Hi.
You look well.
You look well.
Isn’t it weird to say “You look well”?
It’s profoundly neutral. Non-committal.
It’s not a scale of: "You look well" at the top. Then "you look ok” in the middle. Followed by "Fuck, you look terrible! Should I call someone?"
It means you don’t look visibly ill.
You’re not on fire.
There aren’t wild animals tearing shreds off you…at this precise moment.
There could have been…but there aren’t.
You look well.
It’s not like “Darren, I saw you last week and you did not look well. That whole flesh-eating bacteria thing you had really cleared right up and now you look well”.
“Hi Emily, it appears that leg you had amputated yesterday has grown back and now -…you look well”.
You also can’t say "You look well” that often. It’s not an every day greeting.
There has to be enough time elapsed between the last time you saw someone to warrant the “you look well”. You have to give people the chance for them to not be well in order to justify the “you look well”. You give someone the "You look well” - three weeks pass, then..."I see you weren’t hit by a car in the past three weeks, you didn’t contract tuberculosis, or get herpes of the everything - In fact, I can categorically say You look well!"
Some people go out of their way to say you look well. It makes you suspicious. It’s like they’re surprised you’re upright and walking.
“Last time I saw you I was expecting you to explode from morbid obesity but, surprise, you’re still alive, therefore you look well.”
The other implication is “you’ve looked worse”. "You haven’t bled from the eyeballs for all the time we’ve been speaking today, good for you. You know what, you look well."
And pregnant women. They say “oh, aren’t you glowing! You’re glowing. Oh my, you’re glowing” They don’t look up and down sceptically, surprised and say…you look…well? This whole (baby) thing…despite all that…looking well.
“Well" - It’s neutral. It’s nothing.
It’s like "How ya going?...Nah, don’t tell me. Just how ya going?”