By: Leslie Goldman

Oct 26, 2009

So, you’re wearing a pair of low-cut jeans that are just a wee bit too snug, and the tight waistband creates a fat-roll-bubbling-over effect. Lovely. As a result, you feel self conscious and spend the day constantly tugging your top down to conceal the Muffin Top. You feel gross and unhealthy and ashamed of your buttery roll. Your curse the mini Snickers you've been sneaking out of your coworker's candy jar every morning at 9:30am. But in your heart, you know you don’t actually have a spare tire – it’s simply the byproduct of your jeans cutting into your flesh. Even a 100-lb twiglette would sport spillage if you tied a rubber band tightly enough around her hips. And besides, if you just went up a size, the Muffin Top would cease to exist.

A Muffin Top Friend, then, is a woman who makes you feel like those too-tight jeans: Ugly. Unfit. Bulky and bulge-y. Quite likely, she doesn’t intend to have this effect on you – she just does, with her size 2 dress or her 44-inch Pretty Woman legs or her Kelly Ripa biceps. She makes you feel like the awkward, poufy-sleeved, yogurt-eating bridesmaid, while all eyes are fixated on her glowy, airbrushed, princess ballgown-ed, hot bridal bod.

Glamour Magazine’s Vitamin G blog recently posed this question to readers, asking them “Do Certain People Make You Feel Fat?” The respones were telling:

“Certain people make me feel awkward, since i'm 5'11'', being around all short people, especially in heels it makes me very self conscious. also in bikinis' since i have some stretch marks, i feel awkward. i'm a size 4 and though that isn't big, being around 5 ft girls and size zeros can make me feel huge.” - nerdtett3
 
“There is only one person I feel fat around and that is my own twin sister. Funny, eh? We're identical and even though I'm thin, she's downright SKINNY MINI and probably weights 10 - 15 lbs less than I do. Can you imagine what's it's like to see someone who should be your mirror image and they are skinnier than you? It's a big blow to the ole body image. I console myself telling myself that she's that thin because she deprives herself and I never do but it still stings.” - lee_kathyw

“I have one friend who constantly complains about her body. She not tiny, but shes slim and a size or two smaller than me and she constantly complains about how fat she is. I hate hearing her, because I always think, if you think your fat, then what am I??” - condiment

“Yes! My brother's girlfriend is very bony/lanky, I don't know why but I always feel chubby around her--I'm quite muscular, petite 0 but with a chest--so really i shouldn't feel at all fat, but I think it's because she has no boobs and is skinny and all straight up and down, not muscular and curvy.” - colina88

It would make me feel so awful to know I made a friend – however inadvertently – feel unhappy about the way she looks. That’s why it hit me so hard when, about a decade ago and in the midst of a pretty bad disordered eating rant, a close girlfriend of mine looked me in my eyes and echoed "condiment"’s comment above: She said, “Leslie, I love you so much and can’t imagine life without our friendship, but if you keep talking about how fat you think you are, I can’t be friends with you anymore. It makes me think, “If she thinks she’s fat, what does she think about me?’”

I called a therapist the next day.

I don’t necessarily have a ton of Muffin Top Friends – I feel comfortable, body-wise, around all of them – but the area I DO get jealous in is, strangely enough, hair. A few of my close girlfriends have gorgeous, thick, seemingly endless horse manes of hair and I have about three strands that can be entirely contained in a teeny plastic baby bird barrette. Seriously. So sometimes when I’m with them, I think “Do I look bald next to her?” I know, I’m a really sane and well-adjusted person, right?

Who’s your Muffin Top Friend?