Enfilade wrote:

I was once seriously ill and plummetted to 128 lbs. On my frame,
that's underweight (145-150 is my ideal). My close friends were
concerned by how I looked, but casual acquaintances said I looked
great. I was all bones.

Perverted, isn't it? I had a friend who went through a severe bout
of uncontrolled epileptic seizures, and had to be hospitalized for 3
weeks in intensive care. During this episode, she lost about 30 lbs,
and she wasn't that heavy to begin with. She looked terrible afterward,
frail, weak, ill (and she *was* all of that). Yet people insisted on
complimenting her on her weight loss. OK, people often don't know what
to say when someone's been very sick, and maybe they thought that would
be a comfort to her. But she found it very annoying. At one point she
held her hands out in front of her, palms up and curved, and moved
them up and down, imitating the two baskets of a scale, while saying,
"Let's see... fat (lifting one hand).... seizures (lifting the other)...
fat... seizures..." like it was a tough decision.

Yeah, some people have pretty warped priorities.

Joyce