{"id":29678,"date":"2012-03-27T08:02:09","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T15:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=29678"},"modified":"2012-03-12T10:03:01","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T17:03:01","slug":"hold-that-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=29678","title":{"rendered":"Hold That Door"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was 250+ pounds I felt invisible most of the time. There were a lot of social situations where I felt like I blended into the wallpaper compared to the “skinny” girls–and even most of my friends. They got all the attention and I felt left out.<\/p>\n

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One of my big pet peeves as an obese girl was the open discrimination I felt. There were a lot of things that happened in the 10 years that I was obese that made me feel less than<\/em>, not good enough,<\/em>\u00a0because of how much I weighed. A lot of those things were open and harsh. Other discriminating events were quieter.<\/p>\n

One of those types of things that made me really angry<\/em>\u00a0and made me feel bad about myself was how no one ever EVER ever held the door open for me when I was fat. Ever. I’m not exaggerating when I say ever.<\/p>\n

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It was always awkward and I’d feel resentful and irritated when people were rude to me like that. Just because of how much I weighed. One of the most vivid memories I have of this discrimination was at a job I had where I had to push around a bunch of files and papers from the mailroom up to the floor I worked on in one of these mail carts:<\/p>\n

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It was a huge pain and near impossible to steer. In the two years that I had that job, no one in the building ever opened a door or held it open for me when I pushed this cart. I would struggle to steer it, struggle to open a door and hold it open to get the cart through. It was an ordeal and day in and day out I struggled with no help.<\/p>\n

Did that change when I lost the weight? Oh yeah. It changed big time. I was shocked when people–usually men–started opening doors for me. And not just holding the doors open for me to walk through behind them. No, I’m talking about the\u00a0chivalrous men going<\/strong> out of their way<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0to rush to open a door, hold it open, give me a smile and wait for me to walk through<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

It’s the most bizarre thing! I remember when it first started happening –I weighed around 165 pounds \u00a0and it was the most shocking and encouraging thing. I felt so GOOD about myself. Like I’d been ushered into “That World.” Finally.<\/p>\n

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It happens all the time now. When I go to the gym, the door is held open (that could be because I’m walking very fast with determination and a vibe of “don’t get in between me and my workout!” \ud83d\ude09 ). It happened the other day at the bank. A guy was coming through and I was going out and he made a big production about rushing to open the door for me. I was tickled and embarrassed at\u00a0the\u00a0same time.<\/p>\n

If I’m being totally honest with myself, there is still a little part of me deep inside that feels angry when someone holds open a door for me now. It’s a small part and it’s buried somewhere I don’t acknowledge very often, but it’s there–it’s the old me that’s wondering “Would you hold open that door if I didn’t weigh 144 pounds right now?”\u00a0I smile and say thank you, and try to ignore the little voice that wonders “Where were you 100 pounds ago?”<\/p>\n

Could it be the weight loss? Could it be that I was dressing in a more attractive way because I had clothes available to me in a smaller size that were cute? Could it be that I was smiling and happier about life in general because I had accomplished something great? It could have been any of those reasons.<\/p>\n

I don’t know why there was a switch in the universe and I was now deemed worthy of chivalry. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it a lot. That simple act goes a lot. It’s just nice to feel noticed and acknowledged.<\/p>\n

QUESTION: Did you experience this? How did you feel?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was 250+ pounds I felt invisible most of the time. There were a lot of social situations where I felt like I blended into the wallpaper compared to the “skinny” girls–and even most of my friends. They got all the attention and I felt left out. One of my big pet peeves as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,418,44,2754,77,96,154,2559,1243,2778,244,298],"tags":[5718,8591,5713,5716,5715,1717,8623,5717,5714,8662,839,8758],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/holding-doors-open.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29678"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29753,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29678\/revisions\/29753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}