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Women face body image issues throughout their lives. Concern about her body’s size and shape starts to intersect with a young girl’s development of her self-concept. Much of this concern develops as a result of the media’s glorification of thinness. Starting as early as middle childhood, girls become vulnerable to these images. They start to view themselves in terms of whether or not they fit that idealized image, a tendency that only worsens as they hit the key years of late adolescence and early adulthood. This is the time of peak identity development, when teens and emerging adults formulate an overall sense of self. How well they believe their bodies fit in with society’s norms take on an important role in defining not only “who” they are, but also how positively or negatively they feel about themselves.
Concerns about body image affect both men and women, though men are subject to negative self-judgments for being too thin, not too heavy. Women’s body image, however, seems to be more vulnerable to media portrayals of the “perfect” female form. This is in large part due to the vastly wider amount of advertising directed toward women telling them that to look sexy and desirable, they need to be thin (though obviously not in the bust). Body image research on women throughout adulthood shows that women most preoccupied with their bodies, particularly as they change in the midlife and later years, are most vulnerable to mental health concerns (Whitbourne & Skultety, 2002).
Given women’s focus on their bodies, it’s no wonder that women talk to each other about these preoccupations and, as they do, share their worries about being overweight with their girlfriends. You may not even be aware of your own tendency to engage in this type of conversation, called “fat talk,” because it happens so frequently and in so many subtle ways. Every time you engage in fat talk, you run the risk of driving down your feelings of self-esteem. Low self-esteem combined with a negative body image place women at risk of depression, eating disorders, and anxiety.
Researchers are trying to determine whether perhaps some of the increased risk that women have for these forms of psychological disorder can be traced to a negative body image made even more negative by fat talk. In a New York Times article, Jan Hoffman reports on the conversation she overhears at a Gap store among two young women trying on jeans. Both of them express disgust and frustration with their inability to find a size that conforms to their body shapes. They leave the store “feeling lousy.”
Oddly enough, women may feel social pressure to engage in fat talk. The more fat talk women hear, the more they feel they should engage in it. Social norms exert pressure on women not only to feel badly about their bodies, but also to talk about these bad feelings. Unfortunately, the more that women engage in fat talk, the greater the chances that this fat talk will pervade their self-esteem.
In a study aptly named “Fat talk among college women is both contagious and harmful,” Northwestern University psychologist Rachel Hannah Salk and Renee Engeln-Maddox conducted an experiment in which college women overheard a fat talk exchange among other young women. First, participants completed a “trait” body dissatisfaction scale in which they rated how often they feel satisfied or dissatisfied with various parts of their bodies (e.g. hips, stomach). They also completed a widely-used body image scale developed by Thomas Cash in which they rated the way they feel about their physical appearance at the moment (“state body dissatisfaction”). Guilt and sadness, emotions that Salk and Engeln-Maddox believed would follow from negative body images, were tapped by rating scales in which participants stated how much they felt this way right now.
The purpose of the study was to find out whether by being exposed to fat talk, women’s feelings of guilt and sadness would increase as would their body dissatisfaction. Women were assigned to experimental conditions after being matched on body dissatisfaction scores, and all women in the study were of average body mass index. The participants believed that they were in a study on consumer behavior in which they would join the content of advertisements with two other college women. However, this focus group was rigged so that two of the three women in the group were accomplices (“confederates”) of the researchers. In the unchallenged fat talk condition, the confederates both engaged in fat talk when viewing the picture of a swimsuit model (“Ugh, look at her thighs. Makes me feel so fat”). In a second condition, only one confederate engaged in fat talk while the other one challenged her (e.g. “Oh come on, you’re not fat”) and complained about fat talk in general (“I just wish we focused on other things.”) In the control condition, neither confederate engaged in fat talk. In each condition, following the confederates, the participants themselves were asked to give their own views about the ads.
The findings showed that fat talk was definitely contagious. Twice as many women (35%) themselves engaged in fat talk in the unchallenged condition than in the challenged condition (17%). No one in the control condition engaged in fat talk, however. The women who engaged in fat talk also felt guiltier and felt worse about their bodies. In addition, women going into the study with higher pre-existing, or trait, levels of body dissatisfaction were more prone to the fat talk manipulation.
Salk and Engeln-Maddox believed that women felt guiltier after hearing fat talk and not sadder because the effect of the manipulation was to increase their levels of shame, if not depression. However, over time, feelings of shame can lead to mental health problems as well, particularly increased risk of eating disorders. Following a sample of 55 women with eating disorders over a 2-1/2 year period, Tropp and Redshaw (2012) found that shame about the body specifically predicted an increased risk of worsening symptoms of anorexia.
There is good news from this study, however. The women who heard fat talk being challenged, or did not hear it at all, neither engaged in fat talk nor felt any worse about themselves. At the same time, women coming into the study dissatisfied with their bodies were more vulnerable to the experimental manipulation. They, in particular, could benefit from targeted interventions that challenge their beliefs.
The next time you hear fat talk, either as part of a conversation you are in or one that you hear among girls or young women, take charge of the situation. Question why they’re talking this way, especially if they’re in a normal weight range, and encourage them to think about where their beliefs come from.
Women whose weight places them in the overweight range present a different set of issues. Given that the average dress size in the U.S. is a 14, the media may be changing ever so slightly to reach these women. Plus size women who feel comfortable in their skin are starting to show up in commercials and print media as well as TV shows and movies.
Learn to be comfortable in your own skin, no matter what your shape, and you’ll increase your own chances for developing a positive and fulfilling identity.
Follow me on Twitter @swhitbo for daily updates on psychology, health, and aging. Feel free to join my Facebook group, "Fulfillment at Any Age," to discuss today's blog, or to ask further questions about this posting.
Copyright Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. 2013
References:
Salk, R., & Engeln-Maddox, R. (2012). Fat talk among college women is both contagious and harmful. Sex Roles, 66(9-10), 636-645. doi:10.1007/s11199-011-0050-1
Troop, N. A., & Redshaw, C. (2012). General shame and bodily shame in eating disorders: A 2.5‐year longitudinal study. European Eating Disorders Review, 20(5), 373-378. doi:10.1002/erv.2160
Whitbourne, S.K. & Skultety, K.M. (2002).Body image development: Adulthood and aging. In T.M. Cash & T. Pruzinsky (Eds.) Body image: A handbook of theory, research, and clinical practice (pp. 83-90). New York: Guilford.
Cover photo credit: Ben Rice, Getty Images
