Calling pedants, teachers, wordsmiths and class warriors.

[shylock]

I have a question.

"healthy body (which is scientifically easier to assess these days"

Anna, I think we've already established several times that your grasp on science is somewhat tenuous (I am tempted to add like your grasp of reality but will rise above it).

Good post, Xenia.

Well - I have done a lot of adult (executive) education and was good at it... but nothing to do with weight loss, just business performance. Where you do in fact have to let people work out (with quite a lot of prompting...) what their weak points are before they can improve

Actually I do think far too many women put up with fat men and then the men get fatter and fatter and lerss and less attractive and also damage their health too which jeopardises the well being of the family and I suppose similarly men put up with fat wives too. But it's not an easy issue to raise with a spouse. I love you but wish you were 2 stone lighter etc. Or suggesting happy jogging trips at the weekend and ridding the house of sugar laden foods.

anna did you ever see that tv programme about 15 or 20 years ago maybe less or more called taste where they filmed people in their homes and speaking in their own words and that was the ironic twist to the programme?

Xenia - sensitively handled it might just be acceptable within the family unit to talk about how one might work towards losing weight.

But to go for lunch with friends and be told - 'hmm Maggie, you've been piling on the beef lately', just would be unimaginably rude. Yet this is what Anna says they do!

Xenia - I think it is a difficult issue to raise in cultures like the UK where it isn't considered "polite" to mention people's weight.

Nobody here would bat an eyelid about talking openly about what families do together to stay slim and healthy - ie no snacks or sugary foods in the house, balanced meals, sport etc. I never make any issue about my partner going to play sport in the evening or at the weekend, in fact I encourage him like crazy even if I have to look after all the children. I want him fit and sexy...

I think couples can support each other to achieve a healthy lifestyle and weight, Xenia, but it's not easy, and I think with sadness of all the threads on here I've read about women being undermined by their caring partners' polite comments intended to set them on the road to self-improvement.
Anna, I just tend to love my friends for what they are really. None of us is perfect but thank goodness we have many more interesting things to discuss when we meet than who is looking ominously dimpled round their upper arms today.

no i think they all yah at each other and bitch about other people in very loud voices and nobody listens

soapbox - no, those are your words not mine. Stop inventing things, I certainly would NEVER talk like that but I suppose that if that's the way you talk, you'd better not tackle other people's weight

Also with overweight spouses, you can usually understand the root cause, and know how to best approach it.

Not always the same with friends...

'I always comment on people's weight and health and so does everyone I know around here. '

Go on then Anna - tell me how the conversation goes.

Here's the scene - you are at lunch with your friends and one of them has clearly gone insane, putting on 3kg (possible more).

At dinner with my brother this week one of my 8 year olds came out with this kind of 1950s expression I've never heard before - said "mummy had lost her figure" or something. It was very funny the way he said it (not that I'm fat or anything) and my brother said I hadn't. I would have thought that was a more typical exchange even within the family.

There are a lot of different themes on this thread. It's interesting.

Should we correct children at home and school so they speak "properly" (in my terms) or do we mock them if they change. Someone below mentioned a child going to university and coming back speaking differently and I've noticed some difference in my children but I just find it fascinating to watch. What is interesting is their speech improved when they went to university and you might have expected the opposite or perhaps they just decided to abandon certain figures of speech that they needed to have in their schools as teenagers.

One thing I'm not keen on is the aggression in some speech. I don't like "mate", correct the twins if they say it. Don't like high fives (not speech but same thing). It's a forcefulness, a kind of language of the street based on a culture of violence.

I didn't realise "mate" was violent, Xenia - I call my ds, dh, and mat-oops, friends- mate all the time

If we are talking about notions of physical beauty, I am not interested in this discussion at all.

I thought we were talking about the wider experience of beauty in all things (the natural world, the arts, architecture, etc etc) and it's relationship to happiness. In Paris of all places there is beauty in abundance beyond the waistline of your friend's Chanel skirt!

Well, quite obviously, the conversation is entirely dependent upon the person in front of you, there is absolutely no formula and the issue gets raised if both of you want it to. The point being that here people talk about those things really easily - if you are at a restaurant, people order off the menu and make a comment about whether they've been eating a lot recently etc.

I remember a few years back a friend of mine (German, not French) telling me how he'd been so happy when another mutual friend took him aside and said that he really had to talk to her, she could see that he'd put on several kilos and she was very concerned and wanted to help him. It made him feel great and cared for.

Oh come on, looks matter a bit. Two candidates for a job interview - one ugly, fat and also badly dressed and let's add a very regional accent for fun too; another works out, eats well, size 10 and expensive clothes and received pronunciation or whatever it's called. I can tell you who is more likely to get the job.

The thing is Anna, Soapbox has something we call a "sense of humour". It doesn't seem to be something you have come across.

Completely agree batters.

'The point being that here people talk about those things really easily - if you are at a restaurant, people order off the menu and make a comment about whether they've been eating a lot recently etc.'

Really Anna - we do that here too

But that isn't quite what you were saying is it and you seem to have rather ducked the question.

However, since that is your modus operandi, I won't stoop so low as to even feign surprise.

"she could see that he'd put on several kilos"

That's impressive, she's obviously got X rays eyes to go with her sensitivity and tact.

mumbelchum, I heard an interesting programme on the radio about it and there are studies done. That many people at school are in an atmosphere of intimidation all the time, particularly boys. That is borne out in the book by a US lesbian who disguised herself as a man for a long period. The programme said that as that culture of street, violence etc moves into everyday speech and life you kind of import the violence into yoru life too and it struck home with me.

Smiling at someone, putting out a hand and saying how do you do as most people I meet would say establishes a gentle rapport. Punching them on the arm and saying - "how are you doing mate" is in effect saying subtlely what I am about is violence and also it's an assumed familiarity without soeone actually being that person's friend. I think we should nip it in the bud.

do you speak in rehearsed formulae soapbox? or do you react spontaneously to the person in front of you?

Cheer for Batters

Why thank you Tamum - I've had to keep tight hold of it since joining this thread

Come on ANna, I'm waiting for your conversation. You are the case study writer extrodinaire - surely you can rattle one off in a milli second

soapbox has never made me laugh. Lots of other posters have though.