Warning: rant ahead.
People need to learn to keep unsolicited opinions to themselves. Mutually-agreed-upon diet talk among friends is one thing, and even then should be kept to a minimum. But it's been awhile since I've had relative strangers make comments and assumptions about my body, and I forgot just how much it sucks.
When you work with the public, you never know what they're gonna say. I usually take it in stride, even when it's personal, because they don't really know me. Except for when they do. Some of our regulars DO know me a little bit. One lady brings the kids she babysits to my weekly story times and always wants to diet talk, usually right as I'm setting up and in front of the kids. I do my best to shut her down. She shames other staff who don't actively diet or exercise, and tells them all about what she does, but because I am able to say "why yes, I do work out" and she could see that I had lost weight, I just got the chitter chatter, I didn't get the shame.
Until today.
I was walking on my rounds, and she saw me, waved me over, started yammering about nothing that I cared about. I was trying to politely extract myself from the conversation because I was on my lunch break, and she was going on and on about which kind of bagels and bread her kids will eat, and how she prepares her spaghetti sauce, and how many calories in her brand of yogurt, when she looks at my belly and says, "so, you've quit the diet and exercise, eh?"
My jaw clenched.
Pretty sure my face went beet red.
"No," I snapped. "Still going to the gym. Every day. Bitch."
Okay, the "bitch" was silent, in my head, but I really wanted to say it.
Because body shame sucks, and it should never be okay to comment on people's bodies, and only assholes assume things about people, and unsolicited diet talk is never ever acceptable. If I hadn't been at work, if I didn't only know this lady in a professional capacity, I'd have likely launched into a "you can be fit and fat, you know" tirade or try to school her on why my weight loss has stalled and gone back up, or why it's none of her fucking business anyway. But I didn't. I clenched my smile, said, "well, I have to keep going" and got the hell out of there.
The worst of it is, I let her. I let her get away with it, and I let her get to me.
I'm sitting at my desk, staring at my lunch. My healthy, vegetables-and-chicken whole-foods lunch.
And I can't eat it.
Because I know how hard I work.
I know what I eat, and don't eat, and what I have given up, and what I feel deprived of.
And it's not enough. It may never be enough.
Those words, those unsolicited words based on one glance at my body and an assumption, those unsolicited words undid a few months' worth of work.
I know she's wrong.
I know she's wrong.
I know she's wrong.
But I am still staring at my lunch sitting on my desk.
People need to learn to keep unsolicited opinions to themselves. Mutually-agreed-upon diet talk among friends is one thing, and even then should be kept to a minimum. But it's been awhile since I've had relative strangers make comments and assumptions about my body, and I forgot just how much it sucks.
When you work with the public, you never know what they're gonna say. I usually take it in stride, even when it's personal, because they don't really know me. Except for when they do. Some of our regulars DO know me a little bit. One lady brings the kids she babysits to my weekly story times and always wants to diet talk, usually right as I'm setting up and in front of the kids. I do my best to shut her down. She shames other staff who don't actively diet or exercise, and tells them all about what she does, but because I am able to say "why yes, I do work out" and she could see that I had lost weight, I just got the chitter chatter, I didn't get the shame.
Until today.
I was walking on my rounds, and she saw me, waved me over, started yammering about nothing that I cared about. I was trying to politely extract myself from the conversation because I was on my lunch break, and she was going on and on about which kind of bagels and bread her kids will eat, and how she prepares her spaghetti sauce, and how many calories in her brand of yogurt, when she looks at my belly and says, "so, you've quit the diet and exercise, eh?"
My jaw clenched.
Pretty sure my face went beet red.
"No," I snapped. "Still going to the gym. Every day. Bitch."
Okay, the "bitch" was silent, in my head, but I really wanted to say it.
Because body shame sucks, and it should never be okay to comment on people's bodies, and only assholes assume things about people, and unsolicited diet talk is never ever acceptable. If I hadn't been at work, if I didn't only know this lady in a professional capacity, I'd have likely launched into a "you can be fit and fat, you know" tirade or try to school her on why my weight loss has stalled and gone back up, or why it's none of her fucking business anyway. But I didn't. I clenched my smile, said, "well, I have to keep going" and got the hell out of there.
The worst of it is, I let her. I let her get away with it, and I let her get to me.
I'm sitting at my desk, staring at my lunch. My healthy, vegetables-and-chicken whole-foods lunch.
And I can't eat it.
Because I know how hard I work.
I know what I eat, and don't eat, and what I have given up, and what I feel deprived of.
And it's not enough. It may never be enough.
Those words, those unsolicited words based on one glance at my body and an assumption, those unsolicited words undid a few months' worth of work.
I know she's wrong.
I know she's wrong.
I know she's wrong.
But I am still staring at my lunch sitting on my desk.
RSS Feed