By all accounts, I’d been enjoying the conversation. We were two pina coladas apiece in, and between us had covered the breadth of holiday small talk. The weather, the flight over, the cult of the Kardashians, to name but a few. Then Jenny, the woman who had been stretching on the sun lounger beside me all day, got personal: “I know all about your problems,” she said as matter of fact. “You’ve just got to eat.”
With that, she happily skipped back to decrying Kim Kardashian and her much-debated posterior. I sat in silence, scared to burst the supply of tears that had slowly gathered and begun to leak. I then got up and retreated to my room.
I don’t know about you, but there are some things that are, as far as I am concerned, off the conversation table. Combine British sensibilities with a growing PC culture, and you’ll find a number of topics are practically anathema – and for good reason too.
Honestly, would you tell a person in a wheelchair that they needed to walk? How about an alopecia sufferer – would you feel the need to inform them they were missing hair? Hell, I bristle at the thought of presupposing a woman’s pregnancy. She could be nine months gone, screaming and flailing as the little ’un bore forth, and I would still think twice about wishing her well.
[For more of this story, written by Charlotte Samantha, go to http://www.theguardian.com/com...ople-eating-disorder]
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