I can remember the remarks from a very young age. Little quips about someone’s weight, or what they’re wearing, or the colour of their eyeshadow. Mostly about women, from other women, of course, but some men, too. Little aspersions of not-enoughness, cast onto other people without their knowing. Sometimes, it seems harmless. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, they say. But it does hurt- maybe not the person the judgement is about, but the person that does the judging, and all those who witness it.
Because judgement says a lot. It’s an ugly thing, it comes with a sense of superiority. I’ve always thought it was ugly, but it’s often come from people I love and respect – family members, friends. But it’s important to separate fact from opinion.
Fact – judging people is mean.
Opinion – being fat is wrong.
These sorts of opinions, mean and vicious ones, seldom come with an explanation – they’re just put out there as if they were fact. The sky is blue, and that woman’s fake tan is too dark. Water is wet, and that man has a strange outfit on. It takes years and years to untangle the fiction from the truth, and it’s an exercise I’m still doing to this day. It’s a thing I can never lower my guard on – there’s never a thought I can take for granted without having to check myself – is this real or not?
Sometimes, I can tell when I haven’t checked myself. I remember really vividly once, recounting what my parents had said to me to my friend. I said it, for some reason, almost verbatim, “her wedding dress was pretty, but way too lowcut for her size. She is a big girl, big boobs, it’s indecent for her to wear something like that”. Firstly, I was way too old to be parroting the opinions of my parents, it’s widely accepted that adults should think for themselves. But also – what does it matter to be if a girl is big? If she shows cleavage? If she wore nothing at all? Genuinely – what would that cost me?
Nothing, I wasn’t even there. I didn’t recognise the look in my friend’s face when I was telling her this, but another friend later on told me that she’d been offended at my remarks. It was so second nature that I hadn’t even realised that I had said something offensive. The look I’d received was devastating, showing hurt and betrayal and confusion and distrust. But the look was also reassurance, in a sense, that this must have been one of very few missteps on my part. Nonetheless, it was not fun having to do some soulsearching, and to realise that I had been in the wrong.
What came next was some serious readjustment. The strange thing about judgement is that it impacts all those who fall in earshot. Whilst my mother could sleep well at night knowing that the person she’d said was ‘a mess’ hadn’t heard her say it, her young daughter had. Many times over. Too many to count. And what did that do to her? She grew judgemental herself – clearly, I had that to show. But also, she grew distrusting and wary of others. She grew self-critical. She grew scared. She grew thinking that this was how everyone spoke, and she was aware that thousands of people could have made similar comments about her, just out of her range of hearing. And that was scary. Like a panopticon, was she constantly being watched, constantly being judged? Like a caged animal, was the success of her existence only to be measured by the opinions of strangers on her appearance?
Interestingly, whilst she was so concerned of what others thought, and trying to appease them, the voice in her mind started to take that narrative on. It started to pre-empt the words of strangers before they said it. In a weird way, that took some of the power back. The whispers of the neighbourhood gossips couldn’t say anything nearly as bad as what she’d already said to herself. But it stopped her from being her authentic self.
I don’t blame her – my mother was as young as me once. I dare say that she heard her mother saying the same when she was little. It makes me want to cry, picturing her at 9 years old, overhearing grown women talk about other women. It must be taught, as I’m unsure if it’s possible to be born with hate in your heart. It feels like it’s always me that figures out what the curse actually is. It’s always me that finds the problems. And it’s always me going to find the solution, so that no future little girl has to live through the confusion of judgement. I don’t think I am smarter than everyone else. But I must be the only person that’s ever bothered to think about this, because if my mother thought this too, no way would she want to pass it onto her little girl.
Anyway, I wonder if you ever grow out of caring about others? You can try. I’ve been actively trying to be less judgemental. Putting a sock in the mouth of the voice who judges others in my mind seems to simultaneously quiet the one who judges me. It’s funny how that works. But also, I’ve been trying to be more understanding of others. I don’t know if judgemental and understanding are direct opposites, but they definitely inhabit different spaces. Understanding feels like the antidote to judgement, the solution where you don’t think of others as natural enemies or objects of pity. Think of them as people – radical, I know. But maybe they were also that little 9 year old, overhearing things they shouldn’t.
Plus- I don’t actually care what others look like, or dress like, or sound like. I care about how they act, what they do, what they’re passionate about. That’s another thing I’ve been doing recently. I’ve been trying to lean into what I’m passionate about, or find new passions. I feel judged often, for choosing to do things I’m not good at. For example, sports, or crafts. My family pokes fun, and I know they’re joking, but there’s an aftertaste of truth that feels bitter. Like “we can tolerate you doing this, and we find it embarrassing you’re being earnest about it”. But I feel like I care less and less about that these days. Because my passions are my passions and they give me a sense of purpose and what I don’t hear can’t hurt me.