Is It Really Un-PC to Congratulate Someone for Losing Weight?
I approve of tweaking language to minimize the risk of offending people, but it’s easy to go overboard.
The last two years have been arguably the most confusing ones of our lives. Amid COVID, heightened racial unrest, and Tiger King, we’ve seen toilet paper get upgraded to the hottest supermarket commodity, watched the loser of a US presidential election go on to be crowned king of his political party, and witnessed the transformation of health from personal goals into the most explosive political grenade.
A few years ago, I wouldn’t have dreamt face masks and vaccinations could ever rival abortion, guns, and race as divisive topics. For me, it would have been equally unfathomable that someone could actually question the sensitivity of someone who congratulates a person for losing weight. But times change, and here we are.
I recently found myself, for once, on the unexpected side of an argument over how words can hurt people. In this case, the allegedly offensive word was “congratulations,” one that normally elicits a feeling of pride and joy: “Is it PC these days to congratulate someone on losing weight?” I heard someone ask me.
It’s encouraging to me that as a society we’ve become more aware of how we talk about weight. The phrase “the battle of the bulge” seems to have been largely retired as a weight metaphor, thank God, and hopefully, A-list actresses wearing fat suits in movies soon will go the way of the dodo bird. It’s important that we don’t deem thinness the default universal ideal. Body shaming does damage, and we don’t want anyone to feel they have to be a certain size to be valuable and happy.
All that said, when someone burns off pounds through determination and hard work, how loaded can “Congratulations” be? Having it called out made me think about all the ways we’ve tweaked our language to minimize the risk of offending people. In theory, it’s a move in the right direction (I’d rather not return to the days of “homo,” “Indians,” “Oriental,” and “colored”), but it’s easy to go overboard. When you think about it, there are few things we can say during the course of any day that cannot be construed as being hurtful to the feelings of…
