I don’t have a lot of defining characteristics about me physically, at least not since my parents and the government scraped together that agreement to remove my deer antlers before the public realized what I was. However, despite my apparent external mediocrity, there is one characteristic about me that holds more bearing over my life than one would expect; I’m a skinny son of a bitch. And I know there are others like me, like Kermit the Frog, Skinny Pete from Breaking Bad and what I imagine Holden Caulfield to look like, who are tired of hearing the same old garb from people about our appearance.
For example…
1. “BRO! You need to get to a gym” We’ll just be enjoying ourselves on a pleasant day, drawing pictures of twigs and grocery cart handles (you know, things skinny people like), when some guy who just got out of the gym for the fourth time in his life slaps us unnecessarily hard on the back, telling us that we need to get to the gym, as if lifting a bar above your head is a spiritual experience equated with getting a back rub from Kate Upton while playing poker with Jesus, and winning. It’s annoying.
2. “Dude I can see your ribs” The first thing people love to hear when taking their shirt off is that a person is staring at their chest, noting that something is sticking out of their chest like a little kid pressing his face up against a large pair pantyhose. Sometimes this feels more like someone complimenting themselves on having normal, functioning eyesight than anything.
3. “Wow you’re eating a lot for a skinny guy” Sometimes skinny people aren’t practitioners of self-starvation. Sometimes we just have high metabolisms, which means we can probably eat more than you. Don’t look so surprised when I have TWO cheese sticks instead of hitting the ground and attempting photosynthesis.
4. “BRO! You should really start lifting... BRO” Again, I understand the health benefits of going to the gym and I appreciate them, so I’ll go occasionally. But to me the gym is a sweaty cesspool of men staring at themselves in the mirror as if they’re about to either a) kill or b) make love to the image of themselves, and that’s not a comfortable discrepancy for me to observe. I just don’t like it that much. I’d rather run or read.
5. “Hey man, do that thing where you sacrifice a lamb over a tomb and turn its blood into cherry wine” Ok, I really shouldn’t have to say this more than once, but with how frequently we skinny people hear this, I have to reiterate, skinny people do not have dark powers.
6. “BRO START LIFTING GYM" GO TO GYM BRO BRO BRO BRO BRO BRO
7. “Hey man, can I borrow your Death Cab for Cutie record?” It’s kind of unfair to just assume I like Death Cab for Cutie, Vampire Weekend and Two Door Cinema Club just because I’m skinny. And it’s also kind of unfair when you don’t return the CD on time when you PROMISED YOU WOULD, RICKY.
8. “Ew your hugs feel weird” Thanks. I was trying to show a nice gesture of affection by giving you a hug, but I’m glad you mentioned something so that I feel like a fleshy tree trying to absorb an unwilling victim into its ambiguously floral state of existence.
9. “Don’t listen to what anyone says. No one actually cares about your appearance that much and being skinny isn’t even a big deal at all” Why you gotta throw me off with that stuff, man? *wipes tear*
