Have you ever had this experience?: You’re sitting, minding your own business - maybe it’s at a family gathering or with a group of friends - and someone makes a comment about your body.
It could be about your size. About how ‘healthy’ you look. Or anything in between. And it makes you unf*ckingcomfortable.
How do you navigate this situation without flat out telling them to f*ck right off with their comments? Here are a few options:
You don’t. Just tell them to keep their effing comments about others to themselves because they’re helping literally nobody.
Explain that you can’t tell anything about someone’s health by their appearance and you’d appreciate it if they didn’t comment on your body.
Turn the conversation in another direction. Remember you don’t have to engage with talk about your body. You can talk about how you’re feeling instead, or how your mental health is doing. Or straight up change the subject to how many manatees it takes to change a lightbulb.
Say ‘my body is my business’ and shut it down.
Walk away. Point blank. Never feel like you can’t get up and leave a situation because you don’t want to seem impolite. Your wellbeing comes first!
If you choose to do any of these things or none at all, just remember that comments about your body are based on the commenter’s view of the world. Most likely, they will be projecting feelings about their own body onto you. And, of course, everyone has been brought up in a society ravaged by diet culture. The beliefs of the commenter may not align with what you know to be true, and that’s okay!
Your body is good. You know this. The commenter has their own issues they need to sort out. They can do that in their own time and way. Period.