I'm sort of large, (a size 18/20, but I'm also 5'11" so I don't really look it) but I've never ever encountered harassment because of my weight. I'm normally the one making myself feel bad over it, but then when I bring it up to my friends they all say that I'm definitely not fat. Am I just lucky or is it something else?

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Well, you’re a “smaller fat” by virtue of being quite tall, and are simply never going to get as much harassment as a proportionally much fatter woman. And you may simply be lucky and have encountered even less than most smaller fats. You’ve certainly received the socialization that tells you fat is bad – that’s why you feel bad about your fat, after all – and frankly if you think fat is bad, it’s very easy to never notice the kind of harassment called microaggressions (the little, often passive-aggressive, things that never rise high enough to really complain about, but form a background noise of negativity) that are likely directed at you. When somebody thinks their fat is bad and their body is bad, and other people act in ways that assume those same things, pretty often they just never even see it as harassment, but just as the normal treatment they deserve because they’re fat.

Or you might just be lucky. I can’t know.

-MG