[bandjelly]

This may seem strange, but does anyone else have this type of experience?

I have body image issues/eating disorders. Where I work we have to wear a photo badge each day. Some days when I'm talking to someone, I notice their gaze changes. Instead of giving me eye contact their focus is going from looking at my photo badge to my face and facial features---like they're studying or comparing for several seconds whether I look thinner or maybe fuller in the face. I get totally anxious and paranoid after that happens. Why are people so cruel ?

[silver_queen]

Maybe you look slightly different in your photo? - eg, different hairstyle, old photo etc. Or perhaps they're checking you are who your name badge says you are?

[Perna]

I always try to look at a waitresses badge to catch her name. I'd just ask your bosses if you could have a badge without your photo; I think it is for their benefit so the customer can compliment/complain about a waitress and they know they've got the right one. I don't think the customers are looking at your size/weight at all, more like trying to get into their own thick heads your name and what you look like so they can treat you like a human instead of a servant, call you by name instead of looking around for you if they want you and not being sure and then just grabbing any waitress and calling her "ma'am" or "girl" or "waitress", etc.

[bandjelly]

These are people I am talking to for several minutes though---like a meeting or something---it's not a quick contact, like a waitress..

[Perna]

Okay, try the "sense"/logical approach then? Why would they spend all that time comparing your picture with you for "size"? Why would they care???? They don't know you! We don't have other people on our minds "physically" like that, why would other people have us on their minds? Even when I do notice something physical about a person I don't "keep" noticing it; there's not enough there to keep one's interest? If someone thought of you, "gee, her face is skinnier than her picture makes it look" what else is there to continue to think?

[smiley1984]

I like looking at photos because a lot of the older staff at work refuse to get updated photos and in their photos they look funny because they are a lot younger and have hair, or don't have gray hair or have a totally different hair cut that was fashionable years ago or their clothes are from back in the 80's fashion.
My ID photo looks funny because it has been distorted to fit on the card and it is stretched so I look very stretched
It's like your license, ID photos are supposed to make you look silly!!! And they are small and you could never tell someone's weight from one of those photos!

[Soidhonia]

Hello Bandjelly. I just wanted to share this experience with you that I had about a year ago. I had just gotten my ID Photo taken(I ALWAYS) have this uncanny knack for looking like I am on Americas Most Wanted.(Truthfully). I went to get my check cashed at the local store like I always do, and the person cashing my check could not believe what I looked like in the ID Photo.(IT WAS THAT ATROCIOUS). LOL> Anyhow the point I am making is that some people just dont look like themselves when photographed.(Then again some people are just too nosy for their own good, or anyone elses). Take it from me I get photographed often and I have yet to be Blisfully Happy with the results (Truthfully). You just know when you get nominated the last person to be acknowledges from a real life photograph you have problems. LOL (JUST KIDDING). Take care Bandjelly beauty comes from within always remember that and you will do well in life. Soidhonia

[bandjelly]

Thanks, that kind of helped...I've been rattled so much I was thinking of calling in sick to work...

[silver_queen]

I agree totally with Soidhonia - pictures on a namebadge can look nothing like the person standing before you - sometimes they are almost unrecognisable. I too look at ppl's driving licence cards etc - and nurses' namebadges - and they look *so* unlike what the person is really like...