It was almost a public service announcement. On Sunday, comedian Matt Lucas tweeted, “Shout out to the lady who stopped me at football today to ask me why I’ve lost weight and to inform me I look a lot older. For the first time in my life, I think I’ve just been thin-shamed.”
It sounds pretty much impossible – to be made to feel bad for something which is largely the universally celebrated ideal. But thin-shaming is real – and not in a Meghan and Harry my truth type way. In a very real, ouch that hurts, totally upsetting way. I know, because I’ve experienced it.
The irony is that I’m not someone who is naturally super slim, or who has ever put effort and hard work into losing weight. The only times I’ve been ultra skinny in my life have been because when I’m miserable I simply cannot eat.
My appetite evaporates. So I’ve always been at my absolute lowest, utterly heartbroken by some trauma or other, when someone has bowled up and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I look terrible. I am much too thin, they announce, accusatorily. Why have I done that? I looked better before.
Gee, thanks.
I’ve had comments from acquaintances and also strangers. There was a friend of a friend I saw when a good mate had dragged me to a party to try and cheer me up, who gasped dramatically and clutched her chest when she saw me, before waxing lyrical about what a shame it was.
Special mention to the sales assistant who told me I’d taken my diet too far when I was trying to hold myself together for long enough to pay for the dress I was buying for my dad’s funeral.
There’s something about weight loss that completely overrides British politeness. Normally, as a nation, we’re apologetic and so well-mannered we wouldn’t dream of saying anything about anything.
But when you’ve shed a few – too many, apparently – pounds, people suddenly feel well within their rights to discuss it.
And not even behind your back, they’ll gleefully march right up to you and broadcast it straight to your face, with zero sensitivity, and no thought that perhaps your new look is a result of unhappy circumstance, rather than choice or anything you have any control over. They will just loudly appraise your body, presumably without even considering the possibility that they might offend or upset you.
The answer to thin-shaming – and fat-shaming, any kind of shaming really – is a cliché, unfortunately. Nope, not Be Kind, or Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about, although both of those work too.
When it comes to someone else’s body – or life at all, actually – if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
