cimorene

I went to my oldest extant friend's wedding last weekend in San Francisco and heard two conversations that were weird/disturbing and related to weight. (I don't know why I posted this on Tumblr first last night? Maybe because I got distracted in the midst of uploading my photos of the trip...)

Here is what I posted to Tumblr.

Last weekend I was in the San Francisco area for the wedding of my oldest extant friend, who is beautiful and endowed with the kind of large breasts that are hard to buy bras (for so rounder than me obviously), and could easily be mistaken for Dylan O'Brien's sister. I, on the other hand, am 5'7" and weigh 99 lbs soaking wet (which runs in the family and comes along with horrible circulation, wildly ineffective metabolism, drastically low blood pressure, etc).

This is me walking down the aisle. (I don't think it would be entirely kosher to post a picture of her sans permission so you'll have to use your imagination.)

Two niggly conversations happened to me at this wedding wrt body size and body image that I will cut in case you have triggers to do with those things.

We took photos of the bride in her strapless wedding gown, and the hairstylist jumped in:

-You're not going to like this one!

BRIDE: Why?

STYLIST: Your ~arms~ look -

BRIDE: Nah, that's fine, I'm completely okay with how my arms look. I know I'm not a size two.

STYLIST, over-eagerly: And you wouldn't want to be!

BRIDE: Nope.

STYLIST: Real women have curves!

BRIDE, trailing off awkwardly: Real women have... er, everything. [turns away]

My friend is... a size 10, maybe, in US terms? Like, not a 2, and obviously the Women's Magazine Industry wants her to feel bad about not being muscular and toned, but I don't think even the wackadoodle BMI index would censure her actual size and weight.

Later the bride's aunt came up to me twice and we had the following conversation two times, about 2 hours apart. I'm not sure if she was tipsy enough to forget that the conversation had included all the same elements the first time.

AUNT: I just wanted to tell you that your dress was gorgeous!

ME: Oh, thanks!

AUNT: It's a knockout, it's just stunning! I would love to have a dress like that! And you look beautiful!

ME: Well, thank you! I do like this dress. I got it on a sale - I saw it and just kind of had to buy it.

AUNT: Well, I love it - I wanna get down to the same size as you some day so I could wear a dress like that and then I want to find me one just exactly like it!

Obviously I just accepted the compliment, but I think this one disturbed me even more, even though she was obviously not seriously entertaining the possibility of ever becoming my size. I assume she, too, knows that skeletal structure if nothing else would prevent it, because my skeletal structure is kind of a jumble of twigs with knobbly joints. Maybe it was the good-natured envy that seemed to underlie it, like a kind of congratulations and admiration for these physical characteristics which are actually determined completely by genetics, and the casual assumption that for having presumably won the genetic lottery in terms of natural dress size I would be deserving of admiration, let alone congratulations, that she takes for granted that obviously she should want to have my build?

It didn't seem right to alter the tipsy tone either by saying that she was totally hotter than me (could be awkward and I'm not really the type who can pull that off) or that she (and everyone) could and should wear what she wanted or that I'm sure she'd look great in it.

I'm not sure if it makes it worse, or even more surprising, that the woman in question was almost exactly average in build and weight for her age.