Tw: weight loss

Thin priviledge is not wondering if the stranger complimenting your blouse would have simply glared at you at your heaviest.

I have always been fat, since I was a child. I also got tall fast, and at 5'10" still rarely meet someone significantly taller than me, male or female. I was used to being big. And invisible. Looking back, I realize what an incredible feat it was- all 70 inches and 295 lbs of me, all that space I quite literally took up, and the world managed to blot me out. Some kind of magic trick.

Back in November I was diagnosed with celiac’s. And it was a hard road to that diagnosis, because I was obese. Never mind the scads of research I found on the Internet citing studies showing adult diagnosis of celiac’s are more likely over than underweight, never mind the inexplicable rash all over my upper body which is a classic example of the “celiac rash,” never mind the crazy digestive problems I had as a child, and still experienced intermittently. I was fat, and therefore could not be malnourished. Turns out, I was fat AND malnourished, and it was the inability to process nutrients that made me so. Freaking. Hungry. ALL THE TIME.

Fast forward seven months, and I’ve lost a little over fifty pounds since cutting gluten completely from my diet. I went from a size 24ish to a 16W/18 in straight sizes. And suddenly, a whole world of random stranger compliment trading opened up to me. And I am livid. Livid, because for two and a half decades I thought I was just unusually nice. That normal people didn’t tell total strangers what a nice necklace they had on, or that their nail polish was awesome. Turns out, they do, I just wasn’t small enough to rate that treatment.

And the thing is, I’m still fat! Still scared to walk over subway grates, shopping at Lane Bryant, feeling incredibly bold when wearing form fitting clothing- FAT. But at some point not too long ago, I slid into some sort of socially acceptable level of fat.

And I hear these nice words, from people who now stand aside to let me off a train first, or hold a door for me, and a little part of me wants to hoard them up and press them between the pages of my soul, to take out and look at when I feel down. Then I remember these people who are kind now are the same ones who walked into me without apologizing last year, and I want to hurl their words back in their faces. I want to shred up those kind thoughts and burn them and make those people eat them. Because I haven’t changed on the inside. I was confident and beautifully dressed at my largest. I am confident and beautifully dressed now.

I’m starting to experience thin privilege. And it scares me, because I worry I’ll give in. My weight loss is so unique, so odd, so based in the resolution of a major autoimmune disorder, that I hate for it to be seen as an achievement, or as something another fat person could copy. I want to focus on how much better I feel, but the world sees only my shrinking waistline. And I’m sure this sounds whiney and stupid, but I still very much identify as fat. And it scares me that what others see isn’t what I do. I don’t want respect because of how I look. Thin privilege is not being aware that respect is appearance based. It’s not having to second guess the cabbie stopping for you instead of the person a block away. It’s being blissfully unaware. And it sucks.