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agonyaunt2022-06-23 05:23 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2022-06-23 05:23 pm
Entry tags:
Ask a Manager: coworkers and clients won’t stop commenting on my arms
[slightly misleading title -- LW has also gotten comments on, for instance, the fit of her jeans]
It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes:
I am a program director for a very public-facing, often-busy, and somewhat-high-profile mobile health services program. Half of my day is spent mostly outdoors at rotating pop-up sites for which I have long-term relationships with the host, and half of my day is spent in-office.
My Pandemic Body Journey has been getting into heavy lifting and distance running, and my body has changed accordingly. I’m now a pretty visibly muscular (and, for what it’s worth, butch-presenting and queer) woman, and I honestly look very different from when I started my job about two years ago.
Now that the weather is getting warmer, I’m wearing a lot of short sleeves (and occasionally shorts), and it appears that MANY people have unwelcome opinions about my body. I have a few egregious repeat offenders (one of my site hosts, a few of my in-office coworkers); I’ve talked to a couple of them to no avail. In one case I attempted to set a hard boundary with one of my colleagues and it ignited World War III because he believed he was simply being supportive and that I “hated him.” I don’t! Then I have the separate problem of patients making comments about my body while I’m trying to provide them with health services, which is distracting and frustrating.
This might be a me problem, but it’s really making it harder to do my job. None of the comments I get are sexual, but some of them are pretty … weirdly specific … about the body parts they can see. I’ve never had a body that attracted ostensibly positive (albeit deeply irritating) attention before, and I genuinely don’t know how anyone deals with this without throttling the commentariat into the sun.
Maybe my script for this is poor? Maybe I just need to get over it? Do you have any suggestions?
I wrote back and asked, “When you say you’ve talked to a few people to no avail, what have you tried saying to them that hasn’t worked so far? Also, with the person who ended up thinking you hated him, what was that conversation?”
Regarding the people I’ve talked to: mostly, the standard “please don’t comment on my body while I’m at work.” I feel like this sets a pretty firm boundary, but I’ve gotten the feedback that it comes off as rude. I kind of don’t care, but I’m not trying to poison any relationships. And then, it’s often only a temporary fix before I do a competition or something and my body changes again, or we forget after winter when next summer comes and I’m wearing shorts again. I haven’t ever set this boundary with patients because my interactions with them are one-offs.
Regarding the specific coworker I had an issue with, I pretty much said the above to him, and he immediately became icy in our interactions. A few days later, his supervisor (a friend of mine) asked what had happened, because he told them (rather than simply approaching me) that he thought I “hated him” and didn’t know what he had done wrong. I told them that no, I’d just tried to set a boundary around my weight and my body, and it had gone poorly. I approached the coworker in question directly after this and reiterated what I had said, but added that I meant no harm and that it wasn’t a reflection on him. He told me that he’d lost a significant amount of weight at another point in his life, and that he was just trying to support my work towards weight loss and health. The thing is … I’m really not trying to lose weight, I’m just an athlete. It’s important to me to accept my body no matter what it looks like and to celebrate what it does, so intentional weight loss isn’t something I would pursue and it’s important to me to make that distinction. I tried to explain that difference, but he experienced that as a rejection of his well-intentioned support and continued to think that I had some kind of personal distaste for him. Again — I don’t! That working relationship has never recovered, and that happened quite a while ago.
One thing that I didn’t mention in my original letter, but which a colleague of mine has pointed out after seeing some of these interactions, is that at times I think there’s an element of homophobia or misogyny laced in there. Especially when men make comments towards me, it feels like they’re pointing out how non-normative my body is for what they’re expecting out of a woman. It’s hard to qualify exactly why this felt like an apt observation, but some of the comments I’ve gotten in the recent past from men (“wow, you must be a strong lady” or “are you in the army?” or “I can see in those jeans you must be lifting”) really feel like they’re not only evaluating my physique, but also stacking me against their image of what a woman is supposed to be. Most often from women, it’s something about a “summer body” or how I’m “looking great” with a whole lot of enthusiasm. It’s annoying, but doesn’t feel as demeaning.
It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes:
I am a program director for a very public-facing, often-busy, and somewhat-high-profile mobile health services program. Half of my day is spent mostly outdoors at rotating pop-up sites for which I have long-term relationships with the host, and half of my day is spent in-office.
My Pandemic Body Journey has been getting into heavy lifting and distance running, and my body has changed accordingly. I’m now a pretty visibly muscular (and, for what it’s worth, butch-presenting and queer) woman, and I honestly look very different from when I started my job about two years ago.
Now that the weather is getting warmer, I’m wearing a lot of short sleeves (and occasionally shorts), and it appears that MANY people have unwelcome opinions about my body. I have a few egregious repeat offenders (one of my site hosts, a few of my in-office coworkers); I’ve talked to a couple of them to no avail. In one case I attempted to set a hard boundary with one of my colleagues and it ignited World War III because he believed he was simply being supportive and that I “hated him.” I don’t! Then I have the separate problem of patients making comments about my body while I’m trying to provide them with health services, which is distracting and frustrating.
This might be a me problem, but it’s really making it harder to do my job. None of the comments I get are sexual, but some of them are pretty … weirdly specific … about the body parts they can see. I’ve never had a body that attracted ostensibly positive (albeit deeply irritating) attention before, and I genuinely don’t know how anyone deals with this without throttling the commentariat into the sun.
Maybe my script for this is poor? Maybe I just need to get over it? Do you have any suggestions?
I wrote back and asked, “When you say you’ve talked to a few people to no avail, what have you tried saying to them that hasn’t worked so far? Also, with the person who ended up thinking you hated him, what was that conversation?”
Regarding the people I’ve talked to: mostly, the standard “please don’t comment on my body while I’m at work.” I feel like this sets a pretty firm boundary, but I’ve gotten the feedback that it comes off as rude. I kind of don’t care, but I’m not trying to poison any relationships. And then, it’s often only a temporary fix before I do a competition or something and my body changes again, or we forget after winter when next summer comes and I’m wearing shorts again. I haven’t ever set this boundary with patients because my interactions with them are one-offs.
Regarding the specific coworker I had an issue with, I pretty much said the above to him, and he immediately became icy in our interactions. A few days later, his supervisor (a friend of mine) asked what had happened, because he told them (rather than simply approaching me) that he thought I “hated him” and didn’t know what he had done wrong. I told them that no, I’d just tried to set a boundary around my weight and my body, and it had gone poorly. I approached the coworker in question directly after this and reiterated what I had said, but added that I meant no harm and that it wasn’t a reflection on him. He told me that he’d lost a significant amount of weight at another point in his life, and that he was just trying to support my work towards weight loss and health. The thing is … I’m really not trying to lose weight, I’m just an athlete. It’s important to me to accept my body no matter what it looks like and to celebrate what it does, so intentional weight loss isn’t something I would pursue and it’s important to me to make that distinction. I tried to explain that difference, but he experienced that as a rejection of his well-intentioned support and continued to think that I had some kind of personal distaste for him. Again — I don’t! That working relationship has never recovered, and that happened quite a while ago.
One thing that I didn’t mention in my original letter, but which a colleague of mine has pointed out after seeing some of these interactions, is that at times I think there’s an element of homophobia or misogyny laced in there. Especially when men make comments towards me, it feels like they’re pointing out how non-normative my body is for what they’re expecting out of a woman. It’s hard to qualify exactly why this felt like an apt observation, but some of the comments I’ve gotten in the recent past from men (“wow, you must be a strong lady” or “are you in the army?” or “I can see in those jeans you must be lifting”) really feel like they’re not only evaluating my physique, but also stacking me against their image of what a woman is supposed to be. Most often from women, it’s something about a “summer body” or how I’m “looking great” with a whole lot of enthusiasm. It’s annoying, but doesn’t feel as demeaning.
My faith in humanity is faltering
https://www.askamanager.org/2022/06/coworkers-and-clients-wont-stop-commenting-on-my-arms.html#comment-3909926
https://www.askamanager.org/2022/06/coworkers-and-clients-wont-stop-commenting-on-my-arms.html#comment-3909934
https://www.askamanager.org/2022/06/coworkers-and-clients-wont-stop-commenting-on-my-arms.html#comment-3909959
https://www.askamanager.org/2022/06/coworkers-and-clients-wont-stop-commenting-on-my-arms.html#comment-3910095
All of OP's comments have been excellent at least:
https://www.askamanager.org/2022/06/coworkers-and-clients-wont-stop-commenting-on-my-arms.html#comment-3910321
Re: My faith in humanity is faltering
no subject
no subject
no subject
LW mentions working in health services doing mobile pop-up programs. Although I believe people should wear what they like to be comfortable, I wonder whether being a little more formal in the work environment would put some professional boundaries in place visually? A healthcare top, not necessarily white-coat long-sleeves (there are short-sleeved ones), but something that conveys healthcare professionalism? Long trousers, lightweight and loose but not sporty shorts?
Yes, I hate this suggestion too, but it seems like the casualness of the work environment is contributing to LW not being respected.