Can you tell someone their baby is ugly?

Originally published in June 2022

The subject is delicate. Visualize the scene a bit: you are invited to meet the newest heir of your friends, or worse, a person of your family, and you discover that the lump looks a lot more like your grandfather Michel before passing the gun to the left (RIP) just to a cute kid. Slobbering, sure, but cute.

Here you are faced with a small plum less than 60 cm tall and its ecstatic parents, who expect only one thing from you: that you exclaimed with these words, precisely with these words : “Oh-la-la, how nice…”.

But it’s a lie anyway, and you know it. What to do in this case? Blatantly lying and acting, or telling the truthor that their Jean-Guy didn’t win the medal for the cutest baby in the maternity ward?

Ugly girl: she says what she thinks, and it doesn’t go away

Some decided to be honest and bit their fingers. This is the case with this user of the Reddit platform, who asked a question in the aforementioned category ” I’m an asshole / a bitch “, Explaining the situation in which she was entangled:

(…) My brother John, with whom I don’t get along particularly well, had a baby with Carol two months ago. I have to be honest, this baby is not cute. Normally I wouldn’t say anything, but Carol keeps talking about her baby.

My family recently got together to take family photos and Carol kept tweeting about how adorable her baby was. Each time, Carol insisted on making sure she and her baby were in the center.

The photographer even asked her several times to relocate so that other people could have this place, but she refused almost every time. When the photographer took pictures of my parents alone, or just me and my brother, etc., Carole would ask if we wanted to bring her baby. She was always there, very pushy and annoying.

According to the user, his parents also seemed embarrassed by the situation, but they preferred not to say anything, as they do not like confrontation. The story continues:

JI finally decided to say something when the photographer wanted to take a picture of me and my mother, and Carol said something aloud along the lines of the baby, which “made the photo so much better. ”

I replied curtly and said: Your baby is not that cute, forget it”. She went super quiet and she didn’t say much for the rest of the shoot. John didn’t say much either, but he didn’t want to talk to me and he stared at me oddly a couple of times..

Following this altercation, the user explains that her mother asked her to apologize:

Then my mom took me aside and said that what I had said was totally inappropriate and that I should apologize to Carol and John. I completely disagreed and said that Carol had to stop trying to push her baby in our faces, even if the baby was part of our family. I refused to apologize and Carol, John and my parents haven’t spoken to me since the accident about a week ago.

Good. Obviously, in this situation, the sister-in-law seemed a little reluctant to want to impose the baby on all of her photos, and to have only eyes for him. But can we blame him? Not really, and above all who cares, we don’t know her, this famous Carol, who are we to judge.

Ugly Baby: Should We Tell the Truth?

But we can go back to this point: can we honestly tell someone their baby is ugly? No. Yes, because beauty is relative, and we won’t insult a child who hasn’t asked for anything. Furthermore, in addition to hurting the parents, it has absolutely no interest.

This topic always reminds me of a video that was shared many years (or even decades) ago, and that still makes me laugh a lot:

In fact, to say that a child is cute it is a social code. We don’t say in front of parents that their baby is ugly. We say it privately to our friends if we want, we think it very strongly in our heads, but in front of the parents we try to respect the codes, to avoid the slightly exaggerated situation that we can see in the video above.

What to say in front of an ugly child?

But if one day you find yourself in the situation where a friend or a member of your family introduces you to their baby and the baby doesn’t have an easy physique, you can say:

• “Oh, that’s fun!”
• “How serious he looks!” “
• “Looks a lot like both of them! “
• “When I think it was in your belly, not long ago …”
• “We feel it will make you drool! “
• “It seems so peaceful”
• “What a beautiful nose! “ (or mouth, or eyes, or hands, whatever, there’s something not so bad)
• “These pajamas are very cute! “

So, let’s assume that rare are the cute children for real, and that tastes and colors are very specific to each one. And above all, let all this evolve! Personally, I thought my son looked like a wet cat when he was born, and I sincerely thank my friends for playing the game, for the sake of my hormones.

To the question” You can tell someone their baby is ugly The answer is obviously no. Unless you’re ready to deal with parents who haven’t slept in days and are nervous. Good luck !

Photo credit image of one: Monkey Business Images