Are older people obsessed with commenting on other peoples weight?

[ByZanyRubyOrca]

I’m a nurse and have previously worked in older peoples care, so usually around 60+ and find they (mainly women) are obsessed with commenting on other people’s appearances such as how they look, if they are attractive/not attractive but mainly weight comments.
Examples of real life comments “Isn’t Kirsty putting on the weight? Laura has lost too much weight and looks gaunt. Charlotte needs to wear more make up if she wants to find herself a man. John is getting too big, how can he even walk?

I also noticed when I was around 14, my nana would also make comments on everyone’s weight, even her grandchildren (girls and boys) so she would have been around mid 50s then so not old at all. Comments would be made to add context I suppose, but then she would just make comments without it being relevant to what she was talking about.

When I was 20, I visited my then boyfriend’s nana for the first time and she made comments to him about my weight, right infront of me, as if I wasn’t there. Saying how I was fatter than his sisters 😂 I wasn’t fatter than his sisters at all, in fact I was several stone lighter ( was a size 8 at the time) but even if I was heavier why even mention that or bring it up? She then offered me several of her size 20 jumpers, as she thought they might fit me as they were too big for her, despite her being a size 20. Nothing wrong with being a size 20 at all it’s more that she’s saying they were too big for her and I would fit in them, despite me being a size 8 and there’s clearly a obvious difference in size.

Has anyone else experienced this? I work with people in their 20s and people older than me and have noticed they don’t really talk about weight or make comments on appearance.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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

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.

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?

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!

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

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.