The Time I Started Wearing Tights with Dresses

Szani Petrik
Dec 5, 2024
5 min read

Growing up fat is not easy.

Actually, let me correct that. Growing up thinking you're fat is bloody difficult. Sometimes I feel like my whole personality ever really consisted of me being fat. When I started getting chubby in the third grade, I would look around the classroom and see my classmates just being so tiny and well-dressed. They looked exactly like third graders should have looked like. They looked normal. They didn't have to worry about being fat.

They didn't have to worry about having to dress in business casual as a child because they could just to go Mayo Chix and buy normal clothes like skinny people did. They didn't have to worry about their classmates not choosing them in PE classes and making fun of them. They were just... normal. They were skinny, they were well-dressed and good at sports.

Just normal.

And oh, how I wished to be normal. But I wasn't small and I wasn't skinny. Looking back at photos of myself at that age I wouldn't say I was fat, or even really chubby. Looking back at my photos now, I was normal. I was average. But back then, being normal was considered something entirely different and so I was fat.

Of course, as an adult, I'm now entirely aware of my being fat. I find it funny that the word fat is considered an insult when someone else says it but people just refer to themselves as that all the time without meaning to harm themselves. I'm also really just stating facts because yeah, I'm fat. And so what?

But growing up thinking you're fat when you're not really, and constantly being told nobody will want you like that really does a number on you. The realisation came a few years back when I flicked through my high school photos and I was genuinely shocked thinking: Is this really what you people thought was fat?

And so I stopped going to the beach at the age of 13 and I stopped wearing dresses and shorts. I spent my summers in the 40+ degree Hungarian heat solely wearing long trousers, jeans or leggings.

The envy I felt seeing my friends in their summer clothes was infuriating. It was infuriating because I didn't understand. It was infuriating because I wasn't that different from them, yet somehow I was still the only one being called fat. Somehow I was still the only one guys made fun of to her face. Somehow I was still the only one who never had a boyfriend. The funny one, as they say.

To this day, I'm still enraged when I think about how the world did me so wrong at such a young and impressionable age, making me think I was of less worth than others, simply because I looked normal.

What an utterly fucked up thing to do to a child.

I spent the better part of my teenage years and then my 20s hiding my body and sweating under bulky clothes and leggings during summer. However, I've always felt such a duality inside me.

When I looked in the mirror and saw my face, I saw a beautiful girl with a kind and attractive face. But this beautiful, attractive girl had a big round face with a double chin...

I saw a curvy, charismatic young woman with an hourglass figure and big boobs which made her attractive to so many men (only in secret of course because God forbid their mates know they're into plus size women). But it didn't matter that men liked her because the ones she wanted were never interested in her, therefore she was worthless...

I saw a happy girl who used to dance competitively and used to love sports. But this sporty, happy girl fell victim to her own mind and circumstances and ended up putting on double her body weight by the time she reached 30...

The first turning point came when one summer in 2021, at the age of 26, I was getting ready for a night out with work. I was wearing a new dress I had just bought and got dressed with the obligatory long pair of leggings under it.

Man, it was so uncomfortable. It was so hot outside.

I just stood in front of the mirror and thought to myself:

What would happen if I wore tights instead of leggings? What would people think, seeing a fat person wearing clear tights with a short dress? Would they laugh at me?

After contemplating for a while, I decided to switch my leggings for tights.

It was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life, because do you know what happened?

NOTHING.

Absolutely nothing happened. Nobody gave a fuck about me wearing tights. If anything, they started complimenting me on how good my dress was and how great I was looking. But absolutely nobody in the whole world batted an eye because they saw an overweight person wearing tights with a dress instead of leggings.

This was such a tiny thing which I never thought would have affected my life, but thinking back now, this was the exact moment when I stopped wearing leggings with dresses and skirts and I never looked back.

My summer wardrobe now solely consists of dresses, skirts of various lengths and shorts. I even left the tights. And all this because if you radiate the confidence you need to wear a dress confidently as an overweight person, nobody else is going to give a fuck, trust me.

I've made my peace with my experiences in school now and even though I'm still bitter about it, I'm thankful even for the worst of it. I'm thankful for all the rejection and all the hurdles because they made me who I am today.

Now that I think about it, all those things and sleepless nights worrying I was the fattest person in the world when I really was just a child with an average body, led me to that moment in June 2021 when I proudly wore a dress with tights for what seemed to be the first time in forever, without worrying what a random meaningless person on the tram will think about me.

Maybe the next story I share will be about the time I wore a bathing suit this summer for the first time in 10+ years. Spoiler alert: nobody gave a fuck and the world goes on.

Thank you for tuning in to my first blog post on Chasing Sunshine, my personal blog where I will be sharing stories about my experience and extensive journey to find self-love, body positivity and reconciliation with a chronic illness.

Please feel free to leave me some feedback on how you liked this post and if there is anything you would like me to write about!

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