Oy

[serene]

Serene: oh, god, I did something terrible today. I mean really horrible.
encountered a co-worker, and no shit, here is what I said:
"have you lost a bunch of weight?"

James: hee!

Serene: could have committed ritual suicide right there
(she said yes, thanks! and we moved on)

James: only you would be having an existential crisis over that

Serene: maybe. still. :-)

James: I'll consider intervening when you tell someone they'd look beutiful if they just lost a few pounds :)

Serene: Hee! Fair enough.

Comments

[wild_irises]

(I think this is part of James' point): At least you 1) asked a question rather than made a comment, and 2) didn't include the value judgment. Sadly, the value judgment is there in the culture, but still not saying it matters.

I'd have an existential crisis too.

[hel]

I don't think that's a problem. It doesn't carry a value judgment, you could easily have followed up with something like "Are you ok" or whatever, it doesn't automatically lead into "Good for you!" Plus, if you take someone as having lost weight when they haven't, that can be bad, so asking if it looks like someone has lost weight isn't a bad idea.

[redbird]

Oy, yes, but not I think horrible (in part because the flip side of intent not being a get-out-of-jail-free card is that if the effect isn't horrible, carelessness isn't necessarily a terrible thing).

Also, you seem (no surprise, it being you) to have avoided the one that really annoys me, the people who don't ask, but say "Vicki, you've lost weight" (and especially the ones who won't believe me when I tell them I haven't).

[ailbhe]

Whoops! But she didn't mind, so that's ok.

[firecat]

Societal conditioning will leap out of one when one least expects it, neh?

[jae]

Yeah, even if you mean that as a sort of generic observation, there's really no way to make it sound like that, unfortunately.

-J