“My thighs are so fat!”
“Are you kidding? Have you seen the size of you? What about my stomach?!”
Have you ever heard comments like this before? Perhaps you have even voiced them yourself? If so, you are not alone. “Fat talk”, or making negative comments about how you think about and view your body with your friends and family, is incredibly common. This may be unsurprising to a lot of readers as fat talk can be something women hear or engage in themselves on a daily basis. What may be less well-known is the consequences that follow on from saying these negative things about your body. PhD student and researcher at Deakin University, Jacquie Mills, is investigating fat talk for her thesis and has compiled a list of five facts about fat talk for you to read:
- Fat talk is expected of women
When university students were shown a scripted scenario of women engaging in fat talk and asked to select how the conversation would most likely continue, both male and female students believed the fictitious person in the script would be most likely to make a fat talk comment. Further to that, this fat talk was seen as helping the woman be seen as more likeable to other women. This suggests there is a social norm surrounding fat talk whereby it is expected that women will engage in this negative body talk and also shows that it can affect the way other people (particularly other women) perceive you.
- Fat talk can be contagious
Being surrounded by people taking part in fat talk can make you more likely to engage in fat talk yourself. A study has shown that simply overhearing someone else fat talk, whether it be a friend or a stranger, greatly increases your own chance of engaging in fat talk yourself.
- Women believe fat talk makes them feel better
When asked why they engage in fat talk, women typically state that they think it helps them to feel better. At first, this makes sense; similar to when you have any other type of issue with something that is bothering or upsetting you, you discuss your dissatisfaction with your appearance with friends or family in order to feel better about it. However…
- Fat talk actually makes you feel worse about yourself
Although women often report making these types of comments to relieve distress or unhappiness about their bodies, research has consistently shown fat talk actually increases your levels of body dissatisfaction. It can also make you feel as if there is more pressure surrounding you to be thin and achieve the typical “thin-ideal” body that is spread by the media.
- Challenging fat talk can help
Hearing a woman’s fat talk be challenged by another individual can act as a protective factor for body dissatisfaction levels. Just by questioning the idea and habit of making such self-deprecating remarks (not criticising the individual, importantly), women can help prevent the negative impacts fat talk can have on the way they feel about their bodies.
Although fat talk is an extremely common experience for a lot of women, not many women know how it can affect them and possibly others around them. The strong links with increased body dissatisfaction, higher acceptance of the thin ideal from the media, and even heightened depression, show that fat talk is something women should be aware of.
A study is currently being conducted by researchers in the School of Psychology at Deakin University, Australia. The study aims to track your fat talk and body image using a smartphone app. There is a thank you gift of either a $10 Coles-Myer voucher or a $10 iTunes voucher. To participate, please click here! For more information, please contact Jacquie Mills at fat.talk.research@gmail.com.
