Kelly is a mother, runner, writer, designer and serial entrepreneur. She is also a reformed over-committer and believes that a busy life need not be a stressful life. She blogs about all this and more at A Life Less Frantic.
Would you say this to someone's face?
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Alan Jones is in the news again. This time for what he has dismissed as a ‘throwaway comment’ regarding the death of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s father at what he thought was a ‘private function’.
In similar fashion Germaine Greer this year went for some cheap laughs on Q&A and her target was the same person – Prime Minister Gillard. Greer thought it would be amusing to tell the PM she had a ‘fat arse’ and the audience encouraged her by laughing heartily at the gibe.
Now these are examples of high profile people making stupid, hurtful and inappropriate remarks in highly public arenas but facts are, these horrible and thoughtless comments are actually part of our everyday life. They come out of my mouth and out of the mouths of friends and family. They are plastered across social media and in the comments of blog posts. In short, they are everywhere.
Usually these comments are pitched as being funny, and anyone who reacts poorly to them are lambasted for not having a sense of humour. Yet for the most part, these comments are funny so long as they’re not about you, or a family member, or a friend.
And then there are the ones that aren’t even trying to be funny, they’re just a bit mean or overtly narky or a bit judgey. Like the comment I nearly left on a blog post once.
The post was taking author and breastfeeding ambassador Tara Moss to task about some comments she had made. Now I too have found Tara to be a bit dismissive of the biases that some mothers experience when they try to bottle feed over breastfeeding. And after reading that blog post, one which expressed similar views to those I have, I started to leave a comment that was equally dismissive of Tara. And then I read the comment back to myself and I thought “Would I say this to Tara’s face if ever I met her in person?” and the answer was of course “no”.
So I reframed my comment to be a bit more respectful of Tara’s opinion while still expressing my own thoughts and concerns.
And then I thanked my lucky stars I did so because Tara saw that post and responded in a respectful and classy manner to everyone who commented. I’ve been a fan ever since (even if I still sometimes disagree with the way she frames her thoughts on the topic).
Which makes me think to myself, imagine if everyone in the world stopped and thought “would I say this to this person’s face” before throwing out a thoughtless comment or going for the cheap and easy laugh. Well I reckon Alan Jones wouldn’t still be gracing our headlines today and Germaine Greer wouldn’t be disappointing legions of female fans and making them question her relevance.
I realise this is a utopic view and one that the Alan Joneses of the world aren’t going to adopt any time soon. But what if the rest of us did?
Well it goes without saying that the world would start being a MUCH nicer place.
