Mom left devastated after ‘friend’ tells her not to get 2-piece swimsuit: ‘People will stare’

A mother of two was devastated after being body-shamed by a so-called friend, who told her not to get a 2-piece bathing suit because of her stretch marks.

The 31-year-old woman posted in Reddit’s “Am I the A**hole” seeking advice about an interaction she had with a friend of 6 years while shopping for bathing suits online.

“I have 2 young kids, and as you can imagine, stretch marks on my stomach, thighs and breasts. I mean, nothing too crazy or severe, but I think, looking at me you can tell I’ve been pregnant,” she said. “I have a mixture of one-piece bathing suits, and two-piece sets. That day, I happened to be looking at two-pieces.”

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So far so good, but the context given about her postpartum body already feels foreboding.

“My friend, who has a history of being oh-so-helpful-and-honest, asked me why I was looking for two-piece suits. I showed her the picture of the current suit I had loaded up on a website, a cute bikini set with high rise bottoms. I said I thought I’d look decent in it.”

That’s when her friend decided to chime in.

“[My] friend says, ‘But you have stretch marks all over, and you have the mom pouch. You should probably look for a one-piece to cover yourself up.'”

Yikes. Friends don’t body shame friends. That’s Friendship 101.

But it gets worse.

After telling her friend that “most people have some form of stretch marks somewhere on their body, be it from pregnancy, sudden weight gain or loss, etc,” the body-shamer in question had a very unexpected response. 

“Just because ‘lots of people have stretch marks’ doesn’t make them pretty to look at, though,” her friend said.

She then used the mom’s own words against her in a very manipulative way.

“Isn’t that what you said?” the friend asked. “That even if something is common or popular, it doesn’t mean it’s good?”

“I knew exactly what she was quoting me on. Wanna know, Redditors? Ages ago, a group of us were discussing politics and history and blah blah, and at one point in the conversation I said, ‘Hitler won the popular vote. Just because he rose to power doesn’t mean he was right.’ Y’all, she made a comparison between Hitler and stretch marks being unsightly.”

Most commenters did not see the connection between stretch marks and Hitler.

“Also, I hope you have no doubts about it, but what you said about Hitler has no connection to your discussion of bathing suits,” said one comment.

Another wrote, “[W]hat exactly are her good intentions when in comparing having stretch marks to Hitler?”

After being inundated with support from the Reddit community, the poster shared an update.

“I’ve been flooded with so many comments, chats, and messages telling me not to take her comments to heart and wear whatever bathing suit makes me happy. And that is precisely what I intend to do,” she said. “Thank you guys so so much for the kindness … Hitting the beach with my husband and kiddos, y’all. Peace out.”

A friendly reminder: All bodies are beach bodies.

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