Bride tells her best friend she’s too fat to be in the wedding

A woman has asked for advice after her friend Jane kept her out of her wedding party because she was overweight.

The woman wrote into Slate’s advice column, Dear Prudence, and Mallory Ortberg read out her dilemma on the column’s podcast.

Her letter read:

I’ve been best friends with Jane since we were in middle school. Jane got married a few months ago and told me she was only planning to have her sisters as part of her wedding party. I was hurt, since she was in my wedding, but I understood her desire to keep the party small.

On her wedding day, I discovered she actually had four bridesmaids, her sisters and two of her college friends. I didn’t want to ruin her day, so I didn’t say anything about it at the time. About a month later, she texted me to get together, and I told her I was hurt about my exclusion from the wedding party and asked if I’d done something to upset her.

She then admitted she hadn’t asked me because I’m overweight and she thought I wouldn’t look good in the bridesmaid dress she had selected.

She added that she was “devastated,” and wasn’t sure what to do.

Thankfully, Ortberg made it pretty clear - calling what Jane did and said “cruel and shallow and unkind and fat-phobic”.

She went on to explain:

I cannot imagine having the kind of mindset where you think, ‘I want my wedding day to reflect my thinnest friendships’? What the actual hell?

And that she would say that to you, she wouldn’t think, ‘Wow, I’ve done something petty and small and terrible to a person I’ve known for 20 years who had me in her wedding because I thought she was too fat to stand up with me as I got married?’

But that she just said it to you, instead of being so profoundly ashamed at what she’d done.

Ortberg added:

I don’t think that you should get over this, I don’t think you’d be the one throwing a way a 20-year friendship.

HT Slate

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