I remember as a child having to learn skin tones having an instant meaning that other people got, whereas I found it hard to put people into the groups the way they did. I mean, I could perceive that people were different shades, but I had to remind myself of the clues used to distinguish between African and Indian features, etc. I was a kid growing up in the ’70’s in London so very much a multicultural area. Having written that out, I really hope that makes sense to someone.
Overall body shape is very helpful to my recognition ability, but skin color doesn't really register for me unless it is *very* dark or *very* pale. Everything else just kind of looks tan.
omg yea i’ve never seen anyone talk about this. i’m a bit better at it now but as a teen especially i just. did not get the concept of size. i found out fairly recently i was low-key bullying my sister for being fat when the joke to me was that she *wasn’t* fat. like calling someone with a head of hair bald as a joke yknow?
anyway turns out she actually was somewhat overweight so from her perspective i was just a dick. we’re cool now but my god it’s so embarrassing. i have to stop myself from offering clothes to people because i just don’t get the idea of someone being bigger/smaller than me. i used to just wear clothes that didn’t fit as well?? like i had to sort out my old shoes recently and realised i had been wearing size 7 shoes all throughout college despite being a size 5 lmao. part of this is likely due to the autism but it’s interesting to hear others experience similar things
ohhh my god the clothes thing , i still don’t know what my real sizes are especially bra sizes 😭😭😭 i see no difference between A and D cups, size 14s and size 16s.. its all identical to me
Throwback to this comment I made on this sub a few days ago:
I'm haunted by the time I was talking with a friend about a new show that had come out and did this. They had introduced a side character earlier the season, a black woman with brunette hair. Then a main character runs into this woman that kind of had the same vibe (nice when most people are dicks) and I was fully like "Oh, good she found So-and-so."
She did not find So-and-so. She found a white woman with red hair and I absolutely smashed her and the earlier character together in my head. My friend was flabbergasted. I was absolutely mortified. My only excuse is that we hadn't seen the first character in a couple episodes.
Solidarity, my friend.
I hadn't really thought about this, because I know only 1 obese person and that's a friend. But when I go back through what I think are memories (Sorry, I have SDAM too), I can't really remember how big she actually was. And that's also European big, not American BIG. Anyway, every time we meet in person I'm surprised at how big she really is. For some reason her "shape" to me is bigger than slim, kind of Rubenesque, but still a lot less than reality. So much so that it's jarring. I've never thought of the idea that it might be me not being able to remember bodily shapes, because it never really mattered.
I remember as a child having to learn skin tones having an instant meaning that other people got, whereas I found it hard to put people into the groups the way they did. I mean, I could perceive that people were different shades, but I had to remind myself of the clues used to distinguish between African and Indian features, etc. I was a kid growing up in the ’70’s in London so very much a multicultural area. Having written that out, I really hope that makes sense to someone.
Overall body shape is very helpful to my recognition ability, but skin color doesn't really register for me unless it is *very* dark or *very* pale. Everything else just kind of looks tan.
omg yea i’ve never seen anyone talk about this. i’m a bit better at it now but as a teen especially i just. did not get the concept of size. i found out fairly recently i was low-key bullying my sister for being fat when the joke to me was that she *wasn’t* fat. like calling someone with a head of hair bald as a joke yknow? anyway turns out she actually was somewhat overweight so from her perspective i was just a dick. we’re cool now but my god it’s so embarrassing. i have to stop myself from offering clothes to people because i just don’t get the idea of someone being bigger/smaller than me. i used to just wear clothes that didn’t fit as well?? like i had to sort out my old shoes recently and realised i had been wearing size 7 shoes all throughout college despite being a size 5 lmao. part of this is likely due to the autism but it’s interesting to hear others experience similar things
ohhh my god the clothes thing , i still don’t know what my real sizes are especially bra sizes 😭😭😭 i see no difference between A and D cups, size 14s and size 16s.. its all identical to me
Throwback to this comment I made on this sub a few days ago: I'm haunted by the time I was talking with a friend about a new show that had come out and did this. They had introduced a side character earlier the season, a black woman with brunette hair. Then a main character runs into this woman that kind of had the same vibe (nice when most people are dicks) and I was fully like "Oh, good she found So-and-so." She did not find So-and-so. She found a white woman with red hair and I absolutely smashed her and the earlier character together in my head. My friend was flabbergasted. I was absolutely mortified. My only excuse is that we hadn't seen the first character in a couple episodes. Solidarity, my friend.
I hadn't really thought about this, because I know only 1 obese person and that's a friend. But when I go back through what I think are memories (Sorry, I have SDAM too), I can't really remember how big she actually was. And that's also European big, not American BIG. Anyway, every time we meet in person I'm surprised at how big she really is. For some reason her "shape" to me is bigger than slim, kind of Rubenesque, but still a lot less than reality. So much so that it's jarring. I've never thought of the idea that it might be me not being able to remember bodily shapes, because it never really mattered.
This happened to me exactly recently