Scrolling down my Instagram feed, I constantly see the following comments on girls pictures; “you’re so skinny!” “omg tiny!” “skinny mini!”

And every time, I can’t help but roll my eyes.

Is that supposed to be a compliment? Really? That’s the best compliment you can give someone, is on their weight? How uncreative and frankly, pretty weird.

But it goes deeper than that.

Skinny as a compliment is super problematic. For starters, it reinforces society’s unrealistic beauty ideals, of the impossibly thin woman. It reinforces the idea that has been cemented into girl’s heads from the time they can read, that weight loss is the most important thing, that your body is your worth.

It also reinforces the idea that skinny = good and fat = bad. Or even worse, that skinny = healthy and fat = unhealthy because someone’s weight is a really bad way of indicating health for a myriad of reasons. There’s a million other factors to being healthy and unless you’re a doctor or know their bone structure, body chemistry, exact diet, exercise regimen, genetic makeup, personal history and so on, then who are you to decide who is healthy and who isn’t? But anyways, let’s stop acting like fat is this horrible thing and that skinny is the end all be all. That’s not to say I’m not guilty of falling into this trope, I most certainly am. As someone who has struggled with a pretty disordered relationship with food and body image, it’s hard to not fall into what society has us believe, that skinny is beautiful and fat is not. And while I got past that, I still couldn’t get past it for myself- it became “body positivity for all! Everyone is beautiful at any size! Except for me, I have to be ___ size.”

So I get it, I get why you think telling someone they look thin is so nice. And I get why it feels good to be told you’re thin. But if we look at what we’re really saying, it’s some major BS. Skinny and fat are adjectives and no one is any less or more worthy of respect or happiness or anything because of their size. Despite what the media and society would have you believe, there should not be so much value attached to these adjectives and we have to work to change that. Beauty is not determined by your relationship with gravity.

It also raises other issues. Perhaps she is self-conscious about how skinny she is and is trying to gain weight or is just a naturally tiny person. Or consider this, maybe the girl you’re praising for being so skinny got there by starving herself. Maybe she throws up her meals or meticulously tracks each and every calorie she consumes and spends hours at the gym trying to work them off. Any comment on her weight could fuel the behavior, be a trigger or really just not appropriate. Maybe that person just doesn’t want to have their weight be a topic of conversation in any way.

So the next time you want to compliment someone’s body, think about what you really want to say. Tell them they look great, fit, stunning. If they just lost a lot of weight in a healthy way and are proud of themselves or anything along those lines, tell them how proud you are, how inspiring their work ethic is, how strong they are.

Next time you want to compliment someone, perhaps dig deeper. On Instagram, I get that it’s all about the flame emoji and heart eyes or how pretty they are and how awesome that top is. That’s really all wonderful, so keep it up you beautiful people, you.

But don’t forget about how wise your friend may be or how intelligent and friendly they are. Tell them how empowering they are, that they’re trustworthy, that their voice deserves to be heard. There’s a lot more to people than just their weight and more to them than their appearance.