The 3 Stupidest Things People Say To Me ALL THE TIME.

I recently had an eye exam.  My vision has been very poor since I was a teenager, and over the years it has gotten a bit worse.  In fact, my vision is so poor that my new prescription would probably resemble the coke-bottle glasses of yore, and my eyes would appear to others, as big as saucers.  So, with that in mind, I decided to go back to wearing contact lenses, at least some of the time.  I also seem to generally see better with contacts than with glasses.  I was very happy when I left my doctor's office with 20/20 vision and no glasses.  Well, I was happy until I got to work the next morning, anyway.

I realize that people at work aren't accustomed to seeing me sans glasses.  I understand that they look at me and do a little double-take and try to figure out what's different.  After all, when you wear glasses for a long time, they become part of your identity, so it only makes sense that people look twice when you're not wearing them.  The problem is, they all have to say something, and that's were things go horribly wrong...for me.

"You look sick."
"Have you been crying?"

"You look tired."
"You look tired."
"You look tired."
"Are you sick?"
"Are you having your period?"
"It'll be okay!" (she thought I had been crying.)

Okay, so I get the message people.  I look better with my glasses on because they hide the fact that my eyes are puffy and swollen all the time.  Point taken. And if another person tells me how tired I look or how sick I look, I'm just going to say, "No, I'm not tired or sick, this is just how I look."  But that wouldn't be exactly true because I am tired and I am sick, I just don't really want to announce that to the world.

Anyway, all this got me thinking about the stupid things people say to other people, especially about their appearance. Here are the top comments I thought of.  Feel free to ad your own:

1.  "You look__________."   Fill in the blank.  You look tired, you look sick, you look sad, you look angry, you look upset, you look sleepy.  To make this one simple, just remember that you should never start a sentence with "you look" unless it ends with a positive adjective like "beautiful".   Anytime you say "You look_______" to someone, you're assuming something about them that might not be true and in doing so, you might be unwittingly insulting them.  See above.

2.  "You've lost weight."  First of all, this one implies that you thought I was fat to start with.  Yes, maybe I have lost weight, but couldn't you just tell me I look great?  You've lost weight means, "hey, you're not as fat as you used to be!"  For some reason people say this to me all the time, even when I haven't lost any weight, which makes me think that I'm really a cow who just happens to look thinner on some days because of what I'm wearing or something.

3.  "Your hair looks better that way."  So you--a person whom I see every day and whom I may even think of as a friend, have been letting me walk around with bad hair for how long without telling me it looked like crap?  If you think it looks better now, how bad did it look before?  How long need I stay embarrassed about the hairstyle that I had for the last 2 years?

Anyway, I suppose I will get my glasses back out and kiss my better vision goodbye for the sake of vanity.  It's not that I'm that worried about being attractive, it's just that I already go to great lengths to NOT be thought of as sickly, tired or weak and my eyes are apparently betraying me.

The better vision was nice while it lasted, though.