If you’re dating a fat girl, you’re probably more than well acquainted with the negative body issues that crop up every now and again. But if you find that you’re constantly putting your foot in your mouth where your lovely lady is concerned, here are my top five things that you should never, ever say to your fat, feisty and fabulous girlfriend.

“Should you really be eating that?”

Do not, I repeat, do not comment on her eating habits – bringing attention to the amount that someone is eating is dangerous. If, in your eyes, you think that your lady is eating too much or not enough, it’s (quite frankly) none of your business. That kind of negative
talk about food stuffs is the kind that encourages bad relationships with food, not only that but it could endorse a potentially harmful eating practice, especially when someone has a delicate relationship with their body already. The last thing you need to be doing is focusing on something that could send someone on a downward spiral. Let her eat cake!

“That outfit isn’t very flattering…”

You are not allowed to put down your lady’s outfit choices. If she has chosen something that pushes social boundaries, you should be building her up, not bringing her down; if she has endeavored to show off her arms or wear a tummy-clinging dress, then you should revel in the confidence that she has to shun society’s expectations of fat girl fashion. You have no right to decide how she should dress; you have no right to tell her what she can and can’t put on her body. The only thing you should be doing is praising how she looks, and if you think that something isn’t very flattering on her body shape, then you need to question why you think that way in the first place.

“You’re not fat!”

The thing is, your significant other probably knows that she’s fat. She may comment on her size, she might even use the ‘f’ word, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing. We’ve been socially conditioned to view the word ‘fat’ as a negative entity – if you are called fat it is often meant as an insult, it is meant to offend, upset and demean, but it is only because society has given it this negative power that it holds this stigma. If your
lady calls herself fat, don’t jump to her defense! “You’re not fat” when directed at a fat person, is bullshit and she knows that it’s bullshit – mollycoddling her by using words such as curvy, voluptuous and cuddly (anything but the dreaded ‘f’ word) can end up being detrimental to her mental health and knowing that people are lying to your face can hurt more than the acknowledgement of your size.

“Are you sure you can do that?”

Given that society has deemed most things unachievable for fat women, one of the worst things you can do is question her ability to do something. Fat women have long been taught that they can’t succeed at the things they set their hearts upon due to their size, they have been conditioned to believe that their size will restrict them, but that’s not so. The plus size community and fat visibility have come along in leaps and bounds in recent years and the ‘can’t do’ preconception is slowly being banished. There have been numerous women who prove that fat woman can become a success in the workplace, that they can model, that they can push fitness boundaries, hell, they can even zip wire over a frozen lake if they so wish. But their abilities are not confined to their size, and you shouldn’t think that they are either. If you question your partners ability to do something or effectively complete a task they’re undertaking, then you cannot reap the rewards or join in the celebrations when they DO succeed. Your doubt eliminates you from enjoying the achievement, you don’t deserve it… she does.

“Just ignore them!”

Fat women have heard it all. Let’s face it, if an insult is going to be thrown at a fat girl about her size, she’s more than likely heard it before and over time, we tend to build up some kind of intolerance to this kind of thing. It’s incredibly easy to brush these things off when you’re so used to them, but occasionally these things can slip through your body loving shield and hit you right in the heart. If your lovely lady receives these kinds of comments and if she becomes upset or angered by them, the worst thing you can tell her to do is to ‘just ignore’ her perpetrator(s). She needs your support at a time like this, she doesn’t need to feel that her feelings of worthlessness are stupid or intolerable, she doesn’t want to feel like an emotional burden – so don’t dismiss how she feels. You haven’t lived in her fat body and you don’t know of the emotional experiences that she’s lived through, besides the relationship a person has with their body is complex, and all you can do is build someone up again when they’ve been knocked down and that means dealing with it, not brushing it off.