Do I Look Fat? The Aspie Answer...

I was reading Jeffrey Deutsch's blog today and one of his commenters provided a vivid example of how things Aspies say can cause damage when they weren' t meaning to:

Such as how an Aspie may answer the question, "Do I look fat?" Responding, "Only in the butt area, but nowhere else."

If I ask you, does this make me look fat, *I* would appreciate that honesty, because I don't want to think an outfit makes me cuter than it does. And I certainly don't want to buy it if it doesn't flatter my figbure any better than what's already in my closet. I'd rather save my money. But many people would not like that answer. They already know the outfit makes them look fat. Or, more acdurately, their fat makes them look fat and they look even worse with an outfit not cut to flatter their particular body shape.

Honesty was one actually of my downfalls in retail sales. A client would ask me if something looked good. I'd tell her no, offer to help her find something more flattering, but she would get mad and not buy anything. I tried little tactics to be honest without making the clients mad, but they didn't really work. For example, I might have said, well, it's not your best color- maybe we can find another shade (knowing there wasn't another shade so she'd have to get a whole new dress). A LOT of women go into the store and buy things that do not flatter their complexion or are not cut for their figure. I thought being honest and trying to help someone find what's better would bring the customers back, but only a few ever got to the point where they would allow me to help them. And once I got there, I was good and my regulars knew they could trust me to make them look fabulous. More often than not, most customers would just decide not to buy. My coworkers encouraged me to let them spend their money. It wasn't about the clothes, but rather the "shopping experience." They wouldn't really wear most of those clothes anyway. They'd just sit in the closet until years later when they were donated to Goodwill or something.

Wow. What a tangent I'm on. W

ell, I said all that to say we, as Aspies, really have to pay attention to what we say and realize that not everyone appreciates "honesty" the way we do.