Just to be clear, I don’t really care why the sulky twenty-something who texted all the way through our service didn’t like me. I’m just not that needy. I noticed it because it was unusual and it made me think about my own expectations and whether they were reasonable. Even though many of you adhere to a Big Girl Code, from the comments just as many of you don’t, or stick to it personally, but don’t expect the same from others. To me, that’s reasonable.
I also think it’s reasonable to expect, if not service with a (usually fake) smile, at least service without being treated like you’re a nose-dropping clinging to the most offensive hair of Benito Mussolini’s mustache. Call me old-fashioned.
Maybe she was jealous that a foreign fatty landed such a weapons grade hottie (when the fact is, of course, HE landed ME) and took him out of the dating pool.
Maybe she didn’t like Americans, although it should be noted that I can and do speak borderline lovely Spanish and do my best to counteract the myriad Ugly Americans who’ve retired here and STILL manage to be big racist jerks even while living as a guest in a foreign country.
Maybe her cat died or her feet hurt or I reminded her of her third-grade math teacher who didn’t let her go to the bathroom during a timed multiplication test which resulted in Severe Unpleasantness that she remembers, most often in nightmares, to this day. Uh, just an example.
It doesn’t really matter.
I remember working at the newspaper and there was a woman I just knew as Barbie.
An immaculately-groomed blonde ponytail (expensively reblonded every three weeks) swinging to the middle of her back, perfectly straight school girl bangs, cute girly dresses, stilettos at all times. She was clearly invested in looking like Barbie and even though she was just a little past the age where it looked effortless, Barbie was her aesthetic and Barbie she would be.
For years I vaguely disliked her. She worked in sales, the professional bastion of the former cheer captain, and I had no love for the mostly vapid fembot employees who stayed for three months before bouncing their ponytails to a pharmaceutical rep company, but year after year, Barbie stuck around.
Once I commented on her shoes, which were nicer than the good-enough-for-retail-work Nine Wests she usually pranced through the office. She said they were Isaac Mizrahi, but didn’t know how to pronounce Mizrahi. I found it endearing.
A year or so later on a particularly cold day I asked her where she stored her fur coat in the summer. The lynx had recently come into my life and it would need professional cold storage when May rolled around.
She grabbed the lapel of her mink stroller and announced “It’s carpet!”
With that we were pals. Not friends per se, but chat-in-the-elevator, what-are-you-doing-this-weekend work pals.
I had just assumed that any woman whose personal style icon was Barbara Millicent Roberts: plastic doll, would be so deep into the Fat Hate Rabbit Hole that she wouldn’t want to be in the same room with me, lest thighs that touch in the middle prove contagious.
I’ve never had that problem with men, thinking they automatically disliked me.
The one exception was years ago when a good-looking jock yelled “Hey Fatface!” over and over again from across the street, clearly trying to get my attention. I was incandescent until I realized I knew him from the dog park and he was talking to my Sharpei whose magnificently pendulous jowls earned him that term of endearment weeks before. Oops.
Both the fitness model Bulgarian and Hot Latin Boy have told me about their troubles getting big girls to go out with them because the gals in question thought they were either playing a joke or just being cruel. That’s heartbreaking on a whole mess of levels.
It’s just the girls.
I thought I’d open up a question for the weekend.
Whether you subscribe to a Big Girl Code, do you implicitly expect the opposite treatment from stereotypically attractive slim people? Is it justified or just the specter of middle school/high school/college rearing its ugly head?
Let a girl know and have a great weekend!
