To think mil is rude for saying I’m skinny

[Ihavemyeye]

I’m 8 stone and 5’4 which is a healthy weight

@THisbackwithavengeance

I wouldn't say insulted, though it can be insulting, depending who says what and how, can be demeaning, excluding, and downright nasty. Especially for kids and young people. It is a dreaded skit among teen boys.

Just because many want to be skinny doesn't erase that. Envy can drive some fucking disturbing behaviour

For me, Athenen0ctua puts it perfectly:

"Skinny to me means underweight for build and height, a negative thing. Slim is a healthy weight."

Slim is the objective. Healthy.
Skinny is not a positive thing. It's underweight.

Choconut:

"A lot of people would like to be considered skinny themselves and so consider it a compliment."

This is where people's view of weight is out of kilter. Maybe because so many are overweight in the uk we have a distorted view? But we shouldn't be aiming for skinny.

I don't want to be considered skinny. I don't see skinny as a positive thing. I don't think others should see it as positive. How is being underweight positive? We all should be aiming for healthy, slim, the correct weight.

Indeed. Try being overweight if you want to know what really being insulted feels like!

These threads come up all the time and they descend into a how shit it is to be thin competition.

And then fat people like me come on and say come on guys everyone aspires to be thin so stop moaning.

I'll bore off now. Got to get up for work and it's raining!

I think if someone called me fat now, it would seem MORE insulting, but I would still laugh it off. Differnce is, nobody says a word about the fact I'm overweight, even if I bring up my weight gain. There is a polite silence around my body that, at bmi 21, was apparently open season.

I have never been obese, so I don't know what that feels like, but I imagine there's a lot said with people's eyes, even if they haven't the bollocks to open their mouths.

Ultimately I think unless you are close to the average in terms of weight, people feel entitled to an opinion on it.

I sincerely wish people would stop commenting on other’s bodies.

“You look lovely!”
”Gorgeous top!”
” I love that colour on you!”

There are a multitude of ways to pay someone a compliment without commenting on their body size/shape/weight.

Of course it isn’t rude to mention any physical attribute! If that was the case you could never say ‘yes Amy with the brown hair’ or ‘yes he is tall isn’t he!’

There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to refer to the physical appearance of any person, that’s just daft.

@ChubbyMorticia I LIKE it when other people affirm my colour choices 😬

😂

So do I.

I was offering those as examples of compliments that don’t involve commenting on the person’s shape/size/ weight 🤣

I agree. We need to stop focusing on other people's weights. It's not healthy for any of us to hear the message that what you weigh is so important.

EVERY time we see PIL they tell me 'you've lost weight' and it is supposed to be a compliment. I reply 'no I haven't' which is a fact I know about my own body, backed up by scales 🙄 They then argue with me that I have. Eventually they back down and say I look well. So just say that!

They also tell DH he has lost weight (he hasn't either) but in his case it is a criticism because he weighs less. It makes me want to scream!

Ohh ha ha. I’m sorry, I fired that in at 1.30am having just got back from staff do, pished. I was having wee night cap and a scroll. Apologies for riling you up.

I’ve been both very fat and bloody skinny. I’m sitting at a healthy 9 and a half stone just now. I’ve been told I’m a fat cunt and that I’m too thin. I know which of the two extremes is delivered with the most disdain and it’s not being too slim.

Unless you’ve ever experienced the utter contempt society holds for fat people you can’t compare. So yeah…stop bloody moaning. Soz.

Totally agree, it IS rude to comment on anyone's body , fat, thin, tall short, hair, whatever.
I was recently congratulated on looking so thin - my dad had just died and I had hardly eaten or slept for 4 weeks. I looked like, and felt like, a pile of shit.

Totally agree, it IS rude to comment on anyone's body , fat, thin, tall short, hair, whatever
I was recently congratulated on looking so thin - my dad had just died and I had hardly eaten or slept for 4 weeks. I looked like, and felt like, a pile of shit

That happened to me too after i lost my DM. Most family members were worried at how much weight i lost so quickly and i was only slim to start with.
2 friends kept commenting how they would "die" to loose so much weight that quickly, failing to see that someone actually had...my wonderful mum who was my best friend. Needless to say i didnt see them after.

Its just rude to comment on someones physicall appeareance you dont know their hang ups. Theres just no need.

I used to get comments on this in my 20s. It was really bloody irritating.

Nobody who told me ‘you’re so skinny’ meant it as a compliment. On occasions when it is banter between friends, said with love and context, you won’t find posts about it here on AIBU.

To insist that it’s a compliment, and that regardless of how the receiver feels about it they should take it that way, is so short-sighted. It supports the (unhealthy) media view that there is no such thing as too thin, and that women’s bodies are there to be viewed as objects for uninvited comment. And we should be grateful 🙄

These threads come up all the time and they descend into a how shit it is to be thin competition.*

You're entire post is crying Scott how oppressed you are for being overweight. Irony is lost on you

@THisbackwithavengeance

Dont blame you, OP. Skinny sounds unattractive. ‘You’re so slim’ sounds so much nicer.
From experience (for years I was a size 8-10) it’s often the sort of people who are endlessly and unsuccessfully trying to lose a stone or 3, who make the unattractive-sounding comments.

I get called skinny a lot and it's really upsetting. People standing there appraising your body like a bloody racehorse at an auction. I've lost count of the number of times people have told me I need feeding up or that I'm too thin. Too thin for what I often reply. Arseholes the lot of them.

People standing there appraising your body like a bloody racehorse at an auction

ha @Itssooooocold 😂yes, this!

I used to be around 9 stone at 5 foot 5 and have put a lot of weight on over the last few years so I'm now around 13 stone. My auntie told me "you've put the beef on but you look better for it as you were too skinny". I said I was very healthy then and I'm aware I'm now very overweight so am working on getting back to a healthy weight through diet and exercise yet she still repeated "but you look better now" and she means I'm closer to her size.

I make sure to truly complement people who are slim and I ask them in a genuine way what they do to stay slim (I know I have been eating/drinking too much and stopped doing regular exercise..it's not rocket science!).

What was the context she said it op? I'm sure she really wasn't trying to offend.

"I make sure to truly complement people who are slim and I ask them in a genuine way what they do to stay slim (I know I have been eating/drinking too much and stopped doing regular exercise..it's not rocket science!)."

That's not allowed in MN land. You're not supposed to comment on people's bodies even to compliment them apparently.

Wasn't it a supermodel (possibly Kate Moss) who said, years ago, that "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels"? In many cases "skinny" isn't deemed negative at all.

It is rude and annoying. Although it can be taken as a compliment, 'skinny' isn't a nice word. It should be replaced with 'slim' if being used as a compliment, otherwise I feel people are saying I'm under weight, which I am not.

I think context is important. If she said ‘oh I love that outfit on you, you look lovely you skinny Minnie’ that would be said with the intention of it being a compliment, whereas if what was said was along the lines of ‘you look too skinny you look I’ll’ well that is an awful thing to say and is of course rude and you need to question her on that comment.