“Estás subiendo de peso.” “Ay, bajaste.” “Gordita.” “Flaca.”
If you grew up in a Latinx household, you’ve probably heard some version of these before you even understood what they meant. A tía at a family gathering. An abuelita who hasn’t seen you in a while. A mom who means well. Body commentary is so woven into how we talk to each other that most of us never stop to ask: why do we do this, and what is it actually doing to us?
In the latest episode of the podcast, I dig into this and I want to share a few of the pieces that felt most important here on the blog.
It’s not just the “negative” comments
We tend to think body image damage comes from cruelty, the comment that was clearly meant to sting. But comments we read as compliments do their own kind of harm. When someone says “you look like you’re losing weight, good for you,” the hidden message is that there was something to fix in the first place. Praise implies a standard. And that standard gets absorbed, whether the comment was unkind or “nice.”
Intent isn’t the same as impact
Most of the people making these comments aren’t trying to hurt us. Sometimes it really does come from love, or worry, or a generation that learned to show care through noticing your body. But intent doesn’t cancel out impact. You’re allowed to feel the sting of a comment even when you believe the person meant well. Compassion for where they’re coming from and honesty about how it landed can exist at the same time.
We inherited this and we pass it on
A lot of us are working hard to break generational cycles in our families. Body commentary is a sneaky one, because we can be doing it without ever meaning to. Kids don’t need to be told it’s okay to judge bodies. They learn it by watching us look in the mirror and sigh, hearing us critique a celebrity, or noticing what we don’t say as much as what we do. If we want it to stop with us, it starts with catching ourselves not just the comments we make out loud, but the quiet judgments we carry about our own bodies and other people’s.
An alternative: body neutrality
Body positivity asks us to love our bodies. For a lot of people, myself included, that can feel like one more standard to fail. Body neutrality asks something different: stop putting the body on trial. It’s not good or bad, an achievement or a failure, it’s just the thing you live in. The thing that hugs the people you love. The thing that gets you where you’re going.
Practically, this can look like:
- Responding to a comment with something neutral instead of a thank-you that reinforces the judgment (“I don’t really think about my body that way”)
- Noticing when you’re moralizing food — “good” and “bad” foods — and letting that language go
- Curating your social media to reflect real, varied bodies instead of one narrow idea of what’s “attractive”
- Catching yourself mid-judgment (about your body or someone else’s) and gently redirecting
You don’t have to feel amazing about your body for this to work. You just have to change the language, and the feelings tend to follow.
Where to start
This week, notice. Notice the running commentary when you catch your reflection, when you get dressed, when you see a photo of yourself. Notice what you think when you see someone else’s body. And when a judgment shows up, get curious instead of critical: where did I learn that?
That’s the whole invitation, not to fix everything overnight, but to start noticing where the voice came from, so you can decide if it’s really yours.
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Cuídense mucho.