AIO My friend insists that I'm not fat
Hiii guys I know this is a pretty silly post, but this conversation with my friend left me feeling very frustrated, and I'm having a hard time grasping/explaining clearly why. So we were talking over the phone and at some point we started discussing sports, where I made a comment about being fat (I don't use this term negatively btw (edit: I've explained this to him before). This evolved into like a 20-minute "argument" where he kept insisting I wasn't fat.
I am a size 16/18 in women's bottoms (depending on brand), and I told him that this is on the border between mid-size and plus-size, which I would qualify as fat. He kept asking what size this was in men's (which I didn't know). Eventually, I said that I often can't find my size in clothing stores. He refused to believe this. He turned it around and said he can't find his size in stores (he's quite skinny/lanky) and sometimes felt jealous of fat people because he finds plus-size clothes everywhere and "they get all the clothes". This has not been my experience at all, especially in the past few years. He also asked a question following this that I was pretty flabbergasted by: "So if I can't find my size either, does that also mean that I'm fat?"
I was also trying to explain that I've always aligned myself with the fat/plus-size community, and he said, "What, like mukbangs?" and laughed it off. I told him that fatness was a spectrum, which he similarly brushed off.
By this point, I was getting really irked with him and felt like he was being intentionally obtuse. I felt like I was trying to validate my own experiences with my body to him, which I told him, and just ended the line of conversation.
I was coming from a place of my own experience (which is shaped by society, whether I want it to be or not), and his point was that society doesn't dictate whether someone is fat, but rather only clothing size. He was adamant that because I was on the "border" between mid-size and plus-size, I wasn't fat.
I've felt irritated since, and he told me that he hopes I didn't take what he said to heart and asked if I wanted an apology. This argument feels absolutely ridiculous in retrospect and like a total nothing burger. I also feel like I may not have explained myself well...so AIO?