’m buying healthy food I’m wondering if other people are looking at my food and thinking to themselves, ‘’oh, that’s why she’s so skinny’’. I haven’t lost or gained weight since eating healthier.

The junk food wasn’t doing my health any good and last year I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome after coming off the contraceptive pill I’d been on for 10 years, and amazingly enough the doctor actually LAUGHED, yes - laughed when he told me, as ‘I wasn’t the typical patient as I wasn’t overweight’. so the docs just told me I’m going to struggle to conceive and that about 45% of pregnancies in pcos sufferers end in miscarriage and the best he could do was laugh, he also prescribed me metformin which is a diabetes drug as pcos is linked with high blood sugar levels, but metformin is also known to make patients lose weight, I obviously decided this wasn’t for me and started eating healthier, my periods have now returned to normal,

My point to this thread really is to make people think twice about telling someone they are too skinny, I do understand that some of the above comments were probably made with genuine concern, but its because of these comments I have spent my whole life until now trying to achieve the impossible. As a primary school child I wasn’t even aware of body image, and no child should ever be subject to comments about their weight, if a parent is making sure their child is eating and exercising properly then children shouldn’t even have to think about their bodies for a second, yet because of mindless adults I have mentally tortured myself up until now. And now we hear of girls as young as 4 who are concerned about their weight, WHAT THE HELL? This is so so upsetting

Are you a person who has ever made a comment like this? I don’t mind if you are but I just hope that perhaps my thread might make you see why this is hurtful?

I’m not talking about situations where people clearly have some kind of illness, for example people that have never been naturally thin before but all of a sudden lose a lot of weight as this is probably something to worry about if its not their natural size

I would never dream of telling someone they need to lose weight so I don’t get why it seems acceptable when it’s the other way round, I remember I always used to think, ‘its ok for people that are overweight as they can lose weight to be whatever size they want’, although I now realise that was as stupid thing to think as I know for a fact I would struggle to limit what and when I eat if I ever did put weight on,

Sorry for the long thread, this is a question I have wanted to ask a broad audience for a while, all comments welcome,

Thank you

Lyn

Why let it get to you? Unless you truly do think their is osmething wrong with being skinny.

sry I did not want to read your 2 page rant about people labeling you. Lables do not matter if you know that and you let them effect you then you truly do not know it.

reply to post by Minnie1985


Social programming and eventual acceptance is the short answer.

It is not considered derogatory to call someone skinny because the magazines and TV portray that "figure" as being something to strive for.

Being fat is unacceptable in the same magazines and TV

My sister had bulimia and everyone thought she "finally" looked great - it was not until a saw her in bathers that I knew something was wrong - and we JUST caught it in time too - now that's another story!!

Its a sad state of affairs alright.

There will ALWAYS be know it all's, pretentious, or jealous idiots who feel a need to give opinions or advice- unsolicited, or otherwise.

Honestly, IGNORE them.

Tell them they are entitled to their opinion, but that they are incorrect. Walk it off and forget about it and go back to what you were thinking about before your misfortune of encountering said clown.

reply to post by Minnie1985


It is not acceptable for people to make those negative comments to you. You are tall and slender with a great metabolism...I am thinking that secretly...many, many people envy you and they wish they could be as slender and healthy as you are. I say just be your beautiful self.

I am tall, full-figured and middle-aged. I have had people say to me: "I bet when you were younger you were a beauty" and "Don't you think you need to lose 20 pounds; you never used to be that heavy" and "Too bad you are so tall; you might get more dates if you were shorter." Some people are just so rude!

reply to post by Minnie1985


If you don't like it then say something.
Tell people that you are not comfortable with them discussing your weight.

It's that simple.

If they keep at it then leave.
If it's at work tell your boss you're being harassed.

Its because they are jealous, dont listen to them, besides if you really dont get fat at all then you should try out for modeling. Id definately would like to go out with you

I really wish I had your metabolism. You have no clue how much I envy you.

You have problems, but you have no idea how hard it is to lose weight, and the bigotry overweight people face. There is such a drive in this country to make everyone look all the same, and it's driven by the markets that want to sell slim clothing and health foods. And ebcause they make it look attractive, especially when you have celebrities showing how fun it is and manipulating people's emotions, well...

I really wish I could stop it. If I was a multi millionaire I'd be putting out all kinds of ads that made fun of those people and shame them into being more accepting of how real Americans looked instead of trying to get everybody to conform so they can make a profit of of the their crap conformity.

People can be such callous asses, Minnie. It's easy to say "don't let it get to you" but it obviously is hurtful and disturbing to you.

I used to be a pathetically skinny girl (5' 8" also), and I remember going into a bathroom at a dance club, and some women looked at me with pure hate and said, "Don't you ever eat, B****?!" I got a lot of flak. My folks used to tease me when I was a kid that, if it wasn't for my big feet, I would blow away in the wind. I was also flat and had people say that I needed a boob job.

People are usually small-minded with preconceived notions of what women are supposed to look like. Their comments say so much more about their lack of intelligence than it does about you, but since you're stuck listening to their garbage, that's not much consolation.

Now that I am 50 years old, have had kids and a hysterectomy (also had poly-cystic ovarian disease), I look back on my skinny years and sigh. Having kids added a chest, having a hysterectomy added the rest.

It is not as common for a person's metabolism to be overactive, but there are people like that. My husband, fresh out of high school, was 6' 6" and 150 pounds. At the time, his doctor gave him steroids in order for him to gain some weight. He took a lot of hassle for being skinny, too.

It may last forever for you (and that's what you should hope for), but you could be like the rest of us who were quite skinny at one time, then became rather stout as we got older.

If you're eating healthy and you feel good, then you are as you were meant to be. Tell those idiots who are hassling you that your weight is NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS, and if it continues, you will file suit for having to endure a hostile work environment. Not sure how that works in the UK, but it works really well here in the USA.

It is a sad world we live in when people have to defend themselves for being as they are. Most people are just jealous because they cannot control their weight gain. Tell them to piss off.

Listen, being overweight is unhealthy and those people are jealous of people who have high metabolism.

I don't know why there's this big propaganda campaign to let fat people feel better about themselves. They should not feel good about themselves they are un-heatlhy.

Doesn't make you a bad person and sure if you have some medical condition, well what else can you do?

But mostly, it's cause you live an un-healthy lifestyle and well that's on you, not society.

So as for being "too skinny" that does also exist, if you are bulemic, or anorexic or something like that. Otherwise, people are just talking trash to get under your skin.

I would ignore the haters and remind them to put down the fork and pick up a bike route.

~Tenth

hi op

sorry for saying this

ive either just had a de ja vous
or i have read this before
i think this is a cut n paste job with some wording changed.....
soryy in advance if this is actualy your writing

dave


(sorry for bad spelling am slightly drunk lol)

Same here 58kg soaking wet, my wife is also small. A teacher said to my daughter she is anorexic and would she like to partake in a year 12 study about anorexia. She came home confused and told us what her teacher said. Now all 4 of my children are small like my wife and I, so we headed down to the school to confront the teacher, She took one look at both of us and started to say sorry to us. But i was so mad she had no right confronting a 14yo and saying that to her. She should have spoken to a us the parents instead of my daughter to start with.

To make along story short the teacher in question no longer teaches.

I can only guess that I was around 7ish when the school nurse weighed me and said I looked underweight, even though my weight was fine, so why the hell would she tell a child of that age that I looked too thin?? What was the purpose of her saying that?

Because being underweight is a health issue but she should have spoken to your parents, not you.

You just have to learn how to love yourself. If you're confident nothing anyone ever says about your skinniness will bother you.

reply to post by Minnie1985

I always was around 63/65 kg, (175sm)and always heard the same words: ''Oh you so skinny!'' In the beginning only smiled politely, but then had enough - I would turn face to face to the offender (always fat one) and looking at her face, would say, smiling: ''and what will you give away to be as skinny as I am? By the way, if you really do not like my figure, then you always can look at the people of your own complexion and ignore my existence. I love my body and going to keep it as it is. Get used to it!'' After some time the comments stopped. I understood: one should not be shy in pointing at excessive fat of offender, of course politely, and it should be very specific and clear.

it could just be concern.
i understand that sometimes even the most innocent of comments can be really annoying. especially when they disguise critisism as concern.

whoever bothers you, tell them.

i am often told i've put on weight.
my weight is pretty much always changing.
i've gone from being about 13st when i was around 20 to going 10 stone at 22. now im around 11.5 st so i knw all about people loudly noticing my weight.
best to either ignore it or explode with disproportionate rage.

I know how you feel, The "Damn you are skinny" gets tiring after a while... I am not blind I am aware that I might have a little less fat on my ass than you.... People think it is ok to comment on how skinny a person is. But saying someone is fat is seen as a bad thing while skinny isn't... It's annoying.

But I must say, You judge yourself after what other people tell you... And you worry too much about what they say. You need to stop that, It isn't good for you. Be pleased with yourself as long as you know yourself that you eat right and are healthy... Don't give a damn what those people say... People are so bored so they need something constantly to talk gossip about... It's a fools game.

Now what I suggested to you might not be the simplest thing... You ego loves all these things and love to play with your mind, I suggest you start looking inside to find some peace... Try meditation, its a long term thing though.. In the end you will notice the difference... Then all those people can do whatever they feel like and it won't matter to you. However a lot of old things will come to your mind and you would have to let them go to progress further...

reply to post by Minnie1985


Drink more Muscle Milk! It'll slap the pound on, but I won't lie if I saw some
bones walking down the road I would make a bulimic/anorexic joke.
Blame it on MTV True Life: I have and eating disorder.

reply to post by TheBeastly0ne


lol i wished that worked, my self have tried to put on the pounds, With fat diets, butter diets sea food and eat it diets, The sit down for 12months and eat everything i can my hands on diets meat diets you name it. I have been told my metabolism is quite fast.

reply to post by Minnie1985


First of all that's the nicest rant I've ever heard.

I'm not sure about the actual rights in the UK but here in the US we have a right to express ourselves (freedom of speech) to anyone really. It's annoying because anyone can impromptly heckle you at any time. The good thing is, you can outsmart them and it's usually fairly easy.

Just make sure you do not cross the line into harassment. Some people doing this are well versed in law and will hide behind it. These people are a huge minority, but they exist.

Keep in mind that the people saying this may not realize it's hurting your feelings. You could also take it as a compliment.