Rant: “you look amazing”

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:OP, why don't you just stay home? You sound anti-social and easily annoyed by people. I had a baby seven months ago and loved all the compliments!

You remind me of my mom when I complained about street harassment. "When you're old you'll look back fondly on it." Well I'm 40 and I'm still waiting.

Yeah street harassment by leering men and complimenting a post partum mom are totally the same thing.

It's exactly the same in that the harasser/complimenter feel their attention should be held with universal flattery.

No. I got compliments from people I chose to socialize with (and I believe them because yes I did lose the postpartum weight relatively quickly). I've been subjected to street harassment (lived in the mideast for years) and it is absolutely not the same.

Ok? And some people like random attention from strange men, like my mother. It's still not appropriate to shotgun spray uninvited comments about body appearance.

I don't think you or your mother have actually been catcalled, or you would have known what it feels like to be unsafe in that moment. I love my family and friends and when I was postpartum I appreciated their support, even if it wasn't exactly the type of support I preferred. Nothing they say would ever make me feel unsafe.

Nobody is saying unwanted physical complements make people feel unsafe. The point is sailing right over your head.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:"Thank you"

Then you realize that people are trying to be nice to you. You clearly don't deserve it. What a self-centered shrew!

I want to apologize. Now that I have read the other comments, I fully agree that you must be having some sort of post-partum issues and you should probably seek help. It is fully irrational to be offended by such a nice compliment. You should view your reaction as a red flag.

Perhaps you should view your knee jerk response to tell a post partum woman that she does not deserve kindness and is a "self-centered shrew" as a red flag and ALSO seek professional help.

It is a good point. I am just really upset about people who are so self-centered that they view common compliments as offensive. It not only brings negativity to the world in general, but it chills people from being nice. I hadn't considered that maybe the new mom was generally a wonderful person who appreciates people being nice to her but is currently suffering from mental illness.

Consider that is much more self centered to think anyone cares about your opinion of their body. Wanting to just be left alone/unbothered is not really self centered at all.

It actually is. Stay home if you can't handle people trying to be nice and polite to you. Please don't bring your negativity to others.

"You don't deserve human contact if you don't get narc supply from comments about your physical appearance."
"You're negative, never happy, the cause of depression, etc."

No, you are just not a very social person and there is nothing wrong with that. Not everyone thrives being around friends and extended family.

Sorry, you don't get to dictate how other people experience socialization, you control freak.

Yes, by saying that not everyone is social I'm trying to control you, random person I don't know.

[Anonymous]

Yet more evidence that basic social skills are declining rapidly. Pretty soon no one will ever speak to anyone unless it’s a purposeful conversation. It’s not worth it if people are going to freak out over a simple benign comment in passing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, why don't you just stay home? You sound anti-social and easily annoyed by people. I had a baby seven months ago and loved all the compliments!

You remind me of my mom when I complained about street harassment. "When you're old you'll look back fondly on it." Well I'm 40 and I'm still waiting.

Yeah street harassment by leering men and complimenting a post partum mom are totally the same thing.

I mean, one of the examples given in the thread was a friend's husband telling you how thin you look or how flat your stomach is and this is actually very close to street harassment. Like "wow you just had a baby but here I am examining your body VERY closely and there's limited evidence of pregnancy or childbirth -- kudos to you, I would def still bang you."

Thanks?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Thank you"

Then you realize that people are trying to be nice to you. You clearly don't deserve it. What a self-centered shrew!

I want to apologize. Now that I have read the other comments, I fully agree that you must be having some sort of post-partum issues and you should probably seek help. It is fully irrational to be offended by such a nice compliment. You should view your reaction as a red flag.

Perhaps you should view your knee jerk response to tell a post partum woman that she does not deserve kindness and is a "self-centered shrew" as a red flag and ALSO seek professional help.

It is a good point. I am just really upset about people who are so self-centered that they view common compliments as offensive. It not only brings negativity to the world in general, but it chills people from being nice. I hadn't considered that maybe the new mom was generally a wonderful person who appreciates people being nice to her but is currently suffering from mental illness.

Consider that is much more self centered to think anyone cares about your opinion of their body. Wanting to just be left alone/unbothered is not really self centered at all.

It actually is. Stay home if you can't handle people trying to be nice and polite to you. Please don't bring your negativity to others.

"You don't deserve human contact if you don't get narc supply from comments about your physical appearance."
"You're negative, never happy, the cause of depression, etc."

No, you are just not a very social person and there is nothing wrong with that. Not everyone thrives being around friends and extended family.

Sorry, you don't get to dictate how other people experience socialization, you control freak.

Yes, by saying that not everyone is social I'm trying to control you, random person I don't know.

Nope. You are saying all social people enjoy comments about their physical appearance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, why don't you just stay home? You sound anti-social and easily annoyed by people. I had a baby seven months ago and loved all the compliments!

You remind me of my mom when I complained about street harassment. "When you're old you'll look back fondly on it." Well I'm 40 and I'm still waiting.

Yeah street harassment by leering men and complimenting a post partum mom are totally the same thing.

I mean, one of the examples given in the thread was a friend's husband telling you how thin you look or how flat your stomach is and this is actually very close to street harassment. Like "wow you just had a baby but here I am examining your body VERY closely and there's limited evidence of pregnancy or childbirth -- kudos to you, I would def still bang you."

Thanks?

There you go! Its all on the yuk continuum. Don't comment unless you know the person very well enough to know they will take it as a well-placed complement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yet more evidence that basic social skills are declining rapidly. Pretty soon no one will ever speak to anyone unless it’s a purposeful conversation. It’s not worth it if people are going to freak out over a simple benign comment in passing.

More gaslighting. I am *entitled* to make unsolicited complements about your appearance, and if you don't like it, you have the problem. I am the well adjusted social not-depressed adult here!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Ugh, I can't stand people like you, OP, not being able to handle kindness and compliments. Your post sounds like a humble-brag disguised as a feminist rant.

The point is that it's not kindness. It is not kind to tell someone how great they look even when they are telling you that they don't feel right.

And also sometimes there's an expectation that goes long with "you look amazing." A lot of people expect new mothers to be happy and are angry when they are not -- there is still a pervasive cultural belief that a woman with a baby has achieved the apex of female life achievement, and therefore she better be happy. Despite greater awareness around PPD and maternal mental health issues. Sometimes people still get mad at postpartum women for not being content. "You look amazing" can also come with this pressure to be happy and have no complaints.

OP, you are setting impossible expectations for ordinary human interaction. If you think you are surrounded by misogynistic villains every time someone looks for something positive to say, you have a problem. Get off DCUM, take a breath, and go see a doctor. You're only hurting yourself.

OR we could encourage more people to think about a postpartum mom as someone in a vulnerable position who needs better support than just being told she looks great. OP is obviously struggling emotionally and the people around her are just focusing on her appearance. OP's complaint is that she needs the people around her to look past appearance to something deeper. That's not an unreasonable request, actually. She's asking for what she needs and you're telling her that her needs are unreasonable.

Why is it "obvious" to the people surrounding OP that she is struggling? Why do some many women feel the need to pretend they are superwoman and not seek out the help they need?

The comment was that it was obvious from OP's post that she is struggling. Not that it is obvious to people around her (it may or may not be, we have no idea).

Numerous people have posted in this thread about telling people around them that they were struggling postpartum and being ignored or placated. A lot of people also have the attitude "oh it's hormones, it's not real" and will tell women that postpartum. But PPD is partially hormonal; that does not make it imaginary. The hormonal roller coaster women wind up on when they are postpartum is extremely hard for some women to deal with and dismissing their experience as "just hormones" as though a woman should just be able to get over it because it's "just" a massive flood or drop in various hormonal levels causing massive and sometimes scary mood swings is just nuts.

If men experienced hormonal issues like this, it would be treated as a serious issue and treated appropriately. With women it's just "oh you know, women be crazy."

Agreed, but the villain here is the hormones and the answer is professional help, rather than the legitimization of irrational reactions by reframing perfectly normal comments as misogyny. Many women want to get comments like these, and as a PP pointed out, take offense if you don't make them. The fact that OP does not want these well-meaning compliments is not plastered on her forehead, and no one is out to get her by making them. The pseudo-feminist righteous indignation is a symptom that should be heard for what it is, rather than an excuse to excoriate people who clearly mean well.

No one who thinks like me gets offended if you don’t comment about their body.

Fixed it for you.

Nope. Literally no posts here have said they were upset postpartum that no one talked about their body.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


Sequel to this thread:

"I dropped my post-partum weight in record time and NO ONE complimented me. I feel so hurt and unseen."


People can't win with OP et al. You need to be validated, but only in the right way, at the right time, and you can't tell others exactly how you want your validation, because you don't want them to know you desperately crave attention, so they have to guess, and if they guess wrong, they're the WORST SORT OF WOMAN-HATER.

Complimenting a person on their weight loss is not "seeing" them. It's seeing their weight. I know people complain about not being validated for their weight loss but I actually think this is part of realizing that being thinner does not actually heal what are actually emotional wounds. People need to feel validated for who they are as people, not how they look.

It IS a thorny issue, because as a society we put way too much pressure on women to look a certain way and are especially critical of how women look after having children. So a lot of women have a lot of insecurities on this issue. But that does not mean we need to feed the insecurities by constantly commenting on women's bodies. It means we need to stop fixating on physical appearance as a proxy for emotional well being. That's what OP is asking for -- for people to care about her emotional well being an not to get stuck on who well they think she looks.

The reason people get upset about people not commenting on weight loss is because people seemed just fine to comment on weight gain or them being fat in the first place which would all be negated if we just stopped commenting on people's bodies. It starts so insidiously with little girls and its hard habit to break when the first positive comment is always about their bodies or hair or etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yet more evidence that basic social skills are declining rapidly. Pretty soon no one will ever speak to anyone unless it’s a purposeful conversation. It’s not worth it if people are going to freak out over a simple benign comment in passing.

More gaslighting. I am *entitled* to make unsolicited complements about your appearance, and if you don't like it, you have the problem. I am the well adjusted social not-depressed adult here!

Yes because telling someone they look great is always gaslighting and can never simply mean you look great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yet more evidence that basic social skills are declining rapidly. Pretty soon no one will ever speak to anyone unless it’s a purposeful conversation. It’s not worth it if people are going to freak out over a simple benign comment in passing.

Basic social skills do seem to be declining if people are this bent out of shape over being told not to comment on another person’s body. I literally teach this to children at three, and you all think men in their 30s and 40s can’t handle this basic good manners?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Thank you"

Then you realize that people are trying to be nice to you. You clearly don't deserve it. What a self-centered shrew!

I want to apologize. Now that I have read the other comments, I fully agree that you must be having some sort of post-partum issues and you should probably seek help. It is fully irrational to be offended by such a nice compliment. You should view your reaction as a red flag.

Perhaps you should view your knee jerk response to tell a post partum woman that she does not deserve kindness and is a "self-centered shrew" as a red flag and ALSO seek professional help.

It is a good point. I am just really upset about people who are so self-centered that they view common compliments as offensive. It not only brings negativity to the world in general, but it chills people from being nice. I hadn't considered that maybe the new mom was generally a wonderful person who appreciates people being nice to her but is currently suffering from mental illness.

Consider that is much more self centered to think anyone cares about your opinion of their body. Wanting to just be left alone/unbothered is not really self centered at all.

It actually is. Stay home if you can't handle people trying to be nice and polite to you. Please don't bring your negativity to others.

"You don't deserve human contact if you don't get narc supply from comments about your physical appearance."
"You're negative, never happy, the cause of depression, etc."

You don’t deserve human contact if you’re going to use those interactions to try to make everyone feel as miserable as you do.

Everyone deserves human contact but ESPECIALLY a woman who recently gave birth and is struggling emotionally.

But good job making this all about you and your feelings.

Some of you are insufferable, narcissistic drama queens. Look at the site you’re posting to. Most of the women posting have given birth before. Many of us multiple times. And many of us have experienced PPD. But there are always those bridezilla-esque new moms who demand to be treated as though they’re the first and only women to ever give birth!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Thank you"

Then you realize that people are trying to be nice to you. You clearly don't deserve it. What a self-centered shrew!

I want to apologize. Now that I have read the other comments, I fully agree that you must be having some sort of post-partum issues and you should probably seek help. It is fully irrational to be offended by such a nice compliment. You should view your reaction as a red flag.

Perhaps you should view your knee jerk response to tell a post partum woman that she does not deserve kindness and is a "self-centered shrew" as a red flag and ALSO seek professional help.

It is a good point. I am just really upset about people who are so self-centered that they view common compliments as offensive. It not only brings negativity to the world in general, but it chills people from being nice. I hadn't considered that maybe the new mom was generally a wonderful person who appreciates people being nice to her but is currently suffering from mental illness.

Consider that is much more self centered to think anyone cares about your opinion of their body. Wanting to just be left alone/unbothered is not really self centered at all.

It actually is. Stay home if you can't handle people trying to be nice and polite to you. Please don't bring your negativity to others.

"You don't deserve human contact if you don't get narc supply from comments about your physical appearance."
"You're negative, never happy, the cause of depression, etc."

You don’t deserve human contact if you’re going to use those interactions to try to make everyone feel as miserable as you do.

Everyone deserves human contact but ESPECIALLY a woman who recently gave birth and is struggling emotionally.

But good job making this all about you and your feelings.

Some of you are insufferable, narcissistic drama queens. Look at the site you’re posting to. Most of the women posting have given birth before. Many of us multiple times. And many of us have experienced PPD. But there are always those bridezilla-esque new moms who demand to be treated as though they’re the first and only women to ever give birth!!

And many of us, who have given birth, who have experienced PPD, and have had the same experience as OP of having ourselves called “amazing” or validated for being thin, covering up major medical concerns, are empathizing with this new mother instead of calling her names.

How old are you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yet more evidence that basic social skills are declining rapidly. Pretty soon no one will ever speak to anyone unless it’s a purposeful conversation. It’s not worth it if people are going to freak out over a simple benign comment in passing.

Agreed. This thread is bonkers. However, I am totally happy to use benign comments and a person’s reaction to them as a filter for whether I will choose to ever interact with that person again if I can help it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Thank you"

Then you realize that people are trying to be nice to you. You clearly don't deserve it. What a self-centered shrew!

I want to apologize. Now that I have read the other comments, I fully agree that you must be having some sort of post-partum issues and you should probably seek help. It is fully irrational to be offended by such a nice compliment. You should view your reaction as a red flag.

Perhaps you should view your knee jerk response to tell a post partum woman that she does not deserve kindness and is a "self-centered shrew" as a red flag and ALSO seek professional help.

It is a good point. I am just really upset about people who are so self-centered that they view common compliments as offensive. It not only brings negativity to the world in general, but it chills people from being nice. I hadn't considered that maybe the new mom was generally a wonderful person who appreciates people being nice to her but is currently suffering from mental illness.

Consider that is much more self centered to think anyone cares about your opinion of their body. Wanting to just be left alone/unbothered is not really self centered at all.

It actually is. Stay home if you can't handle people trying to be nice and polite to you. Please don't bring your negativity to others.

"You don't deserve human contact if you don't get narc supply from comments about your physical appearance."
"You're negative, never happy, the cause of depression, etc."

You don’t deserve human contact if you’re going to use those interactions to try to make everyone feel as miserable as you do.

Everyone deserves human contact but ESPECIALLY a woman who recently gave birth and is struggling emotionally.

But good job making this all about you and your feelings.

Some of you are insufferable, narcissistic drama queens. Look at the site you’re posting to. Most of the women posting have given birth before. Many of us multiple times. And many of us have experienced PPD. But there are always those bridezilla-esque new moms who demand to be treated as though they’re the first and only women to ever give birth!!

And many of us, who have given birth, who have experienced PPD, and have had the same experience as OP of having ourselves called “amazing” or validated for being thin, covering up major medical concerns, are empathizing with this new mother instead of calling her names.

How old are you?

Old enough to remember the good ole days before never ending therapy (administered by people I wouldn’t trust to walk my dog) ruined an entire generation through the encouragement of excessive navel gazing and framing victimhood as aspirational.

How old are YOU?