‘When I speak, people tend to listen more’

A woman who went from a size 18 to a size 6 shared some of the unusual and unexpected effects of losing weight, including experiencing “skinny privilege.”

Meg Stier, who is an actress and motivational speaker based in New York, talks about body acceptance and body neutrality in quite a few of her TikTok videos for her 463,000 followers. She steers clear of dieting or workout advice and instead, when she talks about her weight loss, speaks more about the reactions she gets from people since losing weight.

“I’ve been anywhere between a size 18 to a size 6 in my life,” she said in one video. When she became a size six, Stier noticed several changes. “People look me in the eye when they talk to me,” she said. “Now, I can buy clothes in my size at any store. When I speak, people tend to listen more.”

As an actress and speaker, Stier also said she believes her career took off when she lost weight.

“I didn’t suddenly become more talented, smarter or better at my job,” she said. “I just looked different.”

Stier said her lifestyle barely changed, but as a size 6, she felt less judgment when she was ordering food — whether it was a cheeseburger or a salad — and going to the gym.

“There’s a serious bias against fat people, and unless you’ve lived on both sides of the spectrum, it’s hard to fully grasp what that means,” she added. “Skinny privilege is a thing, and I find myself taking advantage of it.”

Cora Harrington, a writer, summed up the idea of skinny privilege as: Being able to live your life without your weight or size making it more difficult for you.

“It doesn’t mean your life is easy or that no one ever made fun of your appearance, or that you can find everything you want in your local Target,” she continued. “It means societal discrimination and prejudice does not target you for being thin. It means your weight/body type are seen as ‘normal.’”

Skinny privilege goes deeper than getting more eye contact or finding clothes at the store, too — healthcare, for example, can be weight-centric.

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“Weight bias harms everyone across the size spectrum,” Lindo Bacon, nutritionist, researcher and author, wrote in the 2010 book Health at Every Size. “As long as it is more difficult to live in a fat body, everyone fears becoming fat.”

“There was nothing wrong with me when I was a size 18 and nothing wrong with me at a size 6,” Stier said in another video. “Skinny privilege is a thing. People started to respect me a lot more when I lost weight — which is just disgusting.”

Stier is far from alone in expressing her “disgust” with thin privilege after losing weight. The hashtag “skinny privilege” has over 11 million views on TikTok and features many users sharing their own experiences of losing weight and being treated differently.

“Skinny privilege is real,” Kelsey, a mom of three who lost 85 pounds, said on her TikTok. “Before you come at me and you’re like, ‘Girl, it’s not real, it’s your energy, it’s your confidence, you just have more confidence now.’ No. Immediately no.”

Another thing Stier addressed was that her weight loss is seemingly the only thing people want to talk about with her. In a recent video, she shared an original poem about all those conversations. In the caption, she wrote, “I did not say ‘Thank You,’” in response to people telling her she looks “really skinny.”

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