Someone told me recently I "look great, did you lose weight?" and I genuinely did not know how to respond. Was that a compliment? Should I say thank you? Should I mention I have been stressed and barely eating? I just smiled and changed the subject, which, it turns out, is exactly what experts recommend.
The Guardian recently talked to eating disorder specialists about why body talk feels so confusing right now, and the honest answer is that we are living through what one expert calls a "whiplash moment." The 2010s pushed body positivity, accept all shapes and sizes. Then GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic exploded, and suddenly the cultural mood swung hard back toward optimizing your appearance. Nobody agrees on the rules anymore, so people just default to commenting on bodies constantly, at work, at family dinners, on social media, without thinking about the impact.
If you are in your late 20s right now, this is exactly the Young Adult Blob, the stretch where you are still figuring out your relationship with your own body while everyone around you has opinions about it. And the research is not subtle about the damage. A 2023 report from the Butterfly Foundation found 57 percent of young people are dissatisfied with how they look. Dr Ulrike Schmidt, who studies eating disorders at King's College London, says even compliments about weight loss can backfire, because they teach people they are only acceptable at a certain size.
The advice I found most useful, from psychiatrist Dr Tom Hildebrandt, is refreshingly blunt: be bored by body talk. When a colleague or acquaintance brings up someone's appearance, you do not need to engage or debate it, just visibly lose interest and change topics. People pick up on that fast and move on. He also points out that most casual body comments are not malicious, they are just lazy small talk, the modern equivalent of discussing the weather.
Personally, I have started catching myself before I comment on anyone's body, even with good intentions, even "you look healthy." I have no idea what someone is going through, and neither do you, honestly. If a friend actually seems to be struggling, the better move is asking how they are doing, not asking about how they look. Nobody wants a solution shoved at them anyway. They want to be heard.
This is not about policing every conversation. It is about noticing how much airtime we give to other people's bodies and asking whether it is actually adding anything.
How do you handle it when people comment on your body, good or bad? Do you have a go-to response, or do you just smile and move on like I do?
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