After losing weight, woman says she received a message from a friend with some unsolicited advice: ‘You’re not dressing like a skinny girl’

A woman has recently taken to TikTok to ask for advice after she claimed that a friend of hers offered her advice about her body after she had lost weight. The woman claimed that her male friend, whom she said she believed had her best interests at heart, told her that she’s not dressing like a skinny person.

Christy, a TikToker with over 90k followers, asked her audience for advice regarding her fashion choices after she had lost weight. “One of my closest guy friends from college reached out to me on Snapchat last night and said, ‘Hey, do you want some advice?’” Christy said that she was initially hesitant to say yes, as she described her friend as being “brutally honest.” When she did, he allegedly told her, “You’re not dressing like a skinny girl.”

“You have worked so hard to get this beautiful body, and you’re not doing yourself any favors by not showing it off,” she said he told her. Christy claimed that she had received a similar comment from a stranger in the past and that she had originally been offended by it. “I was defensive, and I made a whole video clapping back,” she said.

She said that hearing it from a close friend made her reevaluate her stance and asked her viewers for their opinions. She claimed she brought the topic up during a live and was told by some of her viewers, “You dress appropriately for your age.” Others agreed with the friend, telling Christy, “You dress like a 60-year-old who’s ready for a yacht excursion.”

The male gaze and women’s clothing

Numerous studies into the sexualization of women and their clothing have been conducted. One study, published in Psychoneuroendocrinology, found that conservatively dressed women were likely to be subjected to sexualization, leading to emotion-based dehumanization from men with higher testosterone levels. 

The study enlisted 20 men with healthy testosterone levels, half of whom were given extra testosterone and the other half given a placebo. They then watched a video of a woman either dressed conservatively or provocatively but behaving in the same way. The extra testosterone group was found to be more likely to dehumanize conservatively dressed women as well.

Comments on Christy’s video mostly disagreed with the friend and encouraged her to “dress however you feel comfortable dressing.” Others told her that how she dressed was nobody else’s business and to not care what other people thought of her choices.