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Is she in the wrong?
By Nia Tipton — Written on Dec 05, 2021
A woman has turned to Reddit to ask for opinions on if she was in the right for insulting her boyfriend’s weight in front of his friends.
The subreddit “AITA” (Am I The A**hole) is a place for anyone to post their story and receive feedback on whether their decision was right or wrong.
The woman started the story by writing her boyfriend’s height and weight, before writing her own as well, stating that it is relevant to the story.
“My boyfriend is 6ft/183cm and 229lb/104kg,” she wrote. “I am 5ft6/186cm and 120lb/54.4kg.”
She went on to say that her boyfriend, from a medical standpoint, is obese but that she’s never really minded.
But she did take issue with him commenting on the weight of other people.
He had struggled with his weight for many years and would constantly talk about losing weight, but never actually exercised or went on a diet.
The woman went on to say that she tries to be supportive and offer her boyfriend advice or general encouragement whenever he talks about losing weight.
Except, he would often make remarks to her about her own weight as well.
“Whenever I make a smoothie, he says ‘You shouldn’t drink those things. They’re full of hidden calories’,” she said. “Or when I do strength training, he says ‘You'll just gain weight because you'll put on too much muscle.’”
Those offhanded comments had annoyed her, especially because she enjoyed fitness and nutrition.
“I'm not an expert by any means, but I've done several courses and I feel I know more than the average person.”
She feels as if she can manage her own weight, rightfully so, and doesn’t like that her boyfriend constantly feels the need to give her advice, especially when she doesn’t ask for it.
One weekend, she and her boyfriend went to meet a few of his friends at a beer garden, and at some point the conversation veered into online dating.
Some of the guys began to talk about their experience meeting people on dating apps, and her boyfriend said he had used Tinder before meeting her.
What started off as a light-hearted conversation, immediately turned ugly when her boyfriend said that he had deleted Tinder because there were “too many desperate fat chicks.”
“He said this in such a disgusted, dismissive way, that I genuinely saw red for a second and just blurted out, ‘Seriously? You're going to criticise fat chicks?’”
Immediately after the comment left her mouth, the entire table had gone quiet before one of his friends made a joke and the conversation moved on.
Her boyfriend, however, didn’t speak to her for the rest of the evening.
“He texted me the next day to say that it was incredibly rude and disrespectful to comment on his weight, especially in front of his friends,” she wrote. “He says he thinks he wants a few days away from me to decide whether or not he can forgive me.”
She does agree that it was rude of her to make a comment like that in front of his friends, but on the other hand, what her boyfriend had said was extremely obnoxious and borderline misogynistic.
On the Reddit thread, many people agreed that the woman was NTA (Not The A**hole).
One user commented, “Maybe you could have phrased it differently, but I’m not surprised you were gobsmacked at the audacity and the double standard. He’s allowed to prefer a type but as you say, the disgust with which he expressed it would have upset me too.”
Another user commented, “I agree I wasn't ready to agree with OP but NTA. He literally was insulting women and being a pig and you called him out on his hypocrisy.”
The woman even updated her post, saying her and her boyfriend had broken up and that she “feels lighter.”
It seems as if he has to work on himself a little bit more, especially if he’s putting down other people to potentially make himself feel better.
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Follow her on Instagram.