So I overextended my knee not long ago (thanks ice!), and decided to head down to the gym in order to stretch it gently so it can go back to normal, and I can go back to pretending gyms don’t exist. lol

I was standing in my building’s elevator headed downstairs, and there was a man in there who noticed me holding some running shoes. He asked something about whether they would work for outside I think, it was hard to tell because frankly I was still mentally asleep (I don’t do mornings), and so I said, “Oh no, these are for the gym, because the shoes I have on have road salt on them and it can be bad for the mats.”

His reply to this? To gesture at my body, then hold his hands out in front of his stomach as though his belly was larger, and say, “Yeah, you’ve got to lose some of this weight …” and before he could continue, in a very stern tone I replied, “Actually I am going for my knee. I said nothing about my weight or weight loss, and it’s VERY rude of you to bring it up. Very rude.”

He took a second before starting with, “I am a 60 year old man..” and I decided that I’m sick of excuses, including implications that age automatically means 1. you know better, 2. you have the right to harass and degrade people by telling them to lose weight, so I cut him off there and YELLED.

“NO NO NO. YOU DO NOT GET TO TALK TO MY ABOUT MY WEIGHT OR WEIGHTLOSS!!"

At this he sort of threw his hands up and said "i’m sorry” in a defensive way and I said, “Yeah, you should be!” at which point I stepped off the elevator in a huff, and moments later bumped into my dad who essentially asked if I had killed him based on the rage I was presently in.

Thin privilege is not having complete strangers telling you to change your entire body all because you have a pair of running shoes in your hand.