"Is That Your Natural Hair Colour?" "Screw You."

In My Humble Opinion
41

Oh my God, you guys have awakened so many pet peeves! Thank you for understanding!

  1. Yes, I get asked OFTEN if this is my natural hair colour. I don’t mind when people say they LIKE my hair colour, that’s actually really nice. What I hate is when they ask whether it’s real or not. And yes, men OFTEN ask if “the curtains match the carpet”. It’s horrible. Often, people will TELL me my hair can’t be naturally red, because I don’t have lots of freckles on my face. Well, I have freckles, but I’m sure as shit not telling YOU where they are, much less letting you count them to see if there’s enough to justify my hair colour, you ass-hat.

  2. I’ve also gotten the “are those boobs real?” question. Screw you. MYOFB.

  3. Yes, complete strangers HAVE come up to me and said “Hey, are you anorexic?” I know it’s a common and life-threatening problem for young women, but it’s not like a rude and pointed question from a complete stranger would have helped if I HAD been anorexic, which I wasn’t, not that it was any of their business one way or the other.

And some of the other things you folks have pointed out that people rudely ask you on a frequent basis astound me. Honestly, do people have no idea how rude they’re being?

And thank you very much for the compliments, I’m now feeling quite a bit less snarky than I did when I started this thread. :slight_smile:

42

CarlyJay, dear, you can free yourself of such enquiries by randomly killing rude persons who ask them.

43

Yeah, but it seems every time people ask these things it’s on one of those days where I’ve forgotten my shuriken.

44

Here’s the thing, Carly. You’re hot. We all know that. Men in particular do stupid things around hot women, unless they (the men) are gay. (Hot gay women inspire even stupider behavior.) The only way to correct this problem is swift beheadings.

45

::teleporting Carlyjay a gross of shuriken and a couple of axes::

46

Oh don’t even get me started on the “are your boobs real” question.

Jeezopete! You’d think people would have better things to do with their time than speculate on the composition of my boobies. Or at least better manners than to come up to me at random and ask out of the blue if they’ve been professionally enhanced. :rolleyes:

They pale in comparison to the people who argue with me about whether or not I’ve been surgically altered.

“Are those real” <vague gesture to my torso>

Option A:

“Yes.”

Option B:

“Piss off” (or some varient thereof)

Option C:

<furiously pretending I did not just hear that question>

All three options followed by:

“They can’t possibly be real. You must have had a boob job.”

If this comment isn’t followed immediately by my walking away from the person, they will absolutely insist on having an extended debate about the veracity of my claim that my boobies are just as Nature made them.

Before I met my husband, any conversation that at any point contained this “debate” resulted in my immediately ceasing to have anything to do with the ignorant lout that engaged in it.

Setting aside the whole issue of how phenomenally rude it is to comment to a total stranger about her girly bits (I don’t care if I’m wearing a top with cleavage or a sparkly design on it, dammit, it’s still rude to come up to me out of the blue and say “Hi, are your tits real?”) and the issue of why, precisely, I should satisfy your prurient curiosity about the source of my mammaries upon first acquaintance, why in the name of all that’s rational and reasonable would you argue with me about the answer?!? Do you actually think I had surgery without noticing it? Do you suppose I’m mistaken? If you think I’m not telling you the truth, why in the name of little green apples would you think I’ll suddenly recant my vile untruths under your repeated blind assertion my knockers must be factory-issued? Are you somehow under the mistaken impression that your display of serious rudeness and implications that I’m a dirty, dirty liar or clueless enough to have spaced out surgery will get you into my pants? :dubious:

Okay I was a little more repressed on this issue than I thought! :smiley:

Ye gods I’m glad I’m no longer anywhere near the dating scene!

47

I was once in line with my best friend at a movie theater. A group of girls asked her if they could cut in line and when she said no, one of them spat, “Well, you’re* fat!*”

My friend gave her a confused expression, then looked down at her body. In a tone of utter shock she gasped, “My God, you’re right!” Everyone in the line laughed. Best response I’ve ever seen.

My boss at my old job was 6’7". We worked with the public. I must have seen him be asked “How tall are you?” by complete strangers at least a hundred times. I was sick of it-- I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him.

I’ve bitched about this myself on the boards many times. I’m so tired of it. If I could gain weight, I’d do it, just to get people off my back. No, I do not have an eating disorder. In fact, I eat a very high-fat diet. I’m just naturally a small person.

I don’t eat in front of my co-workers. Why? Because I know if they see me eat a morsel of food, they’ll instantly start in saying “Oh, it’s so nice to see you finally eat something! Here, have more!”

People also seem to feel free to make fun of me about it. I was once being measured for a bridesmaid dress. The woman who was recording the measurments said, “No need to measure your hips. You have hips like a 12 year old boy.”

I was actually once *asked to leave *a plus-size store. I had gone in to buy something-- I wanted a big, fluffy sweater. I was browsing the racks when one of the clerks came up and icily told me that they wouldn’t have anything for me in there. I can’t remember her exact wording, but she said something to the effect that my presence was somehow insulting and upsetting to the other customers.

God help me if I should complain about this to anyone. I always get the roll-eyes. “I wish I had your probelms!” No, you don’t. It’s not enjoyable to be cold all the time, or to have your butt ache from sitting on a hard surface. It’s no more pleasant to be described as “scrawny” than it is to be described as fat. It’s not fun to be the one elected to sit in the uncomfortable places because “you’re small-- you’ll fit just fine back there with all of the luggage.”

48

Is that you Pippi?

49

Man. Okay. I do dye my hair, because my hair is naturally shit-brown and looks like crap. I dye it black, because I think it looks better on me. I have naturally dark eyelashes and eyebrows, so when my hair is it’s natural color people give me weird looks. I have never gotten the “Do you dye your hair” color because black hair just looks pretty natural to me. I HAVE, however, gotten the “curtains match the drapes” question before, from random passersby on the street and by skeevy guys in bars. The former I just flip off. The latter I have no compunction about punching in the face (hey, when you step into a bar you take your chances, and I have an awsome right hook), although, since the Tashaboy and I started dating, he usually takes care of that for me.

But the pale skin? I get it all the time. For some reason the black hair goes well with my pale skin. I am eternally pale. It takes an entire summer of being outside (which doesn’t happen a lot as I hate the outdoors, for the most part) for me to get the slightest vestige of a tan. People have accused me of bleaching my skin, told me I need more color, made undead jokes, and just in general made fun of me for something I have very little control over.

However, I like my skin pale. I think I’d look like crap tanned, and I don’t like sitting out in the sun. I do enough bad stuff to myself, I don’t need to add “Skin cancer” to that list, thanks.

Another one that bothers me, just for the general gist of it, is my teeth. No, my teeth LOOK fine. However, the back ones are rotted and broken due to crappy wisdom teeth and a dentist who messed up big time when I was younger. I’m in a lot of pain a lot of the time from it, and I wince a lot because of it. This leads people to question what’s wrong, and I generally give them a basic rundown because I don’t want people to think I’m faking a headache to get out of work or something. Invariably, I get this response:

“Well, if it hurts so bad, why don’t you get it fixed?”

Come on! Do you think I like being in pain? Do you know how expensive dental work is? Trust me, if I could get it fixed, I would, assface.

~Tasha

50

Ack, hate that. Two of my nephews are adopted, and I’ve decided that when I’m asked any variation of the question “Are they brothers?”, my answer will be “Yes, in every way that matters.” Had a few people get huffy on me so far, but also a few laugh and, I hope, think a bit.

(They are not biologically related, as far as we know. They certainly don’t look much alike.)

On a related matter… one of my husband’s brothers has formed a his-hers-and-theirs family with his sweetie, totaling five children. Some busybodies have told me I shouldn’t call his two stepdaughters my nieces. The hell with that idea.

51

The response “Fuck you, asshole” is quite useful in these sorts of situations.

52

I thought I was done dealing with this but evidently I am not. I have 5 sibs. Three of us share the same parents. In addition, I have two mergers and one acquisition. (Okay, two half sibs and one step). But genetics quite aside, they are all my brothers and sisters. I refer to them often. One of my friends recently discovered that in fact we don’t all share the same parents and was really annoyed that I had not mentioned this sooner. I mentioned it as soon as it was pertinent for heaven’s sake, it is pertinent far less often than you might think.

And my sister’s kid is my nephew, whether my sister became my sister because my mother delivered her or because my mother married her father.

The hell with that indeed.

53

Put me in with the people who might very well have asked this question of CarlyJay, not realizing it was offensive. :frowning:

My worst? In high school, quite a few people asked/speculated out loud on whether or not I was on steroids (I wasn’t). This was because I (a) put on 20 pounds of hard muscle my junior year, and (b) had a pretty bad case of acne on my back and shoulders for a while. Most of the time it was meant as a compliment (e.g. wow, you’re buff), but it mortified and embarrassed me anyway.

And, for those ladies wondering, the acne is gone and the muscles, while still there, have a few pounds of padding. Turning 30 sucks. :smiley:

54

My response would be:

“Is that your real nose? If not, damn, did you get get ripped off!”

55

But probably more trouble than it’s worth in the office. Discretion being the better part of valor when dealing with people who have no couth, but I’m required to work with each day all the same.

Also not so useful with members and associates of my extended family (spouses of cousins, friends of various relatives) or members of my husband’s extended family.

The random strangers with snoopy personal questions have more or less stopped since I got married though - I rarely go anywhere without my husband, who is large and intimidating looking. He’s a sweetie, but he is over 6’4 and definitely north of 300 with a linebacker sort of build. Nowadays, while I still catch men ogling my pectoral region, the boob-job comments/debate at least have come to a screeching halt. Thank Og.

56

So, what are you down to now? :wink:

57

I’ve always been fascinated with red hair. Since I was in high school, I’ve messed around with my hair color but never felt completely ready to try red.

My hair is naturally blond, but in the last decade or so, it has gradually gone from NiceShinyLight blond to Day-oldDishwaterMousePuke blond. Time for a change, I said to myself. I went red about six months ago (maybe longer).

Because of that drastic change, I get asked a lot whether red is my natural color from women as much as from men. I tell the truth. 99% of the time, their responses are complimentary, but there was that 80-year-old lady who reassured me that “don’t worry, dear, it’ll grow out” :mad:

To be fair to the OP, I’ve never gotten the impression that anyone asking was interested to know if I was red “down there,” but I can totally understand why it would piss her off. It’s one of those cheap come-ons that simple-minded guys think will surely make any girl swoon.

58

“I beg your pardon” is the socially acceptable form of “fuck off” to be used in the workplace and curious family members. If they don’t get that (and most people don’t), “I don’t understand why you believe that is any of your business.”

59

For me it’s, “Are your eyes really that blue or are you wearing contacts?” “Are your lips really that big?” “Did you botox your forehead?” “Do you streak your hair?”

No no no no. Sometimes these things do occur naturally. That’s how people got the idea to mimic them artificially. sigh

60

I get this one all the time. My curls are never uniform (some are tight, some are very loose waves) and I always have a halo of frizz, so I usually answer, “Do you think I would do this to myself on purpose?”