Well, as a naturally thin girl, you learn to not talk about weight or food around others. Basically, you are not allowed to partake in any of these conversations. And I mean, literally,not allowed... "Oh you don't have anything to say about this, you're teeeny" or "yeah, like calories matter to you." That's coming from my friends!

I used to be a little chunky. Never actually over weight. One of my friends actually told me one time that I was gaining too much weight (she was a VERY thin girl). About two years later I had my first child. after I had her I didn't really change anything but for whatever reason (maybe stress or different life style) I dropped about 10 pounds pretty quickly and looked better than I ever had before (and like I said I was never actually over weight).

Anyway, my friend was over one day and she would occassionally mention my weight loss and I would just say... yeah and thanks and then change the subject. Well one night she spilled something on herself and I told her I had jeans she could put on (I was now the same size as her) she flipped out insisting that there was NO way. When she realized I could wear the same size as her she was really mad.

Now about 6 years later, she's bigger than me and I've stayed the same.

I've always been thinner than most of my friends, but one in particular seemed bothered by it. She was considered obese and was always making snide comments about how unattractive it is to be too skinny... or that I shouldn't wear a bathing suit because my bones would be popping out everywhere. Needless to say, we're not close any more.

Hmmm....yeah I've encountered some snide comments but they weren't from friends. And if they were, they weren't friends for long. Women can be so catty and mean sometimes....

oh yea.
Girls can be SO jelaous about this issue!

When I started going to the gym regularly, a lot of my girlfriends did too because they didn't want to be the "fat" one...girls are SO touchy with this...

I've noticed that too Lovely. When I go on a diet my best friend always decides she needs to diet too or work out more. But apart from her most of my friends don' seem to care bout weight. We almost never talk about it.

I'm with TidalWave--one friend in particular made a huge deal when I ordered a big burger for lunch, as if I was rubbing it in that I'm naturally thin. I just wanted a burger.

I live extremely healthy and that was a major problem for my roomie. She would get really mad when I didn't join her for dinner (she'd ask again and again, everyday even though I had told her a thousand times "thank you but I chose to eat healthier")

She gained a lot of weight in our first year of college and I know she tried losing it but she wouldn't let her wish of losing a few pounds come in the way of her chocolate and fat cravings - for which she would then make "fun" of me for chosing not to eat that stuff.

yeah girls always tell me that I don't need to work out, aksing "is that all you're having??" every day at lunch etc... They are just jealous of my willpower and selfcontrol, girls should just not take their bad selfesteem out on their "best friends"!

I might get snarky with you if you said that all the time too, Witchy. I'd think a simple "no" would suffice. My friends are really supportive of me going to the gym... sometimes they even get day passes to go with me. *shrug* I've never had these issues.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous of my thinner friends. But do I resent them for being thin, or give them a hard time about what they eat? Absolutely not.

But I have a friend who is about 30 pounds thinner than I am, who constantly calls herself fat. I find it really insulting.

Now that I'm 24 a lot of my friends are getting bigger, and I'm about the same. Thin. But I work out, and I am conscious about what I eat so I feel like it's kind of up to them what they do with their bodies. I always think healthy and not thin, while my friends think fat vs. thin. Girls are so touchy on this subject. Even my best friends can make snide remarks without reason. As if it is a big conspiracy against them that I'm thin and they are not.

well my bff is really thin, so when she says something stupid like "i wanna lose weight" i tell her to shut up im a bit bigger than her so i tell her if u think u need to lose weight u must think im really fat!
nothing malicious or resentful

What WhiplashGirlchild said. I'm pear shaped and a few pounds over my ideal weight and I'm definitely jealous of my thinner girlfriends (sisters, dance buddies, etc...). I keep it to myself. It's not their fault, after all, that they have more willpower/better metabolism.

TidalWave, I hear you...I ALWAYS get the same reaction from people, my friends included.

I don't think they're jealous that I'm thinner than them, but I think they feel like I can't relate to their issues with weight and food...and maybe I can't. I don't know. I generally just don't join in on conversations about diets and what-not.

My best friend and I are really different body types, so it works out well - I want her waist and legs, she wants my boobs and butt. So when we complain, it kind of boosts our self esteem because we know someone else wants something we have.

I'm happy for my friends who are more motivated and healthy than I am. I don't see their lifestyle or body size as a reflection of me. It doesn't bother me and in fact rather motivates me to whip myself into better shape for Myself, not others.

I find obsessive behavior at either end of the spectrum really annoying. Like WhiplashGirlChild said about skinny girls complaining about being fat. I just appreciate a healthy attitude toward diet and exercise rather than obsessive freakish behavior. Everything in moderation...

I'm one of the two skinniest in the group of friends and every mealtime or girly moment all of the other girls would start closing in on us two and exaggerate how scrawny we are. Whenever we'd go shopping together, the bigger girls would have their own subgroup while the two of us look in the similar sections. They even cover size tags when we critique each other's new stuff to make things awkward. It's a thing among girls to be the more fabulous one.

I lost about 30 pounds and have stayed the same wieght now for a couple of years, i found that my female relatives were all smiles for me, my coworkers were not. I felt like i had betrayed them, i didnt want their doughnuts, or chips, or cheese laden casseroles. one of them even took to pinching my arm ..hard..and saying "hey skinny mini" untill I told her to stop. I get remarks all the time "here comes the toothpick" and "you dont want a piece of cake? but i made it!!"

I'm with WhiplashGirlchild. I'm definitely jealous of my thinner friends but I use that as motivation and don't hold it against them. I would never sabotage my friends or say negative things to them. My one time BFF lost so much weight by not eating and is getting compliments all over the place. I'm glad that she's happy with her body but it saddens me that she did it the wrong way and is feeling validated because of the compliments. I'm trying to lose weight the right way so I can keep it off and make it a lifestyle change that I won't feel guilty of later down the road.

Coworkers "larger" than me always make comments about how skinny I am and it's rude, but I work out and have a fast metabolism. I've never been even slightly overweight my whole life. My friends definitely don't make rude comments, though.

I am guilty of this, although I would never say it to any of my friends (just gripe to the boyfriend lol). I am not really overweight, but I have a very athletic build and envy my rail-thin friends. I also get angry (on the inside anyways) when I hear about people just dropping all kinds of weight by not eating meat, or not drinking soda, whatever. I eat healthy and am very active, but can never seem to get any smaller...its frustrating more than anything, but my problem, not theirs.

I get lectured all the time by friends who are trying to lose weight because I eat like a pig. I am also fairly scrawny for someone who eats like a pig. I do get mad at friends who go on certain diets to lose weight because they end up looking worse off and most really don't need to lose weight; they just need to adopt healthier habits like cutting junk food and exercising. I have a friend who has lost all her curves and looks emaciated now ... so I'd rather she not have dieted since I'd rather have a healthy friend, not a sickly one.

kristinh, that girl sounds nuts. If I were you I'd be secretly gloating that she is bigger than you are now

bbkf - you eat meat? I always thought that your kitten-burger avatar meant you were vegetarian lol

"Though jealousy among women is not uncommon, we don't expect to find it amidst friends."

My experience of jealousy is that it almost always involves friends. You have to care about someone to be jealous.

Anyway, on to the post... I constanly meet women whose bodies I envy, but not in a negative way. And every time I see them I think: "I could look like that if I tried, but I'd rather be 5 lbs overweight than have a perfectly flat tum." So it's hard to be jealous when I am also admitting I'm just too lazy to trim down a bit.

hmmm if only i could combine this thread with the horrible roommate thread. my roommate has gained about 30 lbs in a year. we used to go shopping together, and now we can't, because whenever i try something on, she asks me what size i wear. it's none of her business! plus, one time i was trying on jeans, and she suggested i try the smaller size. i tried it, and she's like, "go one more size down" when i replied, "i can't, there isn't a smaller size", she threw a fit and started going off on how the store we were at makes their pants really big to make fat girls seem skinny. she makes me feel like it's a bad thing to be thin. (and i am in no way sickly thin). some days when she makes comments about me, i just wanna scream "THERE ARE THREE GALLONS OF ICE CREAM IN THE FREEZER...ALL OF THEM ARE YOURS! GET THE HINT?!?!?!"

anyway, yes, i think thinness can cause envy. i think it i normal to think like popgoestheworld, and realize that some women work really hard on their bodies, but most of us (including me) are too lazy/busy/whatever to lose that extra five pounds or whatever. however, it is not normal to start commenting on somebody's weight (big or small). unless of course they are emaciated or obese, and you are looking out for their health.

I eat anything I want and as much as I want, I hardly work out and I'm still skinny (with curves in the right places). My friends know all this and I know some of them get a tad annoyed when we go shopping together, but I don't believe there's any real malice in it as I would never show off even subtly just to make them feel bad.
I myself don't get jealous of thinner girls because I feel I'm just in right shape; any thinner would be 'too' thin.

Yes. I have an eviable figure. I have an all-natural petite hourglass (34C-24-32). I'm a little bit bosom-heavy, as my top is a little bit bigger than my hips, but I'm not complaining.

I've gotten a lot of jealous remarks from women. The remarks that hurted me the most came from my own family. My own mother was jealous of me when I was "blossoming." I was a teenager, and my body was transitioning from a child to a woman. I was becoming more buxom, and my breasts grew bigger than my Mom's, and she resented it. She told me,"Women with big breasts are naturally stupid. Women with smaller breasts are more intelligent." I was a teenager at the time (about 15 years old), and she was my Mom. There was a part of me that believed her, and I worried I was becoming stupid!

Now that I'm adult, I realize my Mom's comment was inaccurate, and stemmed from jealousy (of her own child!). Her remark affected my self-image, but I've overcome that.

When I started going to the gym daily and eating healthier, and lost over 30 pounds.
Needless to say, people noticed...
My closest friends started to get extremely jealous of the attention I was suddenly getting, when our guy friends started hitting on me.

& for the first time, I was able to wear clothes that accentuated my body, not hide it. When I wore a tank top for the first time in my life, I got called a 'slut' and 'skinny b*tch'!!

My "best friend" called me one day when I was at the gym, and she said "God! Stop getting skinny whien I'm getting fat!!" which is supposed to be funny I guess..
But it gets kinda old when your closest friends don't encourage you for becoming healthy but take you down with them...

Seraphimm-That is really sad, but it doesn't surprise me.

Unlike most people on this thread, I am not the skinniest one of my friends. I'm probably one of the "heavier" ones, although I wouldn't say that I am fat but I do have to lose a few pounds. All of my friends are fairly average-size, though, so I don't feel too bad. It DOES frustrate me though when my skinnier friends are always saying "I'm fat" or "I need to lose weight." Or when they make a point to eat something extremely healthy, yet when I (God forbid) eat both sides of the bagel I feel like a fatty compared to them because they only eat one half of it. Last year, my friends and I went on a road trip and we went grocery shopping befor hand so we wouldn't have to buy food for every meal on the road. I brought a couple extra guilty pleasures along with me (like Fruit Rollups and chips) because they rejected some of my choices at the grocery store, and they were all over my junk food even though they were on "diets."

I'm naturally thin, so i pig out at McDonald's and such. Meanwhile my friends are in the corner giving me "the look". It's kinda funny when i think about it.

hmmm never has this probably am naturally thin and so are my friends, we eat whateva we want and never gain an once. if anything we trying to gain weight as we get other not lost weigh!

had*

I think that it might not even be the case that they're jealous of the weight loss but perhaps what's causing the weight loss: will power and self-control and restraint. I'm not tiny and I'm not big but I wish I could give myself an extra kick in the butt to lose just a few more vanity pounds. I workout a lot and try and eat as healthy as I can, but my weight stays the same. So I'm jealous of those that can go the extra step to get to where they want to be. At the same time, I would NEVER make a comment about that, especially when I have tiny friends and obese friends that are sensitive about their weights. I'll support them whatever their choices, the only time that would change would be if I thought they were endangering themselves and their long term health.

No, although I do have skinny genes. The majority of my friends from pasts and present are slim or athletic. Then again, a lot of us are Asian. The high metabolism is rather hereditary. I think we're all pretty sound in the self-esteem department and we all lead fairly actively lifestyles for our own sake, not for competition. There is no jealousy or envy.

Furthermore, I don't fare well or hang around people who chronically complain about their weight or image around me. The 30 minutes a day they complain could be well spent on self-esteem boosting fit activities like martial arts, yoga, taking a stroll in the park, preparing healthier meals, etc. There is no chance of me having to deal with other people's jealousy issues because as soon as they rub me off the wrong way with comments like, "Stop eating. You're making all of us feel bad." or "Where do you put all of it?" I am heading off in the other direction.

One time when I was a freshman in college (I'm 25 now) I made a dumb comment to my roommate and best friend. We were doing normal college eating and she made one of those comments like, "Oh god, I'm getting so fat." Since she was as skinny as could be, I *jokingly* said, "That's okay, the fatter you get, the skinnier I look."

Even though we frequently had that kind of sarcastic back and forth, I think this really hit a nerve because it sparked this strange competition. Up to today, if I say I'm planning on running a half marathon... she'll run a half marathon that's harder and sooner than mine. We've come across jokey products with the similar sarcastic comments, and she'll say my ill-fated phrase.

I've apologized, and we are really good friends, but I realize that these are deep rooted body issues that all women have. I know when she does these things it's not because of me (c'mon, it was a passing comment 7 years ago) but that it's more something within her.

GlowingMoon ~ aww, that's sad

In the Philippines where I came from, thinness or weight is never an issue. All my friends and all the people I know are thin. But here in the USA, a lot of women wonder how thin I could be with all the rice and pastries I eat.

"THERE ARE THREE GALLONS OF ICE CREAM IN THE FREEZER...ALL OF THEM ARE YOURS! GET THE HINT?!"

rofl! I love it.

I think there's always some kind of competition amongst friends, or at least, women you see often. When I was in high school, I was a size 4 while most of the girls there were a size 0. I felt enormous, especially since we'd all been around the same size when we were kids. Five years later, they're all still 0s, and I'm still a 4... and I still dread having to be in pictures with any of them!

cordata! ditto!!

I've ALWAYS been around a group of size 0 friends in high school, and it really killed my self-confidence.

literally ALL of my friends = Size 0
Me = Size 10.

no wonder I hated high school!! ha!

I'm constantly being told that i don't eat when i do, just in small portions when i do get hungry. I currently wear a size 6.

I'm anxious to hear other stories I keep lingering around this post!

I have to mention a friend that always feels like she is better than me because she recently lost weight.

Everyday I get a text message from her asking
"So what'd you eat today? I ate an apple. You probably ate a burrito or somethin huh?" or
"I just came back from running. Are you even going to the gym today?"

i'm not exaggerating......
it's so annoying because I'm not a competitive person, but she's so self-righteous when it comes to weight loss.

Why are some girls so DAMN competitive?

I love to eat. My weight has always fluctuated [132-152], but hey, a girl's gotta eat, so I gained some weight. I was pretty freaked [and one of my friends never failed to remind me that she lost 10 pounds the week before]. Of course, I felt like hell, but luckily for me, my Beau likes the curvier Puff!

I'd like say that I'm a pretty average size, though. I'm around 160 now, and I'm a busty 34G [don't laugh!]. When I was...er, blooming, I caught a lot of sh*t for it. Guys always made fun of me, and my family...yeah, lets not go there. Girls weren't very kind, either. I pretty much hid my figure up until last year, and now that I'm wearing a proper bra, I'm finally confident enough to wear tank tops and shirts with lower cuts. Once again, if it wasn't for my Beau, I wouldn't have as much confidence in my figure as I do now.

I can't help but notice how many comments are thrown around to others about weight. Both of my sisters are a size 0, and of course compared to them at any weight I would seem 'fat'. The first time my friends met my sisters, they said, 'Wow, they're so pretty. And you'd look like them if you were skinny.' One time my friend gained ten pounds and was the same size as me, and she was like, 'I'm about to be engaged, and I'm soo fat. But at least I'll always have you to be the same size as if I stay this way!' I was definitely offended. Sure, I'm bigger than her, but still in the single digits. My mom calls me fat anytime I eat and even said I would never get married because my thighs are bigger than hers.

Italian Blonde! I thought I was the only one! My mum would say I'd never get married once I hit 160 [how ironic].

possibly, but i feel it really depends on the person and the quality of the relationship.

one friend (not close) who has always been 'a big girl' obsesses about weight--diet lingo, gym, etc--but she has quite a competitive (and sadly mean-spirited) streak. i'm not implying this trait is due to her struggles/frustrations, but the fact that this is always a topic of conversation leaves much to be desired.

another friend who has lost weight but remains a very curvy, petite woman mentions weight comments on occasion. however, we dwell on shared values, varied interests and mutual warmth between friends. she did joke about not wanting to stand next to me in pictures after a recent party, and i seriously felt my heart sink. she saw my expression immediately and apologized.

i struggled with low-esteem (physically, socially) throughout high school and college. as a late bloomer (30), i've started to be at peace inside and 'work with the cards you've been given' (not to mention more social, assured, nicer looking and lighter)...thanks to a loving family, friends and others, it has been a good journey so far. and in a way, i find it easier to empathize with others who struggle with ridicule or hardship.

out of the myriads of other things to be jealous about, i wish body image wasn't such a crippling one. it's hard enough the message is reinforced by society, media, family, strangers, etc...

sometimes i feel annoyed men don't have to deal with this crap that has the power to seep into every aspect of a woman's life *sigh* but then i remember everyone has crap to deal with and overcome, right? a thankful heart certainly helped me during crazy jealous spells

sorry for the tangent, the topic just re-surfaced lots of vivid memories and feelings. but in a good way, in the end.

All of my friends are thinner than me and I am jealous of them but not in a way that would make me be nasty or snide to them. It's more in my head because I know I lack the self control.
I do hate though when the skinny ones are all 'oh I've put on so much weight' etc and I'm like "...eughghghg"

seraphimm, that was so mean of her to say things like that to you!!!!
"So what'd you eat today? I ate an apple. You probably ate a burrito or somethin huh?" or
"I just came back from running. Are you even going to the gym today?"

I'm sorry, but I dont know how long SHE'D be my friend. I have to say, "none of your effing business" to her firmly.

Well, I was once overweight. Hung out with a group of girls who were ALL overweight (some more than others, but you know what I mean). No one ever really lost much weight, because we all enabled each other's unhealthy habits (binge drinking, fast food eating, etc).
When we all took our own paths after high school, things changed. I lost 35 pounds. Two of the other girls lost weight. Then I became obsessed with it and developed anorexia. When people would make comments to me like, 'you are getting WAYYYY to thin', I thought they were doing the exact behaviour that this post is about; they were making jealous remarks.
In recovery, I gained back 20 pounds. And I still really struggle with accepting that in a big way. If one of my friends who has a nicer figure than me makes a comment about herself such as, "I hate my flabby thighs", I get highly offended and take it personally (I dont voice this to her, but of course I go on with my own thoughts of if she is fat then I must be a cow, time to starve and lose weight). Sometimes she forgets that I'm there and what I went through.
It's such a sensitive topic for some. Girls dont understand the effect these kinds of comments can have on other girls when they say them.

Cyan45, Not true! believe it or not a LOT of men have issues with weight. I think it's more the other way around though. A lot of guys I know complain because they are TOO skinny and want to gain more weight or be bigger. Most of the guys i'm around are naturally thin (including my BF) and they HATE it.

One of my brothers has also gained a lot of weight from medication he has to take and he gets VERY depressed from it. It's a daily struggle for him because really there isn't much of a chance of him being able to lose much of it.

And it is really sad how competitive women can be. And it seems it doesn't matter who the person is. As at times my BFF can be my worst enemy due to jealousy and comepetitiveness.