Hurtful comment, never forgotten

I think it was quite normal to have insults hurled at you back in the day

I was at a private school and had to cope with no end of insults from other children, who, luckily for them, didn't have to wear a straw boater.

My grandma regularly told me to go boil my head (I loved her more than anyone)

My sister and I never had a nice word to say to each other. Still don't really

When my father met when of my first boyfriends he asked him if he was stood in a hole . He was on the short side.

And a guy in a bar told me I looked like Celine Dion, which was a bit of a shocker.

A friend of mine had dyslexia at school, which back in those days was not even known about. Her father always told her that she was stupid, and would never amount to anything. However I and other friends of hers have assured her that she is not stupid and have encouraged her to read the books which we have enjoyed, which she has no problem with. She is a very talented artist and needlewoman and a really lovely woman. If only her father was still around to see how beautifully his "stupid" daughter has turned out.

I was told I had beautiful feet when I was young and they were, now due to edema the left one is swollen but I do wear sandals forget what was said and wear your sandals. I've also got Vitiligo which is a real social killer but I don't care anymore.

Words hurt I'm like you can't let go of the negative and never remember the positive. Plus I play things over and over in my mind it's horrible . That young man was rude to you. Try and remember like I do I've made it this far and that's good considering all the rotten people out there I've had to deal with.

When I was very young I used to go to mass with a friend who went to the church school. I didn’t! I went to a school nearer home as I was told I was too ill to travel that far!! Not so sure about that! Anyway one day I was sitting with my friend and others from the school at mass when a nun shouted at me and pulled me out of my seat saying you shouldn’t be sitting here and put me at the back of the church on my own.
Then as a young girl about 13 I was out with an aunt. I said it would be nice to go into somewhere nice for tea. A dreamer that was me! We were in London. She told me that people like me don’t go into posh places! So since those two incidences I’ve always thought I don’t belong! I’m 75 now! Never leaves you!

My awful father kept telling me that I had big ears. I always hid them with my hair after that.

A woman I know said 'Are your w...es as small as your brains?' to a couple of men when they made unkind comments to her. That made them go quiet!

When my husband and I got engaged an aunt told me if I married him I would never have anything. At every family get together she would make some disparaging remark about him which we chose to ignore.

Had my revenge when we were at another family get together, we had recently moved and this aunt asked when we were going to invite her to our house. My reply? Which one we own 3! (we would buy run down properties, renovate them and then rent them out)

First music lesson at grammar school......I was thrown out because I was singing 'The Troutlet Song' with a loud, husky voice, as the pinnacle of desire for me was to sing like Lulu. My parents and brothers howled like wolves if I sang at home, and these comments made me afraid to sing until I went to college when a friend persuaded me to sing at folk club with her a couple of times. After college, I'd sing with the children I taught, but outside the classroom, i kept my voice to myself. Then I offered to help stack chairs at a local Am Dram group, was dragged into the chorus for a musical they were putting on and was eventually given the lead roles as Anna in 'The King and I' and Julie Jordan in 'Carousel'. Long Covid and age has stopped all that, but it shows that unthinking and cruel words in childhood can have long lasting effects.

Shinimae
Your feet look perfectly fine to me. I like to wear bright red nail polish on my particularly peculiar feet and it makes me feel glamorous and a bit decadent! My feet are size 4.5 in length but a size 6 in width and my toes have been straightened but never reach the end of sandals and don’t bend! But they’ve carried me around for 80+ years with only an occasional mishap so I am quite fond of them!

When I was about 12 someone said that half my face was forehead. Ever since then I have been quite self-conscious about it and wore bangs for the longest time. Even now when I pull all my hair back, and I think I look good, I won't wear it that way in public.

Better to have ugly feet than an ugly mind which can give so much hurt!
Lots of us were born with flat feet. Mine were so bad, I was in plaster from my toes to my hips. My parents could hear me clicking my legs together in my cot. When the casts were removed, and I was old enough, I also had to try to pick up pencils with my feet. Nothing worked. My mother had ingrowing toenails and had them removed (big toes). Her bulging, really ugly toes never stopped her from wearing sandals. She was just glad to have kept her big toes 😊

Dr Scholl's were not the prettiest of shoes, were they? My hubby has long thin toes and he does not like my more stubby ones. (Not sure what the toes of the Duchess of York are like, but it is, I think, much a matter of taste.

Nobody is really looking except, clearly, stupid teens who want to big themselves up.

I would get the bunion seen to though. Also I really love having a chiropody visit

I don't give a fig if someone says anything about my feet, arms, hair etc. I have very bent toes dur to arthritis but wear sandals a lot (spend a lot of time in warm place). I always paint my toe nails and don't care. You can get some nice sandals (I go to pavers) that don't show too much of your toes/whole foot and they are really comfortable. Like me you are i your 60s and your feet have carried you all that time. So sod the nasty man all those years ago just imagine him with a small bent p£@!s disappointing many a young lady laugh and go get yourself some sandals and enjoy the freedom for your toes 😉

Have you thought it may have been the sandals not your dear feet he thought were ugly and obviously he was a fool anyway ! ❤️

I was a chiropodist for years. I can promise you I have seen worse. Boys of that age can be so hurtful…but all in all who looks closely at you feet.

I have what I call unique feet…..my last 2 toes on both feet are back to front and I am proud of them!
I wear flip flops a lot of the time and if anyone makes comments I’ll just ignore them.

As a 6 year I was taken out of my class to learn to play the violin, because I had the longest arms in the class apparently! A dinner lady congratulated my friend for passing the 11+ and said her parents must be very proud of her, it drove me on to succeed and I was the one who gained a degree and a 39 year teaching career. I was always mindful of comments made to pupils because of my experience.

I tend to think the best way to deal with disparaging comments about one's appearance are to mentally reel off to oneself silently all the things that are wrong with their appearance.

I've never forgotten the (female) supervisor that tried to make me (literally) look worse. That was at the time I had my "best figure ever" (36-26-36) and she tried to stop me wearing my most flattering clothes (ie tight jeans) and she would not have liked to know that I was totalling up everything about her appearance and didn't find one single point in it that was attractive. I was quite surprised at the list I had in my head by the end of it and thinking "How can someone possibly literally not have one single attractive feature? Usually people have got something - nice features or nice hair or good skin - but she's trying to pull my appearance down when there is absolutely nothing good at all in hers. Huh???!"

Betcha he had at least one thing about his appearance that you could have commented back about......(terrible skin or lank hair or something). Very few people have everything right about their appearance.....there's something there in everyone's case...and manners dictate that one says nothing at all about someone's appearance unless you've got something good to say.

So much older now, unkind remarks just pass me by. As a teenager I endured such comments, and went through life feeling fat and ugly. Looking at old photos I realise I was quite pretty - which probably prompted the nasty remarks. My mantra now is 'Other people's opinion of you is none of your business'. The most liberating thought to have - wish I had known it sooner.

My thin legs were the bane of my life, now I realise they are
great pins! I’m only 78!

I had 2 brothers and a sister. My mother had a friend in and I was asked to make tea for them. I delivered the tea and as I left the room my mother said to her friend 'DB1 is the brains, DS is the beauty and DB2 was the baby'. There was no mention of, we really didn't get on, and I was 14 at the time and 70 now. I never held it against my siblings but I never forgot it.

I used to help at an after school club. One day I offered to play uno with two girls probably about 9 or 10.One of them said ‘ugly people aren’t allowed to play’. I’ve never forgotten it as I ve never had any confidence about my appearance.

It is typical of men that they think they have the right to comment on our appearance. God forbid they do the same. Decades later nothing has changed. I don't want to know what a random man thinks of my appearance. I just say "well your not too perfect either mate"

My Mum once told me that a boyfriend had told her that she did not have a pretty face but that she had a kind heart. She said she would have preferred it if he’d said she had a pretty face but a heart of stone. (We are so vain when we are young.)