Don't call me skinny, just because I am not fat

Sun, 07/27/2008 10:22 AM  |  Arts & Design

There are days in our lives when we feel black clouds looming over our heads and don't feel like making human contact.

It's the day you don't want to be bothered by anyone and pray for a facemask, so you dont have to say hello or chit chat in the gym. The day when you feel there should be a liquid food you can drink fast, rather than wasting time chewing. The day you wish the streets were constructed multi-level, to avoid queuing in traffic. The day when you feel some scientist should have invented a teleport to make you disappear when you want.

But living in a big city won't totally facilitate that you never meet anyone, unless you prefer to stay at home and stare at the cracks on your empty wall and go quietly nuts on your own.

Everyone has a time when they feel down and don't care how their hair looks. Yet, we still manage to keep ourselves distracted from sinking too low.

Clean the house, color your hair, spend a day in a spa, go shopping, or go to the gym. There are things we can do to overcome our problems and while we do so, we can probably pull ourselves together and the sun will eventually rise.

Then suddenly along the way, comes somebody you hardly spend a lot of time with, and he says, "Oh my God, you're so skinny!" or "What happened to your skin? It used to be brighter" or "Have you been sleeping less lately?" Aaaaargh! There must be two options you have in mind right then, either to give him a slap, or click on the invisible-to-everyone mode.

But again, what choice do we have beside dealing with it? You can't say back to him, "Oh and you're so fat!" or "Perhaps you sleep too much". Can we answer back? Perhaps it's time to create a new term -- *Don't call me skinny, just because I am not fat (like you)'?

I begin to wonder, why we hardly ever hear people answering back with catty remarks? When we're down, should we stay low? Is it taboo to say someone is fat, while being skinny is just neither here nor there?

Unexpected physical remarks when you're not feeling yourself are very irritating. Skinny, fat, bad hair, salah kostum (wrong choice of outfits), or looking tired, won't help to restore our self-esteem. Is it the fault of the other person for throwing out comments at the wrong time and in the wrong place?

My best friend felt so depressed after being called *plump' that he decided to control his craving for yummy foods so as to be skinny. What used to be meat, carbs, gravy and fried changed to all-organic veggies. I was quite shocked to see his drastically changed eating habits.

Much later, he admitted that after days of veggies, he often dragged himself out of bed late at night looking for 24-hour Padang restaurants where he would pull down one and a half portions of rice plus rendang, curried chicken, fried eggs and potato fritters. Damn, that was nice, but it still did'nt stop his depression.

I humored him by telling him that to get from rendang to the plain salad routine, he must first work his way through satay, gado gado, sayur asem, sayur bening, and then to plain salad. He should take his time and go step by step. He smiled.

Another day it was me who got the comments for being too skinny, on a low-key day. It made me feel like I was not taking care of myself, or that I could not afford to feed myself regularly, or that I was just too stressed out.

Maybe so, but should this person have reminded me about this by telling me *I did'nt look at my best' that day? Maybe they thought being skinny was okay, or maybe they were just too fat to realize that being called skinny could be as disturbing as being called fat.

I bet most people don't realize that. I ate one full nasi campur with pork that night hoping I would gain at least one kilo. This time it was my friend's turn to humor me by telling me my problem could still be solved by eating some of his dinner. Sweet.

I do hope you will reconsider next time you feel like making a physical comment to anyone, especially when you're not so sure how the person will react, by listening, or by throwing it back.

Because you never know, on a bad day, how much damage you might do and then make things even worse. Thanks to my bad hair day, which made me sad, that's how I was inspired to write this article.

I will always remember what my friend said to me in the end of that day, "Behind every black cloud there is a white and fluffy one with a silver lining. And tomorrow will be a bright, sunshiny and silvery day for you". And the same goes to all of you who are still having a bad day.

--Diaz

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