Underneath
What's going on underneath #
Three things that tend to sit under the words.
Everyone looks at the wrist, the shoulder, the face, and the person turns into a thing to be fixed with food.
Many older relatives remember times when food was scarce and a round body meant safety.
Some people hear a line settle: “My body is everyone's business,” or “I have to eat what I'm given or I'll hurt someone.”
Reactions
What people often do #
- Say “bas, bas” again and again until it is ignored
- Take it all, and push it around the plate
- Laugh and turn the comment into a joke
- Eat quickly just to get it over with
- Feel guilty about being annoyed with someone who loves you
The deck
The story in 6 cards #
Six short cards, from the moment to letting go.
The fourth roti at the wedding
A cousin's wedding lunch. Your grandmother adds a fourth roti to your plate without asking, and an uncle laughs: 'Do you even eat? All bones!' Everyone looks at your wrist. You say 'bas, bas', but the ladle keeps coming. You smile, eat fast to end it, and feel your face go warm, loved and a little exposed at the very same time.
A body that's everyone's business
The moment lands on a rule that may already be there: 'My body is everyone's business.' It sounds like politeness. But look at what it does: it hands your plate and your shape to anyone at the table. Even a loving remark starts to feel like a test, and you answer it with your face before you have decided anything.
Why love and remarks mix
We hold the rule because in many families food is how love is shown, and saying no feels like turning love away. Maybe the old fear of not having enough still lives in the elders who say it. The rule isn't silly. It comes from wanting to keep the peace and to belong, and nobody should be shamed for that. That deserves kindness, not blame.
Managing the table
Every such moment takes a little ease from meals. You brace before family lunches. You scan the table for who is looking. You finish what you didn't want, or leave what you did, just to avoid a scene. Bit by bit, a table that could be warm becomes one more place to manage, and the food itself, the part that should be a pleasure, becomes an afterthought.
Is managing it worth your peace?
Ask yourself honestly: has holding this rule ever made a meal more pleasant? Or has it mostly made you manage the table? Their worry is theirs, and only they know what they meant, so you do not have to guess. Either way, a remark over lunch is not a measure of your body. Is holding this rule so tightly worth what it costs your peace?
Taking the care, leaving the verdict
Letting go doesn't mean the remark was fair, or that the love wasn't real. It means your plate and your body stop being everyone's business, and a comment stops deciding how the meal feels. You can take in the care without taking in the verdict. That's where some peace comes back: the remark stays at the table, and the lunch stays yours.
Being mocked about your body again and again, pressured, threatened or frightened is not okay and is worth taking seriously; someone you trust can help you work out what to do.
The flip
The old rule, and a new one to try #
The old ruleMy body is everyone's business.
A new rule to tryTheir worry is theirs. My plate and my peace are mine.
For next time
Try it next time #
- Step 1
At one meal this week, notice one taste you enjoy
- Step 2
When the remark replays, put one hand on the table and breathe
- Step 3
Think of one table where nobody comments on your plate
Want to talk it through?
“Where were you, and who was holding the ladle, when you heard “all bones”?”
Free and private. No sign-up to start. The chat opens with this question.
Everything this deck knows
Go deeper #
What it sounds like, where it comes from, what it costs, and other ways to see it. Every question opens a chat on it.
How it lands
What was said
A plate piled by love, and a remark on top #
A grandmother adding a fourth roti without asking. An aunty at a wedding: “Eat something, na. All bones!” An uncle holding up a thin wrist in front of everyone: “Do you even eat?” The ladle keeps coming, and so do the comments.
It is usually said with warmth, often with a laugh, and often by people who show love through food. But a body being named as too little in front of the family tends to feel less like affection and more like being weighed.
Where did you last hear it, or something close to it?Talk about this ›
Who was holding the ladle, and who watched?Talk about this ›
The first few seconds
Torn between a smile and a flinch #
Some people describe a tightness in the throat, a smile that goes on while the plate gets fuller, a helpless sort of laugh. Some say “bas, bas” a few times before giving in. Some eat quietly just to end the moment.
Love and a remark arrive together, and that can be confusing. Saying no to the food can feel like saying no to the person, and saying yes can feel like agreeing with the comment. Both can happen within one second.
In the seconds after, what did your hands do?Talk about this ›
What did it feel like when the food kept coming and everyone watched?Talk about this ›
Why it lands
Food, love and a body in one sentence #
In many homes, feeding is a way of saying care. So a remark about thinness is often really a worry dressed in words, and it can be hard to tell worry from verdict. The person hearing it has to work both out, in public, with a full plate.
It also puts a body on show. Everyone looks at the wrist, the shoulder, the face, and the person turns into a thing to be fixed with food. What they had come for, the cousins, the music, the afternoon, goes quiet behind it.
When the plate was filled and the remark was made, what did it take over?Talk about this ›
And what had you come to that gathering for?Talk about this ›
The voice inside
When the remark sits down at the table inside #
It can sit down at the next meal: “They're watching what I eat.” “Everyone can see.” “I should just finish it.” Sometimes it shows up before the first bite, even at home, even at a table with nobody from that gathering.
The words were said at one table, over one meal, and may have been forgotten by lunchtime. But because they sound like one's own thought, the voice can feel like plain awareness, not a leftover from a particular relative.
Whose voice does it use when it speaks?Talk about this ›
Is it yours, or one you picked up at a particular table?Talk about this ›
Where it comes from
Where it can come from
How some families came to say it #
Many older relatives remember times when food was scarce and a round body meant safety. Saying “all bones” may carry that old fear. It can be sincere, and it can be hard for them to hear that it lands differently now.
A child who hears it at every visit can learn that their body is always being checked, and that their appetite is everyone's business. Whatever was meant, what stays is the checking.
When did you first notice your eating being watched at a family gathering?Talk about this ›
Who was usually there, and what did you learn to do about it?Talk about this ›
The belief under it
A rule about whose business a plate is #
Some people hear a line settle: “My body is everyone's business,” or “I have to eat what I'm given or I'll hurt someone.”
Rules like this rarely feel like rules. They feel like good manners, the way taking off shoes at the door feels like plain sense. That is exactly why they are worth taking out and looking at now and then.
A rule like this can be looked at as something a remark left behind, not a fact.
Does a line like that fit, or not quite, or not at all?Talk about this ›
At which tables does it still seem to fit, and at which not?Talk about this ›
What it costs
What it costs
What the watching can quietly cost #
It can touch meals at family homes, festival days, picnic lunches, the plates that arrive without being asked for. Some people start to dread the dining table before they have even arrived.
There is a quieter price. When part of the attention is on how a body looks to others, or how a plate is being read, less is left for the taste of the food, the stories and the people at the table.
Not from weakness. Managing a table takes real effort.
What has it cost in the last year, if anything: a meal, a visit, an appetite, an afternoon?Talk about this ›
If it stays as it is
One ordinary Tuesday with the rule loud #
Picture one ordinary Tuesday on a day when “my body is everyone's business” is loud. What is in it: the meals, the messages, the invitations answered with a maybe? It is only a picture to look at, nothing to fix.
Perhaps a lunch eaten quickly at a desk, a plate scanned for who might be looking, a family dinner dreaded since morning. Some of it may be familiar, some not at all, and there is no right or wrong way for the picture to look.
Nothing here needs an answer yet, and the picture can be put aside whenever you like. What, if anything, do you notice when you look at it?
Another way to see it
Another way to see it
Love and a comment can come together #
A grandmother's extra roti can be love, and a remark about bones can be worry, and neither has to cancel the other out. A person can feel the love and still not like being talked about in front of the family.
Both of those can be true at once. The food can be received as care, and the comment can be set down as someone else's worry. Receiving one does not oblige anyone to carry the other.
If a close friend described being told “all bones” at a wedding, with a plate piled high, what would you want to say to them on the way home?Talk about this ›
Noticing it sooner
What people notice on a slow replay #
Some people, going over it slowly, notice how quickly the table moved on, how the cousin next to them was getting the same fussing, and how the grandmother's hand kept moving because that is her way of loving.
Others notice the tables where eating is not a topic: a friend's flat with noodles on the sofa, a canteen lunch where nobody looks, a cousin who just passes the dish. Those tables were there all along.
Which table comes to mind first?Talk about this ›
What do people talk about there?Talk about this ›
Making peace with it
No need to clear the plate or the air #
Making peace does not mean agreeing with the comment, or deciding the love was fake. It means the remark gets less say over how a meal is felt, and how the rest of the afternoon goes.
Some people find it lighter to stop making each table a test. A test has no end, and it keeps one comment sitting at the head of every meal.
What would the next meal be like if “all bones” stayed with the person who said it, something said at one table on one day?Talk about this ›
A truer sentence
A truer sentence to keep nearby #
If the remark has been running for years, there is no need to argue with it head on. Some people keep a line like this ready instead: “Their worry is real. It is not a report on me.”
It does not have to feel true. It is only a line some people try on, and some find that, said quietly before sitting down, it takes up a little of the space the old remark used to fill.
What would a truer sentence be in your own words, one that is kind to the love and accurate about what was said?Talk about this ›
What to let be
Some of it can stay on the table #
Not every remark needs an answer, an explanation, or a plan for the next visit. Some of it can be noticed, felt for a moment, and left on the table with the empty bowls when everyone gets up.
That is not giving up. It is choosing where energy goes, and some people say it leaves more room for the stories, the jokes and the people who are easy to be around.
Leaving the remark on the table does not mean it was fine, or that it is settled. It only means it does not have to follow into the next meal, or into tonight.
If it loosened
And if the rule loosened a notch #
Imagine, only as a picture, the rule a notch quieter. A meal can be just a meal, with people and talk and taste.
Small things can be enough: sitting down at a family table without bracing, tasting the first bite properly, a conversation that does not touch bodies at all.
Nothing here needs to be said to anyone. Whatever comes up is yours, and worth noticing, however small. If you would like to look at it properly, a chat is one tap away.
What is the first thing that would feel different, even slightly?Talk about this ›
What would your first small sign be?Talk about this ›
Small things to try
Something to try
A few small things people try #
- Name it in your head: “there's the eating remark again”
- Notice which part is louder: the words, or the ladle
- Ask yourself quietly: whose worry is this, and where did it start?
- Think of one table where nobody comments on your plate
- Notice one small thing you enjoyed at the last meal
Small, private and all optional. Try whichever feels doable.
Pick a question
Talk it through #
Tap one. A chat with Dr. Thoughts opens on that question: free, private, no sign-up to start.
- Where were you, and who was holding the ladle, when you heard “all bones”?
- Which part stayed longest: the words, the laughter, or the full plate?
- What mixed feelings came together when love and a remark arrived at once?
- On a day when the remark replays, what is around you at that moment?
- If the rule eased a little, what would you notice first at the next meal?