One might think after the year we’ve been having that everyone would have learned by now that it’s absolutely not OK to offer unsolicited comments on another person’s body—especially when it comes to their weight. Unfortunately, as actress Busy Philipps experienced recently, it appears we still have a long way to go before people realize that other people’s bodies are none of their business.

Philipps took to Instagram Stories on Friday night to share an uncomfortable encounter she had with a fan while running errands at Rite Aid. A female fan recognized Philipps from her hit show Cougar Town and approached her to say hi.

“She was so sweet and had such a calming manner—and in a loveliest way, she said, ‘You’ve lost some of your plumpness from Cougar Town. You look nice still, but you’ve lost some of your plumpness,'” said Philipps, according to People.

Philipps brushed off the woman’s backhanded compliment, telling the woman she was glad she liked the show before moving on. But still, the fan’s comment bothered her. “It was a compliment,” she said. “She was very sweet when she said it. It just was an interesting choice of [words]. I don’t think I was plump.”

Philips is not alone in being body-shamed: Celebs like Lucy Hale, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Aniston, Rihanna, and Beyoncé have all been on the receiving end of similarly unsolicited comments about their body.

At one point, Philipps wondered if the woman had been watching the season of Cougar Town Philipps filmed just five weeks after giving birth to her daughter Cricket. “This is how my brain works,” she said. “I’m going to be thinking about this for the next … whatever.” Which is just so unfair: Philipps won a critics’ choice award for her acting on that show and this is what she’s going to think about when she thinks about that job?

She points out that there is a better way to handle these situations without offending the person on the receiving end of the comment. “There’s a difference between saying to someone, ‘You look amazing!’ ‘You look great,’” said Philipps. This woman didn’t do that; instead, she added an asterisk with the “but.” Which is why, Philipps points out, one should always err on the side of not saying anything at all.

“You know how when you’re a woman, sometimes people feel like they should be able to comment about your body all the time or make laws about your body?” she said. “Well when you’re an actress, or any female in the public eye, everyone feels that they can comment on your body all the f—— time. Always. The amount of people in my long, 20-year career in this industry who’ve come up to me in grocery stores and Bed Bath and Beyonds to talk with people about my weight … I think it’s a good thing to err on the side of ‘Let’s not talk to people about their bodies unless they bring it up first and they want to talk about their bodies.'”

Moral of this story? Don’t be a busybody about Busy’s body—or anyone else’s.

Related Stories:
—Busy Philipps Describes Escaping a Creepy Uber Ride in an 8-Minute Instagram Stories Saga
—Chloë Grace Moretz Responds to Backlash Over the Fat-Shaming Campaign for Her New Movie
—The Fat-Shaming on Khloe Kardashian’s New Show Is Not OK

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