Elsevier

Body Image

Volume 18, September 2016, Pages 61-64
Body Image

Brief research report
Fat talk and its relationship with body image disturbance

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2016.05.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Fat talk broadly related to a range of body image constructs.

  • Even so, fat talk was a significant unique predictor of body esteem.

  • Future research should investigate these relationships longitudinally.

Abstract

Although past studies have highlighted fat talk as relevant to body image disturbance, the majority of these have only investigated the link between fat talk and body esteem, to the exclusion of other body image constructs. One hundred and ninety-nine women completed an online survey measuring levels of appearance-based comparisons, body surveillance, thin ideal internalization, body esteem, and fat talk (FT-body concerns and FT-body comparisons). Results showed that fat talk made a significant contribution in explaining additional variance in body esteem above the other three body image factors, with FT-body concerns in particular making the highest unique contribution. Hierarchical regression analyses suggest that fat talk should be viewed as an independent psychosocial predictor of body esteem in both theoretical and therapeutic contexts. Future research should explore these relationships from a longitudinal perspective, and also clarify the nuances in the relationships by investigating the nature of women's everyday body image experiences.

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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