Here's The Skinny

I’ll say it again; “Have you lost weight?” is NOT a compliment!

If you want to tell someone that they look nice, just say it. Don’t speculate on their weight. Don’t ask what’s different. I’ve used, “You look great, is that a new cell phone?” but when talking to a techie, the facetiousness is lost and to the others, the joke is lost.

Go elsewhere on the Interwebs to find more articulate people than I decrying the unhealthy culture of thinness. Slimming down may be an appropriate response to (or a side effect of) an unfortunate medical condition, but as a standard of beauty, pffft!

We’re talking vanity here, folks. I don’t care what gender you are, strong and robust look better than scrawny.

Sure, I’m in the gym every day, training like an obsessed demon. So what? It’s pure ego on my part. I train because I’m going to be fifty. I train because I dislike weakness in myself. I don’t do it to be skinny. Besides, you all know how I love to eat. Fleur de Lys, mmm … but I digress.

When it was said to me by a (male, not that it matters) bulimic yesterday, I recognized that “Have you lost weight?” is the highest possible accolade in his lexicon. In the lexicon(s) of people like me, who slam protein trying to put on muscle mass, it’s a slap in the face.