Oh wow. Where to start?
I've always been the fat friend and can't really remember a time when I wasn't the biggest girl in a group. Some of my reasons are more so in how people treat/react to me being overweight, but most of it is intertwined with our circle of friends.
-Going shopping with your skinny friends. I avoided the mall like the plague when I was in middle school and high school because of this very reason. I've never been able to shop anywhere except "big girl" stores or the misses/plus size department of the store and even then, there wasn't a guarantee that anything I picked up in that section would necessarily fit.
When it was time to go school clothes shopping with my mom, I would be looking over my shoulder and praying that no one from school would see me having to buy clothes in that part of the store. I always had an excuse lined up if I did run into a classmate- like my mom was shopping for clothes for her - and thankfully, my mother would play along if she was able to put two and two together.
In high school, I actually did have quite a few friends (smaller than me of course) that invited me to go shopping with them, but I would always turn it down. They never really seemed to catch on and if they did, they never said anything. When I did go, I hated standing around while they tried on cute outfit after cute outfit of stuff I was dying to fit in, but knew I never would. They would always pick up a pair of pants hold them up to me and encourage me to try them on, "These would look hot on you!" Needless to say, the accessories department became my best friend. If we were in a store that sold clothes I knew I wouldn't be able to fit in, I always ended up looking at the jewelry/cosmetic/purse section cause I knew those were things that I definitely would have no trouble with when it came to size. Still, it was hard to ignore the looks from the salesladies like, "Why are you in here?"
Or when a skinny friend would find a cute shirt and decide she wanted it, she'd toss it over her arm with the rest of the stuff she was going to buy. I'd ask, "Aren't you gonna try it on?" She'd shake her head, "No, it's a size 2. It'll fit.." My jaw dropped. The idea of buying clothes without having to try them on first was completely foreign to me.
As pathetic as it is, I was out shopping a couple years ago with a friend and I thought she was starting to notice that I wasn't trying anything or buying anything, so just to throw her off, I bought a cheap shirt from a store she was also buying clothes from, knowing that it wouldn't fit me. I put the receipt in my wallet cause I knew I would be returning it another time when she wasn't around.
Probably my most recent embarrassing moment was when a good friend of mine from college spent the weekend with me & my husband. We hadn't seen her in forever and she recently lost a bunch of weight, despite never really being a big girl. A male friend of my husband's also stopped by (someone she was also friends with). She had forgot some extra clothes so while hers were in the wash, she asked if she could borrow a pair of my pajama pants. I kind of gave her a look like, "Um..look at me, now look at you.." She caught on, but gave me the, "Oh please! You're not THAT big, girl.." routine. I gave in and went & got a pair for her that I hadn't been able to fit in in a good year or so. As I handed them to her, I told her they probably wouldn't fit but she was welcome to anything in my closet.
She put them on right there in front of me, my husband, and my husband's friend (we're all really close & she had something on underneath) and they immediately slid off her to the floor. It was so quiet, I swear you could hear a pin drop.
Trying to save me the embarrassment, she put them back on and started rolling them up in the waist to make them fit. When she went to walk, they started sliding off again and eventually, my husband offered to let her borrow a pair of his (He's like 140, soaking wet with rocks in his pockets). I could've died but plastered on a smile and laughed it off.
-Skinny friends complaining that they're "so fat."
-Like everybody has said, being the one passed over at clubs/bars or having guys "take one for the team" by talking to me.
I was at one club with some friends and a creepy guy (obviously with a fat fetish) came up to me and started hitting on me. I'm married so I wasn't interested in the first place but the way he approached me was kind of hurtful. "You are JUST my type..I LOVE big ol' girls like you.." He probably didn't mean it the way it sounded but to point out my size in front of everybody else immediately reminded me of it, probably at a time when I had actually pushed it out of my mind and was starting to relax.
-Two words: Facebook pictures. I have one friend that is very particular about how she looks in a picture even though she is very thin. So she'll take a picture of me and her, and when it's one of the few pictures of me where I don't look like a whale and I'm angled just right, she deletes it because one hair was out of place on her. Then she'll turn around and post pictures where I look like a schoolbus and she looks like Heidi Klum.
-Male friends making fun of other fat people or critiquing other girls' bodies when I'm standing right there.
I remember one weekend, my husband invited two of his male friends over and I was hanging out "just being one of the guys." One of the friends is really into really skinny girls (like Kate Moss thin) and has never really been with a girl probably bigger than a size 4. His current girlfriend is very short and very skinny.
We were sitting around drinking and somehow the subject turned to his girlfriend. He whipped out his cell phone with semi-nude and nude pictures of her and he started showing them to my husband and the other friend, talking about how she has the "perfect body" and she "doesn't have an ounce of fat on her - no rolls, no stretch marks, blah, blah, blah.." He brought the pictures over to me (to try and include me in the discussion I guess) and held up the picture in my face and goes, "Isn't that perfect?" He was just being a typical guy (under the influence nonetheless) and bragging about how his girlfriend is so hot, but in my head I was like, "Gee thanks for reminding me.."
Did I mention this is a guy I had a drunken one night stand with YEARS ago & he couldn't "perform?" It was more than likely the alcohol cause he was WAY over his limit, but in the back of my mind, I knew he was into really skinny girls and that I definitely wasn't his type.
This same group of guys come over all the time, drool over my skinny female friends and their pictures, and sit around and talk about how this one has "the perfect butt" and that one is "smokin' hot." If they just casually mention it once or twice, I don't mind & usually agree because I do have some very beautiful friends, but when they harp it on over and over again, it bugs me. It really is superficial for me to be bothered by it, especially cause I'm married and have no romantic interest in these guys at all, but to hear my husband agree with them when he thinks I'm not listening really gets under my skin.
-Friends coming across pictures of me when I was younger/much smaller & making comments.
One time I came across of a picture of me when I was like 15 and had just met my husband (I'm 23 now). I showed it to him and he passed it to his friend and without thinking blurted out to me, "God, you used to be so hot.."
I know he didn't mean it the way it came out cause his eyes immediately widened and he started apologizing and backpedaling, but that was one of many things that really woke me up to the fact that I wasn't the only who was noticing how much I'd let myself go in the last 5 or so years.
-Or being set up on blind dates with guys by friends when I was single. It usually went one or two ways. Either I'd sit there and watch as the guy's face would contort into a look of horror when he realized I was a big girl and he was trying so hard not to let on, or the guy would have a thing for big girls.
Most of the time, the worst part probably wasn't even the guys - it was my friends. They would tell me about the guy and they'd add in, "He likes big girls..you shoulda seen his ex-girlfriend..blah, blah, blah.."
