The Ultimate Compliment...or perhaps not
In honor of the millions of New Year's Resolutions being made in this moment by people who vow to lose weight, and to do my own small part to combat the onslaught of weight loss messages we are about to see and hear everywhere, I decided to publish an essay I wrote in 2004 about the most dangerous "compliment" a person can receive.
You look great! Have you lost weight?
Words to live for: You look great! Have you lost weight? These seven words make up the most commonly desired "compliment" in the English language. It is the comment people long to hear as they pursue the Holy Grail of weight loss.
I've heard this "compliment" many times throughout my life, and never has it had a positive effect on me. When I was at the height of my eating disorder it was a remark I heard regularly, and the effect was to make me more obsessive in my quest to lose weight, even though my body was wasting away.
"See Connie! People did think you were ugly before you lost weight!"
"Please God, never again let me gain a pound!"
These phrases spun endlessly around in my head when I was sick. I have heard these fears repeated frequently by people I know who have lost weight and been told how great they look. Words to die for.
An acquaintance of mine died many years ago from cancer. We saw each other twice a year only, but my memories of her are alive and well. When I close my eyes I can see her beautiful smile and hear her infectious laugh. Unfortunately, one memory that remains in my head is a conversation we had about weight loss at a party we both attended roughly one year before she died. I had gotten braces on my teeth several months previously, and had lost weight due to my inability to chew because my orthodontist had created a contraption in my mouth that made the grinding of food impossible. I was depressed and angry because I struggled to partake in one of my greatest pleasures-eating food!
A woman whom I know casually came up to me at the party and said, "Wow, Connie, you look great! Have you lost weight?" I sighed, as I despise having my body be the subject of cocktail party small talk. "Yes," I responded, "And I feel horrible. I'm dizzy and weak and grouchy because I can't eat. It's awful!"
At this moment, my friend came up when she heard the conversation and said, "Maybe I should get braces, then I wouldn't be able to eat." She laughed her beautiful laugh, but I knew she was serious. Here was yet another woman who thought that she must forever strive to lose weight. I told her I thought she looked beautiful just as she was, and plunged into my spiel about The Body Positive"s philosophy on weight, ending with:
This is not my natural body size and weight loss isn't always a good thing. And primarily, I'm miserable because I'm hungry all the time. I love to eat food and with these braces, I can't!
"Well anyway, Connie, you look great." This said by the woman who had made the original comment, as she turned and walked away. I felt deflated, and distressed for these women's psyches. Now that my friend is gone, I am doubly sad because I know she spent part of her way-too-short life not liking her body.
My father-in-law died from prostate cancer in 2002. His death came nearly one year after receiving the diagnosis. During his last year alive, the cancer caused him to lose weight. Before the cancer, he was a typical older man with a round belly and a love for candy. As he lost weight, he started getting comments about his weight from people at his church. They knew he had cancer, yet they still "complimented" him on losing weight. I was astonished by what he told me, and tried to explain to this dear man, without being offensive towards his community, that sometimes people are clueless about the things they say. Cancer was eating away his body, yet to the people around him, he "looked great." It reminded me of how often I hear people say they want to be anorexic for a short period of time so they can lose weight, having no idea of the true pain and suffering of an anorexic life, and the extreme risk of death.
A final story to hammer home the point that saying "You look great! Have you lost weight?" can cause great harm. A girl I worked with many years ago suffered from severe body dissatisfaction. When our girls group broke for the summer, this young teenager went away with her family to a country where she didn't like the food. You guessed correctly: she lost weight and came home to everyone making comments about how great she looked. That was all it took for her to become anorexic, and she nearly died. She went down so fast that her heart all but gave up. Fortunately, our group work had given her some resistance, because when I visited her at the hospital, she told me she wanted to heal, and that her desire was to live. She also told me about one of the nurses who came into the eating disorder ward every day and discussed her diet. The nurse was eating very few calories a day and proud of it. When my friend questioned her psychologist about the inappropriateness of a nurse talking to anorexic teenagers about her starvation diet, his reply was, "You can't expect everyone around you to change their lives just to make you happy. Not everything is about you." I confirmed my young friend's sane response to the nurse's behavior, and explained that the adult world is seriously messed up! I read her life-affirming poetry I had been inspired to write by her story, gave her a beautiful crimson glass heart, and told her all the reasons why life, though it can be painful at times, is worth living.
The next time you hear someone say, "You look great! Have you lost weight?" perhaps you can share my stories with them. Weight loss is not a virtue, and is often associated with illness. And the phrase is so powerful it can send a vulnerable person rapidly into a full-blown eating disorder.
We all want to feel good about who we are, and real compliments are wonderful to receive. If we could just refrain from commenting about weight, and let other people's bodies be their own business, then I do believe body dissatisfaction and eating disorder rates would drop.
If at a loss for compliments to pay to your friends besides, "You look great! Have you lost weight?" I leave you with the following alternatives:
"You're radiant!"
"You look really happy today."
Or, as a street person on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley said to me one day as I passed by, "Look at you. Man, you are really filled with life. You've got energy!" It was one of the best compliments I've ever received. It had nothing to do with the size or shape of my physical body and everything to do with me as a whole human being-body, mind, and spirit. My response to this man was, "I know. I'm really happy to be alive!"
If someone makes the comment to you, and you don't know what to say, here's a perfect response I read in the book Fat Poets Speak:
Questioner: "You look great! Have you lost weight?"
You: "No. Did you find some?"