‘Are you sure you want that?’: Outrageous comment made to ‘curvy’ woman

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all is the old adage and maybe it’s for a good reason..

Generic photo of woman twittering on Apple iPhone in the office. Twitter has about 1.3 million users in Australia and NSW produces the largest number of tweets.

“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

So goes the old adage, which sounds good in theory, but in reality – we humans being so flawed and all – if we were to practise this behaviour, it would result in the majority of us being rendered completely silent for our entire lives.

For the most part, I do try to practise this, but I would be lying if I said I have never uttered an unkind word about someone who deserved it. And there are ways of saying something a little bit not nice, without going the whole hog, aren’t there?

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My friend Kristen, for example, never says an unkind word about anyone. But when I recently asked her about someone I had not met yet, she said “Look, I love a character”.

The point is, it’s not that hard to be nice, and yet there are people who apparently find it extremely difficult.

A friend of mine was recently at a lunch with a good friend of hers, and two other women who she did not know. They were friends of her friend and she had wanted them all to meet because she said she knew they’d get on like a house on fire.

This, of course, is the death knell to all friendships, but nevertheless she said it.

They sat down to lunch, everything was going swimmingly and then my friend ordered her lunch, and a bowl of extra chips.

One of the women put her hand on my friend’s arm and said, “Are you sure?” Or as my friend – who describes herself as curvy – translated it: “Are you sure you want that, you big fatty boom-bah?”

“I couldn’t believe it,” she told me later, but I could. I had my second child at age 45, and if it wasn’t enough that the medical profession termed me and all the other women like me having a baby after 40, an “elderly primigravida”, I then had to deal with Mitch the mechanic.

I had put my car in for service at our local auto shop and when I got out of the car to give Mitch my keys, he looked at me, looked at my bump, and said “Geez, you’ve left your run a bit late haven’t you love?”

Frances Whiting. Picture: David Kelly

I can’t tell you what I said to Mitch because I know so many of you think well of me.

My friend Sarah once went to a large department store, up the escalators to the designer section, tried on several dresses to wear to her daughter’s engagement party, and was served by a young woman who – and I swear this is true – uttered the following words when Sarah asked her what she thought of an outfit she had tried on. “Mmmm,” the young woman said,
“I think it’s a bit of sheep dressed up as lamb.”

Sarah said to her, “Well, I think you’ll find it’s actually mutton dressed up as lamb”, before turning on her heel, fleeing to her car and crying into the steering wheel.

There’s another old adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”, which is a load of bollocks, isn’t it?

Words can hurt so much, and the pain can linger long after they’ve been delivered. Take it from an elderly primigravida.