Skinny privilege

[Chatterbox98]

Like most people my weight has gone up and down. I am currently bigger than I am happy with ( working on changing this) however I have noticed that people do look and seem to treat you differently when slightly bigger. I never believed skinny privilege was a thing but I think it absolutely is.

Just wondered others thoughts or am just sensitive as currently not happy with how I feel and look.

yabu - its not a thing get over yourself
yanbu - it is a thing

Absolutely a thing
When I am thinner people are really open and friendly with me
When I am fatter I will strike up a conversation and get their back turned on me.
This has happened with the same group of girls even. Was always ignored then lost weight and suddenly I was their best mate.

Maybe not on an individual level, hence why lots of people don't think they've experienced it but on a societal level absolutely it exists.

Overweight people, for a general stereotype, are thought of as lazy. The same isn't said for skinny people.

YANBU

I’ve been very overweight, I’ve never been thin THIN, but I’ve had times where I’ve list a lot of weight.
And it’s crazy how differently people treat you.

I wasn't more confident or nicer when thin either, which is one excuse people give for the phenomenon. I was hangry and an utter bitch when I was thin, active in eating disorder... People were still a billion times nicer to me. More patient, more automatically kind, chattier. Loved complimenting how fit and healthy I looked even though I was on my way to a quick death

This is so true and happen to me too.
I also wasn’t happy when I happened to be on my lowest weight, my mental health was bad - suicidal bad, and people kept telling me how healthy, happy, well I looked.
LOL.

It really showed me that people on average don’t care what you are like, how you are actually feeling, if you are happy / healthy in (whatever) weight.
People just want to look at you and be comfortable.

I've gone up 3 dress sizes since the pandemic and I'm now a size 18. The only thing I've noticed, and it's a bit of an oddly specific one, is men tend to assume I want the diet version of drinks. Just in the last couple of months, a male colleague buying a round got me a diet coke when I just asked for a coke. A barman assumed I wanted slimline tonic with my gin. I got given a can of coke zero by a male relative.

I actually prefer the non-diet version of drinks because I'm slightly sensitive to some sweeteners. But having the diet version isn't a huge deal, it's just funny and occasionally slightly irritating that they assume.

It doesn't really matter what people have or haven't experienced, it's not scientific, people will skew their experience to what they want to say, at the end of the day we live in a patriarchal society and for women especially, how we look matters, including weight. It just does. Maybe not in everything we do, but most things. Humans are judgemental.

'built like a racing snake'

Absolutely love that image! 😂

Agree with other posters that privilege does not feel like the right word for this.

I've been a size 8, a size 24 and am currently between a 14-16. My weight has influenced the way I've been treated, but regardless of size it's not always been positive. But the judgement on my perceived character and behaviour has been consistent - the only thing that changed when I was at my heaviest was the assessment. I was fat, so I must be lazy, unmotivated and selfish ("people like you are why the NHS is struggling").

One of the ironic benefits to being heavier, is that the volume of sexual comments noticeably tailed off. They were replaced with comments about how I was too fat to fancy etc. But I wouldn't say that the comments when I was slimmer were any better. Personally I didn't like strangers telling me I'd got great tits, or that my bum needed someone's cock in it.

Mixed bag at work as well. I wasn't deemed suitable to be photographed for the PR material any more, but I was considered to be a solid safe pair of hands for getting high quality technical work done (previously "You need more experience Elderberry"). Which is strange because the turnaround in the assessment of my competency took about 18 months, and the only significant change in that time, was a 3 stone weight gain.

The combination of being middle aged and heavier has now made me largely invisible, presumably because I've reached that magic combination of being too old to be of any sexual interest or worthy of many comment, even an insulting one. Which is lovely to be honest, because I can get on with my life and not have to face a constant barrage of comments on my appearance. The few comments I get these days tend to be from young women and are fake-sympathetic ("You'd look so much younger if you got highlights and covered the grey"). I don't mind them because what they don't know is that I like my grey hair and I don't care about anyone else's opinion or judgement of how I look. I know they don't know this, because I thought exactly the same way when I was their age.

It does however, make me feel utterly furious about all the shit girls and women have to put up with to get to this point. So my take on this would be that instead of "skinny privilege" why not rail against the actual cause of the problem, which is men who can only view women through the lens of their fuckability?

It's this that sets the societal expectation that we judge ourselves and others against: Our slimness, our "prettiness", have you shaved, are you tanned, is your hair colour up to date, are your nails done, what about make-up but not too much, are you "fighting the signs of ageing" and if not, why not, it's lazy if it looks like you've given up, but at the same time don't try too hard because everyone knows you look a bit tragic trying to dress too "young" for your age... And so on, and so on.

I agree with some PPs that privilege isn't the right word. I think privilege is being overused these days like a lot of words and it becomes meaningless.
I've seen people on here especially talk about white privilege, male privilege, cis (I don't use this word normally by the way) privilege, skinny privilege, blonde privilege, young privilege.... the list just goes on.
Obviously some of those things are a privilege. But I don't think the word is right for everything that might give you a slight benefit in life.

@Desertislandparadise
A colleague at work was obese and had a very bad case of COVID, was in a medically induced coma for months. Lost all the weight during it.

You sound like the colleague from hell judging a coworker who’s had a serious medical ordeal. Not very empathetic.

So….knock us all out and wait until we are skeletal?

I'd say the difference in how you're treated is more about whether you are considered attractive by other people or not, I'm not very attractive despite being skinny so no privilege for me unfortunately. Other people might be over weight and very attractive and get a lot of attention, or they may be more attractive after they lose weight.

There may be a stereotype that fat people are lazy (although that IMO tends to be reserved for the very, very overweight) but equally there is one that they are more fun and bubbly.

Well, often people who carry on about skinny prilvilege don't seem to have a firm grasp on that fact. If you don't like it, lose it.

My experience is that I absolutely was treated differently when I was obese. I posted the following on a similar thread here a few weeks ago:

I spent many years at a size 24. Total strangers went out of their way to mock, deride and be nasty to me. A few examples:

Guys shouting out of their car windows as they went past, things such as ‘fucking elephant’, ‘hippo’ etc

At a sporting event, as I walked to the stadium, jeers of “here’s our BIGGEST supporter” from a group

A man walking up to me, grabbing me and putting his hands on my hips, then standing back and holding his hands my hip-width apart (though probably exaggerating this in reality) and saying to his friends “go on, guess, how wide is she?”

Making “beep beep, wide load” comments as I went past

That’d just a small selection of the abuse I suffered. Based entirely on how I looked.
Now that I look very different, I don’t get any such abuse from strangers. But hey, it must be all in my head and just to do with my confidence, eh?

Is it possible people were being v nice to you because you looked visibly ill? People try to be gentle and make an effort to support those who are obviously struggling.

No, obviously, I wouldn't wish that on anyone and sure, they lost weight, but it must have played hell on their body.

The reason I mentioned it is just to say that the human body will lose weight in certain situations. There is no such thing as a body that cannot lose weight. Humans are designed to store fat and then use the energy in times of famine or when the woolly mammoth-hunting didn't go well that day or whatever.

@sammylady37 thanks for your post.

Yes, when I was young and bigger there were definitely unpleasant comments like this. I am now “mature” and the rest of the population have got bigger while I’ve lost a good amount of weight. I don’t stand out any more so don’t get the comments! I am still obese but invisible. Hurrah!

@Desertislandparadise yes but different people lose or gain weight at different rates - they have different base metabolic rates. My ancestors were clearly really good at surviving famines because their metabolism was slow. They were probably no good at outrunning predators but seem to have got by.

I have been larger and skinny

My biggest I was around 10 stone (on my 5ft 2 frame that is big , to ME)
My skinniest was 7st 7lbs but I was told, at least once during that time, I looked emaciated and Ill. A word was never said when I was 10 stone.

I am currently 8 stone and very happy in myself and no comments as of yet.

Having lost five stone I would say people treat you differently when slimmer. At my largest I felt invisible.

however it is wrong to assume all excess weight is due to greed there are other factors. In my opinion I still have a stone more to lose, mostly my tummy, I am still watching what I eat, my eating habits have changed permanently and I swim five times a week. But will my tummy lose its fat? No. I think it likes it there!

Well, if you had had the confidence to give them a punch up the bracket they would have stopped!

@Beeinalily so resort to violence? That’s your answer??!

I wouldn't call it privilege, but research has shown that overweight people are perceived as being less capable and more lazy than thin people. So it makes sense that fat people are treated less favourably.

I've always been skinny and doctors have never taken me seriously. I have very heavy periods which make me ill and doctors say it's because I'm thin. I also struggle to find clothes due to vanity sizing.

'Privilege isn't the right term for it. Otherwise we'd have pretty privilege, or intelligent privilege, or non-glasses-wearing privilege as well, wouldn't we?'

We do. Everything you have listed above does bring 'privilege' if that's what we want to call it. Study after study have confirmed this. Surely its obvious to everyone.

Yes agree, same here :)

Maybe people treat thin people differently to fat people, maybe they don’t, but this is NOT privilege.

If you’re fat and you don’t like it, get thin. It’s hardly the same as sex or race.