Well, Elizabeth, when you make yourself as grotesque and repulsive as possible, people are going to notice, comment, and judge. And some of them will say rude shit.
It's not paranoia, or hypervigilance, to imagine that she's being watched and judged every day. She damned well knows she is, and she knows it's because she does not look cute (and hey, how many actual men, no matter how soy-fed, insist upon their own "cuteness"? Like, zero).
People are going to notice and gawk at and comment on her in the same way they do around people with extreme body mods--because frankly, her obesity and hormone-fucked appearance are extreme body mods. She might as well have facial tattoos, or encrust her face in piercings, or get devil-horn implants and a forked tongue. She may not be in Farrah Flawless territory of "holy shit, that person's fucking mental," but the visual evidence for her profound rage and self-hatred still disturbs the shit out of other people, in a visceral way.
But rather than stop and think, "Hey, maybe I'm manifesting my ugly girl's self-loathing and internalized rage in a really unhealthy and self-destructive way, and people are going to gawk at that; maybe a different approach is in order," her cope is to pretend it's not really happening (except when somebody is rude enough to remark on her appearance), and to keep aggressively reassuring herself she's "cute," or "hot," and not actually destroying herself. Only she can't stay in echo chambers forever, and reality does have an inconvenient way of intruding and reminding her that the comforting lies she takes refuge in are just that--as it did in this case.
She couldn't be graduating at a worse time for performing arts majors--especially technical theatre. And her fatness will poison any chances she might get, because she is physically less capable of doing the actual job. And while the theatre community tends to be deep in the Woke, I doubt her scripted, badly-read scoldings about fatphobia on social media are going to make anybody say, "Yeah, she seems totally reasonable, and not likely to make absurd demands."
Somebody in the last page or two predicted she'd use grad school as a means to avoid reality for another couple of years, while she gets an MFA. I'm inclined to agree. Yes, it would mean a lot more debt, but look at her--does she look like somebody who thinks through the long-range repercussions of her actions? Hardly.
Okay, on another note, I did a little more digging, and yes, she did attend a Catholic high school--a Jesuit prep school that costs $18K/year and is not easy to get into (the acceptance rate is around 50%).
I don't know why she made the shift, but that school does have an especially strong music and performing arts program, so that may be why. Which would only reinforce what I gleaned from her dad's Facebook--that her parents were very supportive of her musical and theatrical ambitions.
