7 most impolite gifts you can give

All gifts are good. All gifts are great. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I encounter presents so rude and impolite they inspire me to write an entire article about them.

1 Diet anything

In college, a close friend handed me a pack of Bangkok diet pills.

“A gift,” she said, smiling.

I squealed in joy (because I was 18 and stupid), pleased by a present that I now suspect contained shabu. (How else to account for the dearth of appetite and serious mood swings, as well as rage issues, that befell me — though some celebrities can claim a juice cleanse can cause them to behave erratically. So what do I know?)

Now, if someone handed me something similarly unhealthy today, thinking the pursuit of conventional weight goals is enough to make me ignore common sense altogether, my reaction would be entirely different.

The purpose of a gift is to share some happiness. “Here is something to show that I appreciate you” a gift should say. Not “here is something that shows I appreciate you — minus a few pounds.”

True appreciation comes with no strings attached.

2 Whitening products

Dude, don’t even go there.

3 Self-help books. Anything self-help, now that you mention it.

“Are you there God? It’s me, idiot.”

Just as politics and religion are verboten on the cocktail circuit, self-help (the entire category) needs to be stricken from the gift list. (Or any library for that matter.)

When someone sends me any kind of advice book (Why Men Marry Bitches — uh, thanks but no thanks), it sends a message. And that message is: You are a loser. Now here’s a crappy book.

4 Spanx me, I’m naughty

My friend Anna Go-Chia and I had a long discussion over the case of Spanx recently.

“If a close friend gave it to me, I wouldn’t mind,” Anna said. (Mind you, Anna is skinny yet obsesses over the next juice cleanse attempt.) “It’s a practical gift and you know it costs a lot.”

True. A close friend offered to get me one for Christmas, and I thought it was a sweet present.

But… that doesn’t apply to everyone.

“If someone you aren’t close to — like a colleague you don’t even have lunch with — hands you a pair of Spanx for Christmas, that’s a whole other kettle of fish,” I said to Anna. “Imagine the thought process: Man, she looks paunchy lately. Let’s give her Spanx.”

“Well, giving anyone underwear is weird, right?” she said.

“I guess?” I replied, while scratching out “sexy thong for Anna” from my gift list.

5 Cool story, bra!

One Christmas, my friend unwrapped a present only to be greeted by some padded monstrosity. “It was a bra with a really loud print and tried to triple my breast size,” she recalls laughing.

When she revealed that her uncle was the gift giver, the laughter stopped.

The lesson here is: it’s funny, until it’s creepy.

6 Those airplane toiletry kits

“I don’t know if that’s a rude gift,” I said when my friend informed me her aunt received a PAL toiletry kit, the kind given away on first class flights, one Christmas.

“It’s thoughtless!” she texted me back.

OK, case closed.

7 Rude as in too risqué

My gay friend Baz Boor once received a pencil sharpener in the shape of a man on all fours. “So the figure is kneeling doggy style and you shove the pencil up his ass,” he tells me. “As you sharpen, the little man makes moaning noises.”

“I think the gift giver spotted it and thought, oh, Baz is gay and just got it.”