I live several thousand miles away (surprise) and rarely return to visit because I am not like your nice sister Rose and my standing up for myself in such situations always creates friction and “hurt” feelings. I don’t relish being a source of conflict so I stay away. When I return for weddings or funerals I’ve endured the stares, the shunning, the half veiled comments, the controlling statements of concern ala Aunt Joan. It’s galling to the extreme.

Again I’m so sorry that you had to endure this poor treatment at the worst possible time. You certainly deserved much better.

My mother died a few years ago from cancer. She had 3 kids from a previous marriage, who I barely know and who hate that I exist. These 3 didn’t help one bit during mom’s illness or funeral, and one of the 2 who showed up to the funeral wouldn’t get anywhere near me because I was fat. She’s an idiot, the kind who think fat is contagious, and she literally backed away from me constantly. I had to make sure I never stepped within 10 feet of her or she’d start backing into things.

Like a professor of mine once said, it’s great you can choose your friends, and it’s a shame you can’t choose your family.

With great respect, I have to disagree. Based on my own experience (once “medically obese”, now not) and based on what American women say (and a lot of European women, for that matter – and some friends of African relatives who have been stuffed prior to marriage to be “attractive” to their husbands – same problem, really, control over how women’s bodies look; just the inapposite cultural take) whom I talk to and/or read about daily. IMHO, every modern woman has an eating disorder.

I also believe that, whether we stuff or starve, and really so connected to this story, it’s related to what we DON’T say. Particularly to people who are – deliberately or not – hurting us badly.

More centrally On Topic: “I don’t mean to be offensive…”/”Then stop now.”

What Deborah Lipp said.

Also, what Toby Wallinsaid (especially in retort). As women, we are regularly regarded by the medical establishment as “emotional creatures of appetite.” I believe that a significant reason for that is that the majority of medical research is – still – based on how MEN’S bodies work.

However, as women, if we’re not outwardly “emotional”, we’re also excoriated – even, and sometimes especially, by other women — if we’re analytical, logical, and/or plain-spoken. Because then we’re lecturing, cold-hearted b*tches.

It really is a feminist issue. No matter what a woman does or doesn’t do, whatever happens that’s bad is her fault. How many of us eat to stuff down what we would have said? Or –feeling particularly germane in the case of Aunt Harpies the world over — what we would have said back?

This is OT, but I’m reminded of a time when I was 14. I used to go camping every year at the same site and roughly the same week each summer. There were several families that would do the same, and though we didn’t know each other outside that world, after several years we became fairly close. When I was 14, one of the girls who was about 2 years older than me was pregnant. When I found out (in a group of people who already knew) I said, “Congratulations!” Afterward, my friend’s mom took me aside and said that she was very impressed with me because it was the first nice thing anyone had said to this girl. Everyone had been clucking their tongues about it, as if she didn’t already know that it was considered less than ideal to be pregnant at 16. For god’s sake – is basic compassion and human decency too much to ask when confronted with people that make us uncomfortable for some reason? This, I think, is where manners are so important – not to make sure no one uses the wrong fork, but to set up a framework to ensure that people are verbally and physically respectful of each other.