Jasmin Singer, writing for MindBodyGreen:
As my weight came off, I saw the world around me change. Men would enthusiastically hold doors for me. Women, with a snap of their gum and a flip of their hair, would compliment my “cute blazerrrrr!” Employees at coffee shops smiled at me, and made eye contact. Some of my well-intentioned but tacky friends would say that I looked “a lot better.” My (always thin) mother told me she was proud of me; she had the same gleam in her eye that she had when I completed graduate school.
As a fat person, I had been used to folks rushing ahead of me on the subway, not making eye contact at the store, or not smiling back when they passed me in the hallway of my apartment building. These behaviors were what I recognized as normal.
After a childhood of being bullied, and a young adulthood of being overlooked, when the world started behaving appropriately toward me (which occurred somewhere around when my weight reached the 130s), I was gobsmacked.
My initial reaction to this sudden onslaught of warmth, sweetness and gratitude from the world was suspicion that the joke was on me. Since I went from a size 16 to a six, there have been times when I have caught myself irrationally questioning people’s motives, just waiting for the paper snakes to jump out of the can.
Wow, this is fascinating. I wonder to what extent this difference in behavior depends on the gender of the recipient.