Are you considered fat if you wear a size 4?

Dear Rich Bitch, I have a weight related question for you. I’m 35 and wear a size 4. I personally think I’m pretty small. I love my figure and am happy with my size; but my friend, a 40-year old Carrie Bradshaw imitator, called me fat the other day and said she’d kill herself if she ever got big enough to fit a size four. My question to you: Is wearing a size four fat? Stacie

Dear Stacie, your friend clearly has a problem, but there’s very little likelihood you will be able to convince her of this, especially given that she’s managed to keep hanging on to her body image issues all the way into her 40s. If you truly love your figure and you’re happy with your size, don’t concern yourself with your friend and her opinion.

The fact is, except in a very scant few cases, there’s nothing normal about a 40-year old woman wearing a size 2; and those few who are naturally thin usually have some type of metabolic disorder. The keyword here is “disorder”. Whether it’s the result of a medical disorder over which they have no control or a mental disorder that drives them to dedicate every day of their lives to consciously striving to stay thin, women over the age of 15 who wear a size 2 are not at a normal size for their age.

The media might try to push this image onto us as being the ideal, but considering the extremes a woman needs to go through to achieve and maintain a size 2 or smaller size, it is clearly not ideal.

Unfortunately you probably won’t win an argument about what’s fat and what’s not with someone who has a warped view of reality and is totally unaware that their view is warped, especially considering your friend has so much material she could draw on to make a case that the rest of the world agrees it’s better to be a size 2 than a size 4. The best thing to do is to ignore your friend if you can and if you can’t ignore her, trade her in for someone who doesn’t think being a size four is something to kill yourself over.

Image: Toni Maticevski: New York Fashion Week Fall 2007 by Peter Duhon via Flickr