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Fat Talk

Fat talk is a social phenomenon in which self-disparaging remarks about one’s own bodily appearance are made to other people. These self-degrading remarks are characterized by criticism and concerns about the body’s weight, shape or physical fitness. Fat talk may serve as a mediator of body dissatisfaction and can also be used to make others feel better about their body by criticising their own body and weight. Typically, when engaging in fat talk, no intention is made to solve the problem of the negative body image. Primarily women seem to be affected to engage in fat talks.

The influence of media is one of the strongest factors that promotes the use of fat talks; at the same time social media is used by opposite movements like the ‘Fat acceptance movement’ that encourage the acceptance of one’s own body and to improve one’s own body image. Fat talks can have severe consequences like eating disorders. The underlying mechanisms regarding the concept are still not fully clear, but there are several theories attempting to explain why fat talk occurs.

Definition

In 1994, researchers Mimi Nichter and Nany Vuckovic came up with the term "fat talk“ to describe how young women talk to each other about their bodies and appearances. Fat talk can be defined as a degrading talk about appearance, weight and physical fitness. The discourse can include eating and exercising habits, the fear of gaining too much weight, one‘s own appearance, such as body weight or shape, and also the comparison of oneself’s body to others. It can be considered as a ritual, as it is a type of conversation that is part of most people‘s daily lives and almost always occurs spontaneously.  Fat talk is usually a reciprocal type of discourse, which means it elicits the response of others, which are, most of the time, about the same topic. However, this conversation has no intention of finding a solution to the speaker's discomfort, it is only about complaining and co-ruminating.

Fat talk can have multiple functions, depending on the context in which it is used. It can be negatively intended and have as a self-degrading goal. The emphasis then lies on how one didn‘t succeed at reaching beauty standards that are praised by oneself or by society (for example "I am so fat“ or "My thighs look so big in those shorts“). Weight, shape and other features of appearance are then criticised and often compared to others.

Fat talk is mostly used in a negative manner, but it can also be positively intended. Then the objective is to make the conversation partner feel better. By fat talking about oneself, the other person is distracted from their own self-consciousness, making them forget about their distress for some time (such as "If you are fat, then I‘m a whale“).

Another function would be the reinforcement of social relationships. Fat talking requires a certain degree of disclosure about one‘s own insecurities and doubts. Openness is an important part of social relations and provides more points of identification and empathy for the involved parties.

History

Women‘s dissatisfaction with their appearance had already started to spread in Western cultures before Nichter's and Vuckovic's article in 1994. The propagation of bodily unhappiness is referred as "normative discontent“, referring to how women are taught to develop a negative self-image of their body from a young age. The need for a descriptive term further underlines how common the dissatisfaction is, and how how heavily it is impacted by societal norms. The expansion of this idea was encouraged by society‘s 21st century beauty standards, such as the "thin ideal", which attributes a thin waist, a large bust and flawless skin to women and slim and muscular upper bodies to men. In addition to this, the word "fat“ has received a negative connotation in everyday media.

Being fat is socially considered the opposite of attractive and successful in life, which leads people to question their appearance based on what is shown in media. Media has largely contributed to the prominent association of "fat“ and "bad“, clearly seen in movies, where the villains often are represented by actors with a larger body. This, in addition to the social aspects of fat talk, has turned it into an injunctive norm, where the idea of using degrading language when referring to ones' body has become both acceptable and the benchmark for social interaction.

Theories

Fat talk is a prevailing phenomenon within society that can be explained by a variety of theories. It is primarily women that seem to be affected by fat talk, which might find its onset in puberty. Fat talk can also arise as a consequence of the constant medial representation of women's body ideals, thereby indicating that multiple factors may be at place when examining who and how people are affected by fat talk.

Objectification Theory

The most prominent explanation for fat talk stems from the objectification theory. It proposes that women tend to engage in establishing a body image which relies on the societal standard of how an ideal body should look like. In terms of their social and cultural environment women are thereby often reduced to their bodies and are seen as objects. In retrospect this perspective is internalized by women and lets them value themselves on the basis of their looks, which can create amongst others body dysmorphia, unipolar depression, sexual dysfunction and eating disorders.

Fat talk occurs as a consequence of objectifying one's own body, as well as socially comparing physical features to images in the media or other females and therefore resulting in body dissatisfaction.

Body dissatisfaction is a factor that comprises variables within the objectification theory, self-discrepancy theory and social comparison theory. Being dissatisfied with their own body is therefore contributing to fat talk and occurs not only because of objectifying oneself, but also through inter-individual comparisons to others and intra-individual comparisons to an inner ideal with the actual self.

Regarding fat talk, the objectification women tend to face in their daily life leads to an internalization of a westernized body ideal. This may lead to engaging in self-degrading behaviors and conversations about their body weight. Objectifying one's body also leads to comparisons of one's body weight to the sociocultural norm. This causes women to evaluate their societal value with respect to their body weight.

Social Comparison Theory

Social comparison theory proposes that humans often engage in comparing one's own performance in different domains of life to others in order to assess one's abilities, skills and accomplishments. It is a mechanism that supports self-monitoring, but that is also an underlying component of fat talk by encouraging body-surveillance.

Prominently women in western societies seem to take part in upward and downward comparisons to others regarding their diet and looks. They make especially negative self-comparisons by making upward comparisons in evaluating themselves worse in terms of their lifestyle or their body type. On the other hand downward comparisons entail that they evaluate themselves to be better in these aspects. Both factors cause women to engage more in conversations regarding fat talk.

Self-Discrepancy Theory

Self-Discrepancy theory is describing the relationship between one's inner self-images. The actual self is therefore compared to the ideal or ought self. Discrepancy forms when there is a division between these cognitions and drives the individual to strive for reducing this gap. People are mostly motivated to align the actual self and the ideal self and establish somewhat stability within themselves. Nonetheless self-discrepancy can prevail by ways of fat talk.

A social comparison component is integrated in fat talk as the concerned persons are fueled by medial images of how an attractive body ought to look like. Again, mostly women tend to show weight-discrepancy by being unsatisfied with their body weight. They show a negative self-evaluation by comparing their actual body-weight with their desired ideal, which is often lower than their current weight. This makes them engage in conversations of fat talk.

Looking up to thinner ideals when having a high discrepancy within oneself can lead to depression and lower self-esteem. In addition these individuals were found to feel somewhat fearful of their actual self and appeared hopeless when it came to reaching the ideal self in terms of their body weight. These discrepancies lead women to take part in fat talk by comparing their actual body to their desired ideal. This also causes one to self-degrade one's body image and to  feel ashamed of one's body weight.

Self Perception Theory

Self Perception Theory suggests that individuals are exploring aspects of the self in terms of monitoring their own behavior and attributing these behavioral instances to their self-concept. By doing this kind of self-observation humans derive at conclusions that are supposed to undermine their characteristics and attitudes.

Self-perception theory is closely linked to fat talk in the sense that if the individual constantly catches oneself in socially comparing their own body to others or engaging in fat talk per se, they will internally attribute that they are discontent with their body. This might end up to enhance body dissatisfaction and self-discrepancy which in itself leads back to fat talk.

Self-perception theory further states that if individuals are making internalizations of being dissatisfied with their body, they are also prone to seeing others as “not fat”. This can result in the subjective evaluation of being “fat”, although objective measurements, such as the BMI, oppose this conclusion.

Self Determination Theory

Motivational differences in setting goals can lead to various different behavioural outcomes. This also accounts for the relationship between self-determination and fat talk. Self determination theory in the context of fat talk concentrates on how focussing on either intrinsic or extrinsic goals leads to the acquisition or absence of fat talk.

If people have the self-determined and intrinsic motivation to follow a healthy lifestyle they are significantly less engaged in fat talk. In concordance they are shown to self-regulate their eating in a healthy manner.

On the contrary, focussing on the extrinsic goal to achieve a lower body weight is associated with more fat talk and unhealthy eating habits. This constitutes non-self determined behavior. Being motivated to lose weight arising through the external motivator of the sociocultural ideal body is therefore a factor provoking fat talk.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

In social psychology cognitive dissonance theory explains how two opposing mental processes can lead to discomfort within a person and guides them to change or neglect a cognition to arrive at a state of harmony. The cognitions that stand in contrast to each other can originate from a conflict with attitudes of oneself and a certain social group.

Cognitive dissonance theory can explain how fat talk arises by means of medial representation of ideal body types. Female models in advertisements and other media often convey the message to be thin. Ordinary citizens are flooded daily with these images and might develop dissonant cognitions about their own body. Women often experience increased bodily dissatisfaction when looking at these images, although beforehand they were content with their body weight. Cognitive dissonance therefore emerges as a consequence of being exposed to western images of idealised bodies.

Accordingly, viewing these pictures within a social group can cause the individual to engage in fat talk by stating how much one´s  body deviates from the “norm”.

Methods to measure Fat Talk

The Male Body Talk Scale is a self-report tool that assesses how frequently men talk negatively about their own bodies. It is comprised of two factors: Muscle Talk, which assesses how often they speak of discontent with their overall degree of muscularity and the muscularity of specific body parts, and Fat Talk which measures men´s concerns about being overweight and wanting to be leaner. The measure includes 16 short statements and 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from “never” to “always” on how often the participant says these statements or similar ones out loud.

The Fat Talk Scale includes nine vignettes in which a fictional woman engages in fat talk with a friend. The respondent has to rate how often they would say similar things as the women in the vignette on a 5-point Likert-type scale. The Fat Talk Scale seems able to predict unique variance in body shame and eating disorder psychopathology.

The Negative Body Talk Scale measures the frequency of certain fat talk related statements in conversation with friends. The respondent has to rate 13 questions on a 7-point Likert-type scale from “never” to “always”. The scale has two subscales, the 'body concerns subscale' measures the respondent’s tendency to state concerns about the shape and size of their body and the 'body comparison subscale' measures the tendency to make disadvantageous comparisons between their own body and others. The Negative Body Talk Scale has, like the Fat Talk Scale, shown incremental validity in predicting body dissatisfaction and eating disorder psychopathology.

The Fat Talk Questionnaire assesses the frequency of body-related complaints made by women to their female friends of a similar weight. It consists of 14 questions that are rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale going from “never” to “always”. The Fat Talk Questionnaire is considered a reliable and valid assessment for research purposes.

Consequences

Fat talk has several negative consequences on the people that engage in it. These outcomes seem to be interconnected and are also risk factors for eating disorders.

Fat talk is intrinsically related to self -objectification. This process can be expressed through self-criticism or even general concerns about eating behaviours. Being engaged and even hearing fat talk already influences one’s self-objectification process. This is usually a negative development that can lead to harmful health outcomes such as depression and low self-esteem. Fat talk can also significantly predict changes in the development of depression across time.

Participation in Fat Talk has been shown to heighten body weight concerns by making weight a salient issue. This results in individuals thinking and worrying more about their weight than before. Fat talk is then involved in affirming and maintaining a negative and distorted self-perception, while supporting the standard beauty ideal that identifies thinness as a goal. Self-judgment comes from interpersonal messages that reinforce the society's ideal body image. They are objectifying, suggesting that other’s bodies can be seen as objects and therefore can be evaluated judgmentally. Fat talk also heightens the connection between negative weight-related body cognitions and broader negative feelings about the self.

Fat talk is primarily done in groups of women but it might also happen to men and can have a negative impact on them as well. The pressure to be thin is related to depressive symptoms among adolescent women, as well as body dissatisfaction among adolescent men. The relationship between body concerning variables such as body dissatisfaction or the desire to be thin, as well as self-esteem and depression, is mediated by fat talk.

Prevention

Research shows that Fat Talk is not only damaging on an individual level, but on a societal one. It increases the risk for eating disorders, self-objectification and depression, leading to an overall less content population.

There are several resources and organizations that aim to prevent the consequences of Fat Talk, such as:

• Anti-fat talk initiatives such as ‘Fat Talk Free Week’ aim to reduce the spread of fat talk by using social media platforms. Their goal is to reach many people and encourage them to not engage in fat talk. Such prevention initiatives seem promising in raising awareness and decreasing the frequency of fat talk.
• A cautious content on media has also been used for the prevention of fat talk, its symptoms and the resulting consequences. Showing bodies of all shapes and sizes in the media seems to increase self-image satisfaction.
• Shifting the focus of the body qualities that are thought to define oneself to other aspects of the self seems to have a positive impact on self-discrepancies as well.
• Family and friends can have a big impact on the person who is engaged in fat talk. They can show support by being considerate when it comes to body image and encouraging to accept one's body. Moreover, integrating the person and showing up for them helps to repair the negative self-image. That can be involving the person in activities in which participation does not trigger the negative self-image.
• Changing the way to respond to fat talk can also help in the prevention of fat talks. These responses should not include language that refers to the body appearance. In general, avoiding fat talk in one’s own language helps to self-awareness when engaging in fat talks.