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17 Years Later, This Woman Still Remember The Hurtful Body Comment She Received From A Stranger
“I was made aware of the size of my body long before I was ever taught to love it.”
Words do hurt and any functional adult doesn’t need to be explained about it. Yet, we often don’t realize it when our comments are actually impacting people’s lives in such ways we can’t imagine.
For Elyse Myers, words once crushed her teenage dream.
Elyse is a content creator on TikTok with more than 3.5 million followers. She loves creating relatable content and talks about her daily life. Sometimes, she shares things that she hopes can help others be better people, such as one where she talks about body comments.
She shared, “It is no secret that as a child, specifically as a middle-schooler, I was a little bit round. That would’ve been one way to describe me. Other ways would have been more appropriate: funny, cute, has curly hair, determined, sarcastic, witty, smart, talented, musical.”
“So many ways to describe me, but the one thing that people loved to latch onto was the size of my body.”
“Was I ashamed of that? No! Other people seemed to be,” she continued. “You would be shocked at how determined other kids and adults were at making sure that I knew that they knew that I was larger than other kids my age.”
“I was made aware of the size of my body long before I was ever taught to love it.”
“And I know now as an adult, that says more about the people commenting on my appearance that it did my appearance at all.”
Elyse shared that as a teenager, she once received a hurtful comment from a teacher who heard about her dream to become a cheerleader. He was just a substitute teacher that happened to overhear her talking to her friends about it.
“He felt the need to walk up to us, cut me off, and say, ‘I need to save you from yourself. You would be much more, better suited in color guard or marching band or wrestling, but not in a cheerleading outfit.'”
“The audacity of a man to walk up to a 7th grader girl in front of her friends and comment on her appearance in any way is disgusting.”
“I met that man for one hour. I was like 11 and I am 28, still undoing the damage that that one sentence had on my life,” she shared. “So if you’re an adult, if you’re around children, if you’re around humans in any way, I need you to understand how powerful your words are.”
“As easily as they can tear someone down, they can build someone right back up. But it’s gonna take a hell of a lot more work to build them up after you’ve torn them down.”
“So I need you to be careful about teaching people how to love themselves, how to see themselves. Because I was taught how to perceive my body through the eyes of other people that didn’t love me, that didn’t care about me, that just thought they could make a passing comment and move on with their life. And I carried that forever.”
“You have to be more careful with your words. We have to teach people how to speak kindly about themselves, how to love themselves, how to see them as beautiful and worth and more than just what they look like.”
“If I had as much attention poured into the things that I was good at and I cared about and I loved, I would have been a completely different kid. Thank you.”
“While I did him the power that he had no business having of stealing the dream of becoming a cheerleader for me, I did play a cheerleader in Grease my senior year and I felt incredible. So, bye, Mr. C.”
Negative, destructive comments can definitely leave a lasting impact on one’s life. Elyse’s story had 3 million views with many people resonating with her messages. Despite it all, she still managed to become on in her later years for the musical Grease!
People praised her willingness to share the story and encouraged others to do better.
Watch her tell her story below!
@elysemyers Your words are powerful. #coffeetalk #theadhdway #words original sound – Elyse Myers
