Are older people obsessed with commenting on other peoples weight?

Oh no, your comment will have the self loathing British virtue signallers in a spin! Those who insist that the UK is a cesspit, but still continue to live here.

I'm in the US too, and I notice what you've noticed.

Its very much the same in most of Europe, the further east you go the more it is. OP and people clutching their pearls at people 'people critiquing' need to spend some time in France or Italy or Spain.

We as a nation, generally speaking, are the most silent on something like this.

I am from an Asian culture. Many elders there comment critically on everything. Weight, darkness of skin, straightness of hair, martial status etc. Britain is nothing in comparison!

I'm old and so are most of my friends. I don't ever hear older people comment about someone else's weight. But I'm in the US. Maybe this purported fascination with other people's weight is a British thing?

DSis (late 60s, usually a very polite person!) thought that it was acceptable to sit at 20yo DD’s birthday dinner and comment to everyone on how DD had lost weight and her ‘face looked much thinner’ after she’d been away travelling for a few months. Just why??! Completely ruined the atmosphere and made things awkward. DD was never fat or heavy, yes she’d lost a marginal bit of weight but nothing worth commenting on. The mind boggles.

You can suggest all you like but also, people can post where they want.

In the Tudor age and before, people were generally dead before 50. A 60 year old stood out.

I heard a historian on radio 4 saying that if you made it through being born and childhood, you had a good chance of making it to old age.

In the Tudor age and before, people were generally dead before 50. A 60 year old stood out. According to Google, 25% of the UK population are over 60. However, I don't go around 'remarking' on how old 60+ yos are because that is rude. I think you would also take umbrage if I said, "400 years ago, you'd have been dead, instead of making rude comments about people's bodies."

My grandparents’ generation definitely did (they’d be in their 90s/hundreds if they were still alive). My parents generation- (again both dead)- still prevalent but not as much as the generation before them. From my experience anyway.

Staying with my DPs in their 70s and they made a comment about not being able to sit down on a bench at a local attraction because "the fatties" were already on there. Said in front of my teen DD who I've told them I suspect has an eating disorder.

Oh gosh when I was pregnant my mother in law told me every time I saw her how much weight she’d put on when pregnant. A stone apparently. I know that with the baby, increased blood volume and placenta they said two stone when I was pregnant so not sure if that was true but it was just so odd, why tell me that?

Can I suggest that people stop posting g on this depressing, ageist thread?

Yeah I think the last couple of posters make good points. Women in their seventies and eighties and more put up with a lot of body shaming from society and the medical profession. They just put up and shut up at the time. Maybe some filters have dropped. I don’t know. Imagine being pregnant and having to monitor your weight in the way described. Awful. My own mother was from that generation. I remember her describing her delivering me, and the treatment was rough to say the least.
But even so, she never ever commented on my weight or appearance. I think having recently lost both parents I feel quite protective towards that generation - and wish I could have given them more understanding than I did. They had tough, deprived wartime and post war upbringings, and in the case of women, didn’t benefit from equal pay and legislation until they were in their thirties.

I knew from the 1980s on not to make comments or 'judge a book by its cover'.

My mum was very free and easy with the comments though. Weight was the one thing my mum excluded from her 'don't make personal remarks about other people' rule, weirdly.

As young teens, my siblings and I really noticed her focus on weight and her comments when we were out about other women's bums or bellies, or what they were ordering in a restaurant. We took her to task but she never fully understood the problem and we employed short, sharp reminders if she started wanging on.

Her sisters never had the same preoccupation, so maybe it was a very personal problem of hers.

And my next post where I mention volunteering in an old folks home??

Read the thread.

I, 63, would just think it but my mother aged 85 would say it. She once said to my lesbian cousin, "I can't see the point of lesbians". OMG we all cringed. I'd like to say nobody behaves like this but I'm afraid repeated personal experience tells me that many of that generation do.
My grandmother said on my wedding day in front of everyone, he isn't good enough for you don't marry him. Thanks for not mentioning it before the actual day when it was too late to consider it, it certainly put a damper on my wedding day. I was furious.
Things were very different for that generation, wars and a lot of hardship and loss. It made them harder and more out spoken I think.

I'm 60 and would never dream of doing that.

My DM otoh had to be told to stop making remarks about people's shapes and sizes.

Back when DM was young (40s, 50s) young women were routinely shamed for gaining weight. Her doctor used to pinch her (!) at pre natal checkups as well as weighing her (and she accepted all of this as a good and necessary thing), and emphasised the need to gain only the minimum amount of pregnancy weight. DM was very proud of weighing less when she had her post natal checkups than she did at her first, and fitting into all her cute 1960s dresses.

It's weird. My DM is in her 70s. Her DM was rather round and never mentioned weight or size as far as I remember. It is more that my mum is anti vanity. She doesn't want anyone to believe they may be attractive. How strange.

This speaks to the view that it's generational, though. Your mum's probably about my age now, and I'd say my generation's more likely to be excessively interested in body size (theirs and other people's). My parents' generation were even more so.

My parents labelled me the fat one while they were in their early thirties. They praised me while I had anorexia 😒 then resumed the "Garlic is fat" theme after I'd recovered. It wasn't until I did therapy (starting at 45) that I realised I'm not overweight and never have been.

They themselves were terrified of being fat. Strangely, their own parents were nothing like this; the pressure must have been cultural.

Here's a bit of 1970s(ish) fat-shaming.

@Soontobe60
same! Same age and never even owned bathroom scales. Didn’t have them at home growing up either. I go by how I feel not how much I weigh!
mind you, I might have a personality change next year when I turn the dreaded 6-0 and become OLD!

In the 70s and before, people were generally very lean, an overweight person stood out. According to Google 65% of the uk population are currently overweight with 24% of that percentage being obese. Being overweight now is normalised and then sometimes ‘young’ people, like you, take umbrage when ‘old’ people remark on it. Lots of people now are fat. 50 years ago most people weren’t fat. You’re unreasonable to say it’s an age thing. It’s just people with no manners being pass remarkable, some of whom might be above 50. 43% of people your age (25-43) are overweight so less likely to comment on it. You’re also unreasonable to call 60 year olds old.

My late DM was the same. Always commenting on my, and other people's weight. I had to tell her tone it down a bit in public sometimes, when she'd start saying 'Oh look at that woman,isn't she huge?' in a voice loud enough that I was sure they'd hear her. I think maybe it was throwback to her having spent the years between when she was 12 and 18 during the second world war, when rationing was in place, and you very rarely saw an overweight person.