Why I stopped dating people who comment on others’ bodies

By Virgie Tovar

The sad truth is that we live in a culture where it’s still perfectly normal to comment on other people’s bodies. Whether the comment is about another person’s size, age, hair, ability, clothing, skin color, piercings, or gender presentation, there’s a pervasive sense that it’s okay to criticize other people if they “stand out” in some way.

In my experience, people who stand out are often—though not always—members of a marginalized group, like queer people, fat people, sex workers, trans people, unhoused people, people with disabilities, poor people, and people with darker skin. In our sexist culture, it’s also often considered okay for people to comment on women’s and femmes’ bodies.

I grew up with a family that frequently commented on other people’s bodies, especially in public. It was a way that we bonded. My family has experienced a lot of racism and xenophobia. It also has some dysfunctional qualities. So, criticizing others was a way, as negative and maladaptive as it was, that we could let off steam and turn the focus away from ourselves.

My grandfather raised me, and he was the head of our family. He was a really loving and complicated human, but he was also pretty deeply misogynistic and thought it was okay to make fun of women for all kinds of reasons. He also thought it was okay to comment on women he found to be particularly attractive. (Those two things, I’ve found, often go hand in hand.)

I also grew up being made fun of all the time at school. My body was always being judged, and like my family, I felt kind of powerless. So sometimes I would try to get back some of my power by making fun of another person who had less power than I did. The people who had been laughing at me were now laughing at someone else. I felt safe for a few moments, and that felt good.

As a result, I thought it was totally normal when my partners commented negatively on other people’s bodies–especially other women’s bodies–when I started dating. To be honest, I found it comforting. If they were saying mean things about other women’s bodies, then I convinced myself that they didn’t feel that way about me. I did my fair share of being critical and negative, too. I didn’t think twice about it because I believed it was something that everyone did.

And then I started dating someone who just didn’t do it.

We’d be out and about and no matter who we encountered, he just didn’t comment on them. I tested the waters, baiting him by teeing up a critical statement. He’d just shrug and continue on with whatever he’d been doing before.

Wow.

At first, I’ll admit, it was weird and uncomfortable because it forced me to face how often I was being a total jerkbag. I was confused because I’d never dated someone who didn’t criticize others fairly constantly. It made me feel like a bad person when he didn’t engage in the call and response. It turns out, I had been relying a lot on my opinions of others to create opportunities to “bond” (just like I had been taught at home) and to fill in silences. It made me examine my own relationship to silence, and it came back to my upbringing. My family doesn’t feel comfortable with silence, and shaming other people was always a really easy way to get conversation going.

It took a while, but I realized I wasn’t a bad person. We rely on the tools we know how to use. But here I was, faced with an opportunity to try something different. Would I be able to treat it like the gift it was?

It took a long time–several months–to stop going back to the habit, but once I got over the hump I found it incredibly relieving, peaceful, and powerful. I started to become sensitive about it when I noticed others doing it, finally able to feel how hurtful it really was. It changed how I interacted with spaces, because I wasn’t constantly looking for a target. It changed how I interacted with people, because I was able to see more of their complexity. And it changed how I dated.

This non-judgy human had become my new standard without even realizing it. I was able to look back at many of the people I’d dated and see that what we’d done wasn’t bonding. I wasn’t actually safer because they body-shamed other women and femmes. A person who feels like it’s okay to criticize how women or femmes dress or look is a misogynist. When they make fun of other women and femmes, you are not safe. You are just in the presence of someone who is showing you that they’re 100% not here for people like you.

Author and activist Virgie Tovar started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight and is the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat (August 2018). In 2018 she was named as one of the top 50 most influential feminists by Bitch Magazine. She holds a Master’s degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender, and has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera, and NPR.