I’ve always been kinda thin and have still not become tired of the “how do you stay so skinny?” comments. Actually, I kind of like them. I work hard to keep thin. I don’t get a lot of, you must be throwing up your food or you must never eat; I guess I would get a little tired of that. Like someone else said, it’s just a stupid thing people say, stating the obvious, like “you’re so tall!” But I agree in a way with the OP because no one would ever say “how do you stay so fat?” and get away with it. Anyway, I’ve just started answering, I try to eat right and exercise. Not very snappy, but then neither am I.
i just read your post about your trip to ireland.
guess what, js.
you are just another jerry springer guest
misspelled words and unnecessary commas everywhere
JERRY! JERRY!
In the early 1950’s being called “skinny” was an insult. It wasn’t until Audrey Hepburn came along that “thin was in.” She also struggled with her weight all of her life. I learned recently that her dress size was less than a size zero. Yet she was a symbol of beauty.
Runway models weigh 25% less than what is considered normal and healthy. They weigh that because that is considered the standard of beauty. For that reason alone, I doubt that most people who comment on someone’s skinniness these days thinks that they are insulting you – especially if you are a woman.
If that is changing, I am pleased to hear it. I will be really happy when the day comes when people don’t have to do anything special to their bodies to change them in order to be considered beautiful.
I know that a few of my friends enjoy being referred to as skinny. None of them are. The compliment is usually “You are getting skinny” or something to that effect.
I wouldn’t dream of commenting on a stranger’s shape or size.
I wish you all good health and contentment with your body type!
Nothing spells “funny” like a giraffe with elephantiasis.
An elongated ungulate with gomphotherian gonads.
Who wouldn’t titter?
you have self esteem problems. 118 pounds is a perfect weight for a 5’7" woman.
hehe, i am guilty of some of that shit you describe though. i am not fat but i make fun of an asian girl in my college, she is about 95 pounds at about 5’7". so when she said like “i am going to cafeteria, anybody going to eat” i was like “jen, you eat ???” hahahaha
thing is, i think that girl is very hot though. she’d look better at 118 pounds though.
I am exactly the same size as the OP, to the inch and pound. I have gotten “You’re too skinny! I hate you! Eat more!” comments all my life, often from friends. Yes, the constant life-long reiteration of “You’re too <something>!” (in the OP’s case, from her mother-in-law) does tend to cause self-esteem issues. Thank god I never heard it from my family, who all knew I was just fine.
My dentist (whom I have a great deal of respect for, his work is great and he’s very compassionate) once asked me out of professional concern if I was anorexic. I assured him I wasn’t, and he’s never asked again, but that kind of comment gets tiring after a while. The automatic assumption seems to be that EVERYBODY gains weight if they so much as look sideways at a donut, and EVERYBODY fights constant battles to keep their weight down, so if you ARE skinny, you must be “cheating” and doing something awful to yourself. Dammit, I’m NOT!
Heh heh. Don’t do it anymore.
ROLFLOLOLOLOL!
Ha ha ha! No, seriously you are stupid and obnoxious and nobody likes you.
Not funny, and you have no chance, whatsoever, of getting in her pants if you keep making boneheaded comments like that. Trust me.
I knew a girl from a friend’s college who could eat and eat and never gain weight. She used to joke that there was some poor girl with her name somewhere that kept gaining no matter how much she ate. She could go to Denny’s and eat two large breakfasts. She would then stop at the city market and eat a pie. Not a slice of pie. A pie.
I’m overweight. I will freely admit this is mostly because I’m lazy, don’t exercise and I drink too much soda. (thyroid problems don’t make it any easier when I do try to lose weight). The ONLY time I will ever make a comment about someone’s weight is if I know them and they look like they’ve lost and/or they are trying to lose. This is excepting my boyfriend when we make our weekly proclamation that we’re going to lose the weight NOW… and then we eat some ice cream. :rolleyes
I admit that I am guilty of thinking some women (especially on television) are too skinny. There are some women who are sick. If you starve yourself to be thin, you are unhealthy. Period. If I were to meet someone this thin, however, I wouldn’t tell them they are too thin. How is that my business?
A friend of mine who works in publicity in Los Angeles was setting up interviews for a premiere. A very famous thin actress who had recently become thinner was coming in and her advance agent told my friend that Ms. wasn’t to be offered any food, and no food was to be in her dressing room or in any room she was to be in for any length of time. During the interview process, she passed out twice. Not eating=bad.
My old roommate, on the other hand, can eat a large pizza and still look just as thin as the above actress. So, I try not to judge.
I would say it’s the opposite; It’s just as legit to be sensitive about being thin as it is to be sensitive about being fat.
I don’t think the stigma of being a “scrawny guy” is equivalent to being a thin woman; being thin is a liability for men and it’s currency for women.
I think that the tone of this board re: punctuation, etc. has already been set. Leetspeak is not tolerated, people who type in all caps are spanked (my wifey was once, remember?), and people who don’t realize there is a “word wrap” are kindly advised to lay off the return key.
Lastly, thank you for the apology. Wifey was just rolling her sleeves up to rip you a new one. 
People suck sometimes, and it doesn’t seem to matter what size they are. However, when I’m the one on the receiving end of such comments, it can hurt intensely. And it doesn’t matter what size I am, thick or thin, tall or short or anywhere in between. Unfortunately, we live in a society where one of the very last bastions of “acceptable” rudeness, meanness, and sometimes downright prejudice and discrimination centers around size. There would be absolute hell-to-pay (and understandably so) if someone were to approach a stranger and say, “Gee, you sure are black!” Or imagine a person approaching a paraplegic coworker who is in a wheelchair and saying “How’s the air down there, short stuff?” That’s grounds for a huge friggin’ lawsuit! However, there are no clear social sanctions against such comments that amount to “size-ism.” Many people (let’s not say “all” here, because it simply isn’t true) tolerate and often justify inappropriate and rude comments about another person’s size simply because they view those comments as true.
My son’s father (no longer in my life, thank God) was like that about fat people. One story he loved to tell was about being in a buffet restaurant when a morbidly obese man entered with his family. My ex thought the man looked disgusting and claimed it made him lose his appetite. He approached the manager of the store and requested the obese man be asked to leave bceause he believed his presence adversely impacted the other patrons. The manager refused to do so, telling my ex that the other gentleman had just as much right to be in the restaurant as he did. As he finished his story, he stated he couldn’t understand why someone that large couldn’t lose weight, that “…all they have to do is stop eating.” Now my ex had a very noticable stutter. My response to him was “That’s like me telling you: ‘I can’t understand why you stutter. All you have to do is talk right.’” At which point he got thoroughly pissed off and stormed off to pout. He never did get what I was trying to tell him. The absolute irony of all this was that the two women he had long-term relationships with were both large women. I certainly hope he’s a Doper and recognizes himself! 
Sandi7001, hold your head up and just be who you are. Assholes aren’t worth your time or energy. I have seldom had anyone so rude approach me and say such rude things, but if you ever get such comments again, you are welcome to borrow my comeback: “Then thank God I wasn’t put on this earth to please you. Have a nice day!”
I’m going to second kung fu lola and say that it probably is more difficult to be a skinny guy than a skinny girl. Men are still expected to be big and strong and beefy, and skinny guys can be seen as weak or effeminate. But girls are supposed to be little and delicate and helpless, so saying “But you’re so tiny!” is supposed to be a good thing to hear. Everyone called me Kate Moss in the locker room, and it always bugged me a little bit. But I think it was probably harder for my brother to put up with those sorts of comments.
I don’t want to get too much into the spelling/grammar hijack, but I will say this: on a message board, you are your words. That’s all most people will ever see of you. If you use a ton of acronyms and exclamation points and smilies, it might make people think you’re some sort of lightweight teenybopper. If you make an effort to use reasonable grammar, spell things properly, and get your punctuation more or less in order, people will tend to take you more seriously. I wouldn’t go overboard and load your sentences with SAT words or get into archaic usage or anything; most people here take a more conversational tone. But good grammar’s like good grooming - I don’t ask for perfection all the time, but I’d like to know that you’re at least trying.
i think you should have said “good grammar IS like good grooming.”
but i don’t think you are dumb or a bad person because it IS informal in here.
the OP was written just fine, and it seems everyone understood her point.
this isn’t a business letter or a scientific journal, it is a message board
and the assholes who have to correct how people choose to write in here are breaking the rules. you know the one that says “don’t be a jerk”
uh oh, i didn’t capitalize, now everyone will think less of me
oh well, after april 21 or 24 or whatever the deadline is i wont be able to post anymore anyway.
i wouldn’t pay 1 cent to have to read one more fool correcting someone’s post (and misspelling and using wrong punctuation to do it) :mad:
tell miller goodbye for me
ps i used to be skinny when i was a teenager and hated it
I’ve been thin my entire life. I am 5’8", and about 135 pounds, been that height since 5th grade, and my weight has averaged 120-140 since that point as well…the most I have ever weighed in my life was 155 pounds the day before I gave birth to my daughter.
I eat whatever I want, most of it crap, my sole form of exercising comes from work (I’m a dancer…that kind of dancer, so while I do get alot of literal exercise at work, don’t think I’m expending as much energy as say, a Broadway dancer, or a ballet dancer).
I have and always have had a hyper-active metabolism. I have had serious complications at certain points in my life to due to this fact.
People’s systems change at certain periods in their life, and damn near every time my body goes through some sort of change, my metabolism freaks out entirely and goes ballisitic, and whoops off start coming the pounds.
When I got pregnant, I lost 25 pounds, and at 130 and 5’8", most of my body weight muscle not fat, it was not a pleasant experience, and almost had to be hospitalized for it. We finally stabilized my weight, by doubling my normal food intake and having to drink 2-3 of those 2500 calorie weight-gainer shakes shudder a day. This is not the only time I’ve had to endure this.
My entire life my body image has bordered on “mostly attractively thin, but sometimes godamn near skeletal, through no fault of my own.”
I’m pretty confident about my body these days, being older and wiser, but my entire life, I have heard derogatory comments from overweight, or even average weight people, that vast majority of them women. My two best friends in high school, for instance, were both overweight and teased my constantly about my skinniness.
I do not take “skinny” as a compliment. It is a word that robs me of my feminity, in my opinion. I’m well aware I lack the full, lush curves I’ve always dreamed of, there’s no real need to rub my nose in it. I HATE the way my ribs stick out, do you really need to remind me of it to make yourself feel better about yourself?
Call me slender, thin, lithe, or what have you, but “skinny”, to people who have been taunted with their weight (or lack of it) their whole lives rarely consider it one, anymore than a cute “chubby” girl would appreciate me calling her that, even though her being chubby may very well have added to her cuteness, in my opinion.
For that matter, alot of women don’t even like to be called cute, let alone have random strangers comment about their weight for better or worse.
When I’m on the receiving end of these back-handed “compliments”, I generally just pretend I thought it was a compliment and say thank you, and leave.
Although I do save one specific response for the women who tell me in a really snotty tone of voice “You must really starve yourself to stay that skinny”, or similar.
“Actually no, I eat like a complete fucking pig, and sit on my ass as much as humanly possible. What’s your diet regime?”
I’m still saving up the “Well, the doctor said I should be done with my chemotherapy in a few weeks…” and filling my eyes with tears response, mostly cause I have a really long, extremely full head of hair, I’m not sure I could pull it off, and it would have to be used on a complete stranger who I’d never see again.
Heh. That’s funny.
i dont understand what’s wrong with being anorexic ? so it may not be very healthy, but then neither is smoking and for some reason that is not considered a disease. nobody tries to hide the fact that they are tobacco smoker for example.
i could care less how much a girl eats and how much she works out as long as she looks good.
i know some girls who fucking live in the gym. i mean every time i go - she’s there. she may do cardio for 20 minutes, play basketball for another 40 minutes, then lift weights for another 40 minutes, do 20 more minutes cardio, play some more basketball … and that every fucking day.
do i find anything wrong with that ? no i dont.
Well. This is by far the smartest post I’ve read all day. Really. I mean it. It’s almost genius. Almost.
:rolleyes:
Not in Virginia, and yes I checked my own license just now.
I’m no lawyer, but that might be considered perjury. Of course, there’s the fact that even the most overzealous prosecutor wouldn’t bust you for that.
My sister’s current driver’s license makes her look just one of the 9/11 hijackers (Mohammed Atta). I tease her about that. It looks really bad—I’m not kidding. She doesn’t look anything like that in real life. How does the DMV manage this?
Regarding “skinny.” Yes, I can see how some thin women would get mighty sick of this.
I also will repeat what others have said here—with the exception of the over-the-top mean and jealous cracks, most comments about a thin woman are compliments. Almost all comments about a woman’s excess weight are not compliments. There’s a whole different dynamic going on there.
However, there are many dynamics with all of us. When I was a teenager and somewhat plump, I always envied the really thin girls because they were skinnier than me. All I saw was that I was fat and they were not. I figured that anyone who was thin had the world by the tail, because they were thin! I later realized that these skinny girls had their own worries too, like perhaps thinking that they were too flat-chested or whatever. Being flat-chested wasn’t a concern of mine so it never ocurred to me that it would worry someone else.
We all are often oblivious to other people’s sore spots. We just know what bugs us and worries us, and some of us assume that if someone else doesn’t have our particular problem, then they have no problems at all.