Miss Manners should be shot!!There is a letter in today’s column
http://womencentral.msn.com/firstperson/articles/manners_0205.asp that makes me want to drive a nail gun into her brain, in the hope that some of that most gentile sensibility would drop away and give her a modem of common sense. A man wrote in complaining about the fact that he married the “girl next door” 22 years ago. Even though he has kept his current weight all that time she had the nerve to go from a size 6 to an incredibly obese size of 10. EXCUSE ME!!!Not only that, he stated he would not have dated her let alone married her if she was that fat when they met. Miss Manners responded by saying how he should tell her he loves her dearly and is worried about her health, also that his fondest dream is to see her again in her wedding dress. What the obtuse woman should have told him is to thank his lucky stars he has a woman who was able to put up with his shallowness. That a size 10 is not fat, and that after three children he should be thankful his wife has time to cook and clean and take care of him because obviously he has time, he goes to the gym, when does he want her to find the time? What a prick. What has the world come to when a person can be a size 10 and be fat??A few pounds gained in middle age is normal, and it sucks that women have been forced to starvation, instead of just giving mother nature the middle finger and moving on with their lives.
That response sucks. She should have told him to incorrectly place her dessert fork on the right side of the plate. Rather than use a fork from the incorrect side in an obvious breach of etiquette, she would likely discretely refuse dessert. Weight loss would immediately follow.
The same world it’s always been. To risk an old adage, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If I think a size 10 is fat, then I’m entitled to that opinion. *
Basically Qwisp, you’re making this into an issue that it’s not. And one we’ve discussed ad naseum on these boards.
Just calm down.
- FWIW, I don’t.
Leaving aside the debate about whether size 10 is fat (I don’t think it is but this gentleman may), I’m not sure how I feel about this issue. On the one hand, you are attracted to the way someone looks, but on the other you marry for better or worse knowing that people age and change physically. I don’t think encouraging someone to fit her wedding dress is the way to go; if you want to steer someone’s behavior that’s not the way. Better yet, let her live her life.
I guess I tend toward the side of loving the person inside forever; I would be much more turned off if someone’s character changed radically than their shape.
LMAO, Giraffe. You are my hero.
I don’t know if it matters, but the writer says that his wife now weights 145 lbs. I used to weight 145 lbs., and I was a size 12, not a 10. I’m 5’5", and I sure felt fat at that weight. If she’s shorter than me, that could make an even bigger difference, appearance-wise, but she might wear a smaller size because of her height. I wear 8 or 10 now, and am not fat - I am at a perfectly healthy weight, according to the FDA, but then, I was at a healthy weight when I was 145, too. (Not that I liked it particularly, but I knew I wasn’t obese.)
However, the guy is clearly a dolt for writing the letter, and Miss Manners should have told him so
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Judith Martin is not in the business of making moral judgements. He wanted to know how to politely tell his wife something. Miss Martin responded.
And she should die for this?
Christ, grab a sense of perspective, willya?
First thing, this Gentle Reader will fix that link to Miss Manners’ column.
Now, he wishes he could see how Carolyn Hax would have handled it.
Lessee, they’ve been married 22 years with 3 kids, and the woman’s gained 25 pounds over that time, going from 120 to 145, mostly over the past six years. She’s also lost her previous zest for working out, but he still enjoys it.
If that’s enough to undermine “for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health,” in his eyes, and make her “a women that I did not marry and would not have dated 22 years ago,” then he’s a superficial jerk who clearly doesn’t understand the promises he made then, even with the advantage of 22 years’ added wisdom (assuming that’s adding a positive quantity).
I love the way he says, “We have three wonderful children and a marriage that lacks for romance,” apparently not connecting that with, “Over the last year I have mentioned her weight many times. Too many times, to the point that I have hurt her feelings with several of these comments.” If I were her, that would certainly put a damper on my marital passion. I bet she doesn’t even change clothes when he’s in the bedroom anymore, if she can avoid it.
From a strict etiquette perspective, there’s no polite way to make someone feel rotten just so you can have your own way. And at this point, hints to lose weight, even disguised as a desire to see her in her wedding dress again, are going to be transparent to her as a mere change of tactics. She’ll still feel just as cruddy about her husband’s underlying message that he only loves her at a certain size. So the polite thing for him to do is to keep his mouth shut, and learn to love the person he married, if he’s capable of it. Sheesh.
Also, in the response I read (perhaps it has changed since the OP was written) Miss Manners did call the husband a jerk.
And then told him that if he must comment on his wife’s weight, here was the appropriate way to do it.
Maybe he should have written to the ladies who took over for Ann Landers instead – the poor wife might be depressed. Sudden weight gain is a symptom of that, and along with the mentions of the marriage lacking joy and romance, and the husband’s obvious insensitivity regarding her weight, I smell a bad situation going on.
But aside from that, he did write to Miss Manners, simply asking the polite way to bring something up to his wife when it hurts her feelings. I would have brought up possible underlying causes, but she’s under no obligation to.
I think Miss Manners did fine. Remember she’s in the manner’s biz - it wouldn’t really do for her to be cussing out her readers, even if they are ignorant dolts.
Specifically, I’m thinking of this:
Heck - for MM that’s downright harsh. Lighten up Qwisp - if you wanna be aggrieved with someone, be aggrieved with the husband, not with poor Miss Manners.
Okay. Okay. You are all right. I should not have gotten so mad with Miss Manners. I should have gone after the one I was really agravated with. The Husband. I was seeing so much red after reading the jerks letter I guess I had a hard time focusing. I can just see the little twirp asking his poor wife if she really wants that potato, wouldn’t a nice salad be better?
I forgot to thank RTFirefly for fixing my link, also for at least somewhat agreeing with my rant. (We both agree the husband is a big doody head)
Sometimes I wonder if they’ve changed Miss Mannerses. First was that weird thing where she said that brides and grooms were entitled to wedding presents, now this. Once, someone asked, “Can you think of a tactful way of telling someone she is getting too fat?” She answered, “Can you think of a decent reason for wanting to do so?”
But couldn’t she just get the wedding dress altered? Seriously, though, a size 10 is NOT fat. Models are just too skinny. And even if she was a size 200 (do they even make those?) her husband should love her for her personality, not for her body. If he can’t do that, then there was never much of a marriage to begin with.
I think Miss Manners was pretty spot-on with this one, and no, she is not getting wimpier over the years about skewering the Gentle Readers. (She pointed out in one response that Miss Manners sometimes has to tell herself “Just answer the questions; you don’t have to like them.” IIRC, that was when she was dealing with a query from a married guy about how he could politely manage to get seated near pick-up-able attractive women on airplanes.) Just read the second letter in the linked column where she slams the querent for complaining that her newly-engaged younger sister is “stealing her spotlight” by getting married first.
Quite a while back there was a letter from a guy wondering how he could politely tell his formerly-stunning cousin what a shame he thought it was that she’d gained so much weight (in fact, that may be the very letter that matt was referring to). Even then, MM gave him a suggestion for how to do it: “the only polite possibility is to confess to a weight gain of your own” and see if the fat cousin would like to join you on a diet plan.
I agree that the husband featured in this thread is somewhat beyond creepy, though. Saying “I have lived for the last six years with a woman that I did not marry”?! Now I think people have a right to their own preferences about what they find physically attractive, and spouses need to put some effort into maintaining each other’s attraction to them as well as accepting each other’s changes, but jeez! How many of you gentlemen would consider that a 25-pound weight gain turns your wife into an entirely different person from the one you married?!
I think Dragonblink is probably right that there is a more serious issue here. Think about it:
- 18-year-old girl marries the “guy next door”
- Over the next 16 years, has three kids but still “maintains a very sexy figure”
- At 34, loses “most of the joy and a majority of her discipline to work out” and gains 25 pounds
- Husband is upset about this primarily because he feels cheated out of “romance” as he “would not have dated” her at this weight when they first met, and considers her “a woman that he did not marry”
- Husband nags her about weight gain “many times” and has repeatedly “hurt her feelings”
I know that “remote psychoanalysis” is worth just about what you pay for it and we have no idea what else is going on in this marriage, but here’s the Kimstu diagnosis anyway: Poor girl fell in love as a teenager with a shallow, appearance-obsessed jerk. Several years and three kids later, while busting her butt to maintain the “very sexy figure” that he required in her, she realized on some level what he was really like. Resenting his shallowness and his expectations, but still multiply dependent on him and with no experience as an independent adult, she sank into depression and gave up exercising. Her weight gain is painful and humiliating to her, but on some level she’s using it as a punishment for her husband (and maybe also for herself) for caring more about her figure than her happiness.
Kimstu, I like your diagnosis. It’s better than my simpler : She eventually said “Screw it. Why am I knocking myself out for this jerk?”
They need you on JoJo’s psychic hotline(remote psychoanalysis doesn’t have to be cheap).
I like most of your ‘remote diagnosis’, Kimstu. I’m going to suggest a slight simplification, based on my sense that gaining 25 pounds over 6 years (4 pounds/yr) is not exactly depression-symptom weight gain.
Anything difficult that you’re doing for someone else, rather than for yourself, eventually gets really hard to keep doing. If she was primarily exercising to keep hubby happy with her tummy (how’s that for alliteration? :)), I expect it just got harder and harder for her to keep going to the gym. When other things would get in the way, she’d do them rather than put the gym first, and for awhile she may have gone less regularly before she stopped going altogether. Kinda the way anyone whose heart really isn’t in an exercise program stops.
And by now she’s probably just depressed (in the non-clinical sense) because hubby can’t stop criticizing her for her weight. He makes her feel unattractive, so she doesn’t feel romantic. It’s gotta be hard to want to get naked with someone who tells you your body’s undesirable.
And that’s where I feel Miss Manners gave a bad answer. By now, there is no polite way of hinting that she should lose weight, because she’ll sense it for what it is, no matter how it’s dressed up.
RTF: By now, there is no polite way of hinting that she should lose weight, because she’ll sense it for what it is, no matter how it’s dressed up.
Tee-roooo dat. This guy has made it so abundantly clear why he’s expecting her to get back in shape—because by golly, he’s entitled to a thin sexy wife—that it would require massive amounts of hypnosis and hashish to make her believe it’s her well-being he’s really concerned about.
(And CarnalK, I like your take on it too! :))