Fat Friend

Fat Friend

This is the girl equivalent to a “wing man” for men. It means that when you go out to a bar or party where there are single people looking to meet up with other singles and connect with others, you take along someone who is less attractive than you think that you are, so you look extra attractive to a prospective mate, by comparison. It’s a terrible thing to do to someone, even if they know they are being used.

In the past, I have been the “fat friend.” At first, I didn’t realize that was the role that I was in. I was just happy to be accepted (or so I thought) and asked if I wanted to go to a bar with some women that I knew were prettier than me. I knew that compared to them; with my curly and sometimes frizzy hair and less than perfect body (not fat or skinny body type) that for all their flaws miniscule as they may be, made them look better and perhaps even more attractive to the men at the club.

Compared to them, I didn’t know how to act or get the men to buy me drinks or ask me to dance. I was always the smart one and the funny one, not the beautiful/charismatic one. I had always been made fun of because of my big and curly hair and those mean jibes from my past really effected my self-confidence. So, fast forward to the night club…when I was in the restroom, I heard one of the women talking to another one. She was asking her if she thought that I knew why they had asked me along?  

The woman said she wasn’t sure, but she thought I was beginning to “pickup” on it. There is also such a thing as a “pig party” when pretty girls would bring the least attractive person that they could find to a party, and they would win a prize and the person they brought along would be ridiculed and humiliated (Think about the movie Carrie by Steven King). When I was growing up, I was the “fat friend” a lot and it hurt, not just in the moment but from then on, often times.

I don’t know why people are cruel like that, I have never really understood human cruelty. I just know it hurts and leaves scars that sometimes last a lifetime. I think that this type of cruelty can lead to violent events in the future (think school shootings), but they don’t have to. How do some people rise up and become more resilient in the face of human cruelty?

I read once that a major contributing factor in resilience for children is one caring adult and that this person doesn’t even have to be related to them. The other way a person can overcome the scars of their childhood or even more recent wounds is to realize that our very human experience of our lives really doesn’t come from events outside of us (unless we let it), It comes from the inside out. We don’t have to let the thoughts and cruelty imposed on us become a part of our self-image or let pain and humiliation become a state of being for us. We can reject their opinion of us as the “fat friend” and see ourselves as we truly are; an integral part of something far bigger and more beautiful than just looks.