Thin privilege is having your intended accomplishments acknowledged.

I recently started college. I didn’t go in with the intention of losing weight, but the difference in terrain coupled with my ability to walk everywhere, added to the fact that for the vast majority of the past four months, I was too poor to afford to properly feed myself led to a distinct weight loss (something close to twenty pounds). I came home for Christmas, and my entire family (all fat themselves), complimented me. I was showered in compliments for merely unintentionally taking up less space. Nobody commented on the fact that I pulled a 4.0, or on the fact that my dedication to strength training had resulted in a massive increase in my physical strength, or really anything I was proud of; no, the subject of every conversation was that I’d lost weight and avoided the freshman fifteen.

Thin privilege is also not understanding why your fat friend is distraught at being fetishized and hypersexualized again.

A guy I’d become friends with at the beginning of the semester, who’d never been anything short of polite and respectful, started texting me over break and asking me to send him various pictures of my body parts (tummy, thighs, etc.) because he thought my fat was beautiful and arousing. He kept harassing me with questions on how much I eat, how long I’ve been this weight, how much I weigh, etc. It was extremely off-putting, and I very politely asked him to stop (which he didn’t), before I blocked him.

I then confided in a (thin male) friend of mine because I was so upset, both because this guy turned out to be a total creep, and because it’s become a disturbing pattern for my male friends to try to have sex with me, despite my disinterest (which, when expressed, seems to make most of them try harder). His response? “Oh boo hoo, poor you, having people find you desirable. That must be fucking awful. Try having people see you only as a good friend – that’s a hell of a lot worse."

I was so hurt that he would react that way, but I felt the need to justify myself. I explained that I went from gradeschool, where I was mocked and ridiculed at every corner for being fat (and therefore unattractive and undesirable) to university, when suddenly strangers hit on me on a daily basis because they thought I was easy (and no, that’s not an assumption; the fact that several of them got extremely pissy when I turned them down and told me variations of "you should be grateful I’m even interested in you” proves why they were hitting on me in the first place). I explained to my friend that yeah, men suddenly find me “desirable,” but at the cost of not wanting to develop any sort of friendship with me. They view me as strictly an object of sexual desire, as an object, but hey, they’re willing to bang me, so that must be a good thing, right?!

My friend never did understand why the incident upset me so much, and told me I should be happy people wanted to fuck me because “at least you’ve got options."

(That second incident also intersects with male privilege)