Underneath
What's going on underneath #
Three things that tend to sit under the words.
Remarks about looks tend to be remembered almost word for word, sometimes for years.
For some people, a name like this was handed out at school or among cousins years ago, said so often that it stopped sounding like a comment at all and started sounding like just what people called them.
Some people hear a line like this settle in: “People notice my size before they notice me,” or “I have to laugh along to fit in here.”
Reactions
What people often do #
- Laugh louder than anybody, so nobody can tell it landed
- Make the joke about yourself first, before it can be made for you
- Change the subject, and hope it doesn't come back round
- Feel annoyed later, and wonder whether that is allowed
- Say nothing, and replay it on the way home
The deck
The story in 6 cards #
Six short cards, from the moment to letting go.
Food piled on your plate
A family dinner in Cairo. Your aunt piles food on your plate and says, “You're so skinny, eat something!” Everyone looks. You laugh and change the subject. For the rest of the evening you feel watched at the table, watched by people who may mean well but make you feel like a problem.For a moment, everything else goes quiet.For a moment, everything else goes quiet.
Your body should please everyone
First, plainly: comments about someone's body, even meant kindly, aren't okay when they make you feel watched, and they say nothing about your worth. But a rule can grow out of them, and it becomes yours: 'My body has to satisfy everyone's opinion.' It sounds normal. But look at what it does: meals and gatherings start to feel like inspections.
Why body remarks stay with us
We hold a rule like that because remarks about our bodies can come from people we love. It is one of the most ordinary hopes there is. Maybe food and bodies were talked about a lot at home. Maybe you just want to be left in peace. Either way, wanting to feel comfortable isn't fussy. It comes from wanting to belong. That deserves kindness, not blame.
The tension each remark adds
Each remark like that adds a little tension. It happens slowly, so it can be hard to notice. None of it shows from the outside, but you feel it. You feel watched at meals. You avoid family dinners. You replay comments on the way home. The warmth of eating together gets mixed with being judged, and gatherings that could be easy start to feel heavy.
Is pleasing everyone worth it?
Ask yourself honestly: has holding this rule ever made meals feel easier? Or has it mostly made them tense? Other people's opinions about a body are just opinions. It is worth asking gently, without blame. There is no wrong answer here. Take a moment with it, if you like. Is holding this rule so tightly worth what it costs you?
Enjoying the company
Letting go doesn't mean the remarks were okay. It means other people's opinions about your body no longer decide how you feel at the table. You can be there for the company. It doesn't happen all at once, and it doesn't need to. It can start small, one moment at a time. That's where some peace comes back: meals can be about people again, not about being watched.
Being mocked about your body again and again, threatened, hurt or frightened is not okay and is worth taking seriously; if eating or your body worries you, a doctor or someone you trust can help.
The flip
The old rule, and a new one to try #
The old ruleMy body has to satisfy everyone's opinion.
A new rule to tryTheir opinions are theirs. I can enjoy the company.
For next time
Try it next time #
- Step 1
At the next gathering, focus on one good conversation
- Step 2
When a remark comes, take one slow breath
- Step 3
Notice one person who never comments, and enjoy them
Want to talk it through?
“What was happening when it was said, and who laughed?”
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 comment that arrives dressed as a joke #
A cousin at a family get-together, a teammate in the changing room, a colleague at the office door, someone in the group chat under a holiday photo. “You're so skinny,” or a nickname along the same lines, usually with a laugh, and the talk goes straight on.
Because it often comes with a smile, it can sound as if it shouldn't matter at all. However it landed, the words turned a person into a shape for the room to look at, and there can seem to be no easy way to say so.
Where did you last hear it, or something like it?Talk about this ›
Who laughed, who didn't, and what did you do with the words once the conversation had moved on without you?Talk about this ›
The first few seconds
Why the body answers before the mind #
Some people describe a face going warm, a breath held for a second, a smile arriving before any decision to smile. Some laugh first and loudest; others go quiet and wait for the talk to move on. Any of these can happen, and none of them needs explaining.
A remark about how someone looks, made in front of others, tends to register in the body within a second, before any thinking. The thinking can arrive much later, on the walk home, going over who was there and whether they laughed too.
What did your body do in the second after those words?Talk about this ›
Did it laugh, freeze, or want to leave?Talk about this ›
What might that first reaction say about how much that moment, or that person, mattered to you?Talk about this ›
Why it lands
Said lightly, but it measures a person #
A comment like this sounds casual, almost like small talk. Said out loud, though, it tends to turn a whole person into a size to be looked at, and for a moment everything else they are, the friend, the worker, the one with the funny story, goes quiet behind it.
Remarks about looks tend to be remembered almost word for word, sometimes for years. When a comment arrives as a joke, some people also find two things land at once: the words themselves, and the sense of not being allowed to mind them.
If the comment had been about something you did, it could be looked at and argued with.
What is it like when a comment is about how you look instead?Talk about this ›
The voice inside
When the joke keeps going without them #
Hear it often enough and it can move in. It can come back as the joke itself, replayed at odd moments, or as a nudge to keep out of sight, sometimes before anybody has said a word, just from walking into a busy room.
The words were about one thing, and the person hearing them is more than that. Yet once the joke runs inside, it can arrive on its own, and because it sounds like your own voice, it can feel like plain common sense rather than someone else's line.
Whose voice does it use when it speaks?Talk about this ›
Is it yours, or one you picked up in a particular corridor, from a particular person, years before today?Talk about this ›
Where it comes from
Where it can come from
For some people, it was a nickname first #
“Stick.” For some people, a name like this was handed out at school or among cousins years ago, said so often that it stopped sounding like a comment at all and started sounding like just what people called them.
The reasons behind teasing like this differ from group to group, and they are rarely explained to the one being teased. What can stay is what a child quietly concludes: that their body is an open subject for anybody's joke.
When did you first notice that your size was something people commented on in front of you?Talk about this ›
Who started it, who joined in, and what did you learn to do when the name came out?Talk about this ›
The belief under it
A quiet rule a joke can leave behind #
Some people hear a line like this settle in: “People notice my size before they notice me,” or “I have to laugh along to fit in here.”
Rules like this rarely feel like rules. They feel like simply knowing how groups work, the way lowering your voice in a library feels like plain sense. That is exactly why they are worth taking out and looking at in daylight now and then.
Some people trace a rule like this back to early years; some don't. Either way, it can be looked at, as a rule a comment left rather than a fact. Which rooms does it still fit, and which not?
Does one like this fit, or not quite?Talk about this ›
What it costs
What it costs
What laughing along can cost #
It can touch outings, photos and plans, the ordinary parts of a week that involve being looked at. Some people start planning around being looked at, and a few outings get a no long before anybody has decided they don't want to go.
There is a quieter price too. Laughing along takes effort, and it can leave the people nearby meeting only the joking version, never the one who minded. For some people, over a year, that can add up to moments that looked fine from outside and weren't, quite.
Not out of weakness. Keeping a smile on, however it landed, takes real effort.
What has it cost in the last year, if anything: an outing, a photo, a plan, a laugh that took more than it gave?Talk about this ›
If it stays as it is
One ordinary Tuesday, with the line loud #
Picture one ordinary Tuesday on a day when “I have to laugh along to fit in” is loud. What is in it: the messages, the outings, the things quietly skipped? It's only a picture to look at, nothing to fix.
Maybe it holds some messages, a plan or two, a few conversations, an afternoon with people in it. 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 nothing in the picture is fixed. Looking at it is enough for now. What, if anything, do you notice?
Another way to see it
Another way to see it
A joke about a size, not a whole person #
Whatever the exact words were, they were one remark about one part of a person, made by one person, in one moment.
Some people notice that the words were about one thing, and the person hearing them is more than that. Everything they did, said or cared about that day was there too; the joke only picked out one thing and made it the headline.
Put like that, how much of a whole life, the work, the friendships, the plans, can one remark actually cover?Talk about this ›
Another way in: if a close friend had heard the same joke in front of a group, what would you want to say to them afterwards?Talk about this ›
Where would you start?Talk about this ›
Noticing it sooner
What people notice when they look closer #
When some people replay the moment slowly, they notice who laughed and who didn't, who changed the subject, who caught their eye. Sometimes the room was less behind the joke than it felt at the time, and sometimes it really was, and that is worth knowing too.
Others notice the places and people where the joke simply never comes up: a friend who wants to hear about the week, a team that asks for the plan, a grandparent who only wants the news. Those rooms were there all along, only quieter.
Which of those people or rooms comes to mind first?Talk about this ›
What do they tend to ask about when you are with them, if it isn't the thing that was joked about?Talk about this ›
Making peace with it
No need to find the perfect comeback #
Making peace doesn't mean agreeing that it was only a joke, however it landed. It means those words get less say over which trips get a yes, which photos happen, and how the rest of the day goes.
Some people find it lighter once they stop rehearsing the perfect reply. That rehearsal rarely ends, and it keeps one person's joke at the centre of the day.
What would it be like to let the joke stay theirs, something said in one moment, rather than something that follows you from one room into the next and the one after that?Talk about this ›
A truer sentence
A truer sentence to keep nearby #
If the nickname has been running for years, there's no need to fight it head on. Some people keep a line like this ready instead: “That was one person's joke, not a summary of me.”
It doesn't have to feel true. It is only a line some people try on, and some find that, said now and then, it takes up a little of the space the old joke used to fill, especially before a group outing.
What would a truer sentence be in your own words, one that is accurate about what was said and what it covered, without needing anybody else to agree with it?Talk about this ›
What to let be
Some of it can simply be put down #
Not every joke about a body needs a comeback, a laugh or a plan for next time. Some of it can be noticed, felt for a moment, and put down, like a heavy bag set on the floor at the end of a long day.
That isn't giving up. It's choosing where your energy goes, and some people say it leaves more room for friends who are easy company, and for the outing itself rather than the moment of the joke.
Putting the comment down for the evening doesn't mean it was fine, or that it's settled. It only means it doesn't have to travel into everything else today, into the next group photo or the next chat.
If it loosened
And if the rule loosened, even a notch #
Imagine, only as a picture, the rule a notch quieter. A joke can simply be a joke that somebody made, and a group photo just a photo of a good afternoon. What is the first thing that feels different, even slightly?
Small things can be enough, such as a conversation where the attention stays on the other person, saying yes to a trip with people who are easy company, or a walk home with nothing to replay. What would your first small thing be?
Nothing here needs to be said to anyone. Whatever comes up is yours, and worth noticing, however small it seems. If you'd like to look at it properly, a chat is one tap away.
Small things to try
Something to try
A few small things people try #
- Name it in your head: “there's that joke again”
- Notice which part of the moment is louder: the words, or the laughter
- Ask yourself quietly: whose joke is this, and where did it start?
- Think of one person you know where the joke never comes up
- Notice one small thing you wanted today, however small
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.
- What was happening when it was said, and who laughed?
- Which part of that moment stayed with you the longest?
- What feeling comes first: hurt, anger, embarrassment, or something else?
- If a line like that ever gets loud for you, what is around at that moment?
- If it eased a little, what would you notice first?