Brief research reportFat talk and its relationship with body image disturbance
Introduction
Well-established theories in the body image research field – such as objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) and the tripartite influence model (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999) – emphasize how the adoption and pursuit of an unrealistic, yet societally prescribed ‘thin ideal’ physique makes individuals vulnerable to negative evaluations of one's own appearance, such as heightened feelings of shame and dissatisfaction and lowered body esteem. It is argued that this vulnerability to negative body image issues arises from a range of body self-monitoring and comparison behaviours designed to actively evaluate and compare one's appearance against others (and often against the unrealistic ideal) (McKinley, 2011, Tiggemann, 2011). In addition to these well-established negative body image predictors (internalization, comparison, and self-monitoring), recent research highlights fat talk as another body image behaviour that appears to contribute to body image (Sharpe, Naumann, Treasure, & Schmidt, 2013).
Fat talk refers to disparaging remarks made about one's appearance and/or that of others in an attempt to improve one's own or a peer's body-related esteem (Nichter & Vuckovic, 1994). Although fat talk is possibly well-intentioned, extant literature suggests that fat talk co-occurs with various body image constructs, and that fat talk may even promote these body image disturbances. Cross-sectionally, frequency of fat talk has been linked with lower body esteem (Sharpe et al., 2013), tendency to engage in appearance-related comparisons (Engeln-Maddox, Salk, & Miller, 2012), internalization of the thin ideal (Salk & Engeln-Maddox, 2011), and self-objectification (Jones et al., 2014, MacDonald et al., 2015). Furthermore, fat talk has been shown to prospectively predict lower body esteem and increased perceived pressure to be thin (Arroyo & Harwood, 2012), and has also led to immediate decreases in body esteem levels in experimental contexts (Salk & Engeln-Maddox, 2012).
Although sparse, existing literature is consistent with the notion that fat talk should be considered a correlate of body image. However, given the diffuse associations noted above as well as the dearth of multivariate models including fat talk, there is some uncertainty about whether fat talk is an independent contributor to body esteem. As prospective investigations are costly to run and more burdensome for participants, a useful intermediary step is to evaluate fat talk as a predictor of body esteem in a cross-sectional context. Evidence of unique contributions of fat talk for predicting body esteem (after controlling for other body image constructs) would provide indication of the merit in following up with a longitudinal investigation.
The current study sought to address this gap in the literature by evaluating the incremental predictive value of fat talk for body esteem after controlling for other, noted body image behaviours and attitudes (internalization, appearance comparisons, and body self-surveillance). Understanding the role of fat talk in women's body image may further develop current models within the area and, consequently, lead to stronger, more effective preventative measures and treatment options for both negative body image and eating disorders.
Section snippets
Participants
A total of 199 women were recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). MTurk has been shown to garner samples that are representative of the broader population (Berinsky, Huber, & Lenz, 2012). The mean age was 30.31 years (SD = 5.35). The majority of the sample identified as Caucasian or White (69.3%), 11.1% as African American, 10.1% as Asian, 5% as Hispanic/Latino, 3.5% as mixed ethnicity, and 1% as other. Based on self-reported height and weight, participants’ body mass indices (BMI; BMI
Data Cleaning
Data were screened for missing data, outliers, and normality. No more than 0.5% missing data was found in any one variable, and any missing data were dealt with using expectation maximization (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). All key assumptions of the General Linear Model were met (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).
Correlations and Descriptive Statistics
As shown in Table 1, mean values for most of the modelled variables were around the scale midpoint, with the exception of the two fat talk components which were somewhat lower than the
Discussion
This study investigated the interrelations between fat talk (FT) and key body image constructs (internalization, appearance comparisons, self-surveillance, and body esteem). In particular, the present study evaluated the incremental predictive value of fat talk over and above other body image behaviours and attitudes when predicting body esteem.
Bivariate correlations showed that both the FT-body concerns and FT-body comparisons subscales correlated with all other body image constructs, with the
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