Trivial annoyance

I hate when I order hot chocolate at a cafe and the counter guy asks if I want whipped cream and I say no thanks and he looks me up and down and nods a little and smiles as if confirming to himself that I am probably "on a diet" and he expected as much. And there is a superciliousness of the person thinking either I am that obsessed with my food intake or that i should or should not be dieting or denying myself the richness of whipped cream. I can't even tell if they are thinking I'm fat and therefore it's good that I'm denying the whipped cream or if they're thinking I'm skinny and it must be because i'm uptight or virtuous enough to deny myself the whipped cream. I can't tell which way they're going with it, but they obviously are going in one of those directions.

No, you dumbfucks. Check it. Sometimes I want whipped cream and sometimes I don't and that is fucking all.

Comments

[Barak]

Um. Paranoid much?

[maryrose]

As a fat woman, I get this all the time.

Rose

[minnie]

hahha. no i don't think she is being paranoid. people make comments (silently and otherwise) about what women eat.
i have this book called boobs, boys and high heels by diane brill. which is AWEsome by the way, and she talks about how people LOVE to see a skinny woman dig into a giant ice cream sunday. yet, if a plump woman does.. she is a pig, or should be dieting or whatever.
also, my favorite chapter in that book is "how to get ready in just under six hours". i used to do it all the time.

[badgerbag]

No barak... actually it's not paranoia - people judge what women order in restaurants or are eating just constantly. If you are female, it is constant background noise. If you're fat then it's much worse but it's still there no matter what.

[blaize]

Aaarrggghhh don't you hate when you absorb so much of that overweening background contradictory whine of what a woman should look/act like & it gets in the way of enjoying something as simple as a cup of coffee.

I get even more annoyed at myself for allowing it to bother me so much though, sometimes internal dialogues are a pain in the arse.

[Joshua]

Uh.

Hm.

I totally want to comment on this, but for some reason I can't think of a single thing to say.

Just think of something really devil's advo-catty and pretend I said it.

[badgerbag]

Maybe that I should have other things to worry about other than that some random stranger is judging my relative fatness/skinniness in relation to my latte order?!

[badgerbag]

Or maybe that they're thinking how they hate me for being such an ass as to spend $2.50 on some hot chocolate...

[Joshua]

Or, you know, maybe they're just looking at your tits.

Now, the question is, would that be bettor or worse?

[Barak]

Or perhaps he is reading the funny sticker you have on your shirt.

Or maybe he's thinking "purple hair, checkered converse high top trainers. Cute."

Or "She reminds me of my old girlfriend Carol. She would always say no to whipped cream in chocko."

[Barak]

Badger, you are a pretty entertaining billboard. There are 20 or 30 reasons to look you up and down and nod and smile.

[Jo]

Maybe checking you out for weapons? Or noting the similarity to his mother? Wishing he didn't have to ask the stupid whipped cream question 100 times a day when really his destiny is the high seas!

Or judging your weight. Could be.

[badgerbag]

That is a good reason to do as I do and engage in flamboyant display behaviors, like a poison dart frog or a stripey bristley caterpillar. It is a useful camouflage.

It's that it always happens at the moment of the whipped cream question - or when they are about to steam the milk and are sure that I will want nonfat.

[Joshua]

I guess the reason I find this particular complaint totally baffling is that it would just never occur to me to scope someone out and make a judgment about them when they're ordering food-- whipped cream, pizza, whatever. And I've worked a shitload of restaurant cashier jobs. I mean, there are definitely morbidly obese people where you end up feeling like kind of a crack dealer, because someone's eating habits are clearly killing them. But that's more of an ethical question than an aesthetic one.

[squid]

You could have asked him why he was smirking. Next time ask for hot chocolate specifically with or without whipped cream.

I hear what you're saying, though. I have absolutely no tolerance for that kind of shit when expressed outright, especially in the media. I was looking forward to going through the entire Star Trek original series with Iz, but being asked why the men treat the women so patronizingly or offhandedly, and why the women have such lame lines--every five minutes--is tiring.

Grumpy even about trivialities,

[Madeline F]

What irritates me is getting unordered diet sodas all the time. "I ordered a Coke. This is a diet Coke." "Oh!" I sit at a table with my plump boss, and she orders a diet and I order a Coke, and then we taste what we're given and have to switch... Just because I'm skinny, I must be drinking the shit that is diet soda? Dipshits. Sometimes they ask before just assuming... "Coke please." "Sorry, did you ask for diet Coke?" "No, regular Coke." Dumbass.

[Mary Tsao]

If you don't want your whipped cream, can I have it?

[badgerbag]

Just the other day at Cafe Quetzal the barista asked me if I wanted whipped cream on my pie. And he asked in a completely normal way with no strange implications. He was merely offering me the option of whipped cream on pie with no subtextual judgement about my body or my level of buying-into-beauty-myth-or-not. It was quite unusual!