“No seconds for you!”: Exploring a sociocultural model of fat-talking in the presence of family involving restrictive/critical caregiver eating messages, relational body image, and anti-fat attitudes in college women
Introduction
Fat talk encompasses negative, self-focused appearance-related remarks, which typically occur in conversations among both women and girls (Nichter & Vuckovic, 1994). Researchers have theorized that fat talk likely serves multiple purposes. For example, it may serve as a vehicle for reassurance seeking from others and an attempt to regulate one’s own feelings about their body (Salk & Engeln-Maddox, 2011). Fat talk may also serve to indicate agreement with cultural body ideals. For instance, a study by Guertin, Barbeau, Pelletier, and Martinelli (2017) found that women who were extrinsically motivated (e.g., motivated by appearance) were more likely to engage in fat talk conversations.
Although many women report that they believe that engagement in fat talk will improve their experience of their body (Salk & Engeln-Maddox, 2011), this self-deprecating conversation style has been associated with increased levels of body dissatisfaction as well as a variety of other negative correlates which include, but are not limited to, self-objectification, disordered eating, thin-ideal internalization, depressive symptoms, and upward social comparison (Mills & Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, 2018; see Shannon & Mills, 2015 for a review). A recent systematic review and meta-analysis by Mills and Fuller-Tyszkiewicz (2017) further explored the relationship of fat talk with body image disturbances. This review supported the link between fat talk and a broader range of body image concerns such as body checking, body shame, and perceived pressure to be thin.
Most of the extant fat talk research has focused on investigating this phenomenon in peer groups; however, this line of research has recently been expanded to also include family settings, consistent with past scholarship supporting the importance of the early family context in impacting later body image (Kroon Van Diest & Tyłka, 2010; Rodgers, 2012). Indeed, fat talk conversations are common in families (Lydecker, Riley, & Grilo, 2018; MacDonald, Dimitropoulos, Royal, Polanco, & Dionne, 2015; Neumark-Sztainer et al., 2010) and overhearing parents emphasizing the importance of appearance and achieving a thin body type is linked to body dissatisfaction and disordered eating in children (see MacDonald et al., 2015 for a discussion). Other researchers have also explored the implications of fat talk conversations within the family setting, confirming the relationship of this conversational style to higher levels of body image dissatisfaction and disordered eating (e.g., Arroyo & Andersen, 2016; Chow & Tan, 2018; Greer, Campione-Barr, & Lindell, 2015; Rogers, Martz, Webb, & Galloway, 2017) and to lower levels of body appreciation, functional body appreciation, and mindful eating (Webb, Rogers, Etzel, & Padro, 2018).
Nevertheless, little is currently known about what early environmental factors may contribute to disclosing self-deprecating comments about one’s physical appearance by young adult women amidst family. Addressing this gap could aid in future efforts to bring awareness to the role of the family environment in perpetuating this maladaptive expression of negative body image and to stimulate prevention within the family context. Rogers et al. (2017) found that perceived fat talk of mothers explained more of the variance in fat talk of college-aged women than the perceived fat talk of their friends, suggesting that the role of the family is still quite relevant for fat talk behavior at this later age. Therefore, due to the widespread nature of this conversational style within the family setting, and the important role of caregivers in impacting body image and eating behaviors (Rodgers, 2012; Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999) the present study explored family-related factors associated with engagement in family fat talk among college women. More specifically, this analysis targeted evaluating recollections of restrictive/critical comments made about participants’ eating behavior in childhood as an early exposure variable that may persist in contributing to present-day fat talk with family members. We additionally explored both positive and negative forms of relational body image (i.e., perceived body acceptance by others and external body shame, respectively) and anti-fat attitudes as potential explanatory variables in this predicted relationship.
To increase understanding of body image and its expression, sociocultural models have been utilized to examine how contextual factors impact the experience of the body (Tiggemann, 2011). One particular focus of scholarship is parental influence (Rodgers, 2012; Thompson et al., 1999). Parents have been demonstrated to serve an important role in impacting body image (2008, Field et al., 2001). Furthermore, this influence can be either direct, such as comments explicitly made about weight or body shape, or more indirect (e.g., parental modeling of dieting behaviors or comments implying parental dissatisfaction with the child’s eating behaviors). Although there has been a wealth of research demonstrating the negative effects of direct commentary about young adult children’s weight on their body image (Baker, Whisman, & Brownell, 2000; Gross & Nelson, 2000; Rodgers, Paxton, & Chabrol, 2009), the present study explores the potential negative effects of more indirect commentary in which a caregiver’s criticism of one’s eating behavior implies commentary about one’s weight or body size (Kroon Van Diest & Tyłka, 2010).
The impact of restrictive/critical caregiver eating messages in early life appears to persist into young adulthood; for instance, Iannantuono and Tylka (2012) noted the relationship between recall of these messages and later psychological distress. Recall of restrictive messages from childhood regarding food by college students positively correlated with increased focus on food and disordered eating as well as less engagement in adaptive food intake processes such as intuitive eating (Kroon Van Diest & Tyłka, 2010; Tan, Ruhl, Chow, & Ellis, 2016). The relationship between recall of these messages and disordered eating has also been demonstrated in samples with a more diversified age range (Oliveira et al., 2019). Importantly, recall of restrictive/critical messages in young adult samples was also related to facets of both negative and positive body image such as increased levels of body dissatisfaction, internalized and externalized body shame, and perceived pressure by family to be lean, as well as lower levels of appearance control beliefs and body appreciation (Daye, Webb, & Jafari, 2014; Kroon Van Diest & Tyłka, 2010; Oliveria, Pires, & Ferreira, 2018; Wansink, Latimer, & Pope, 2016).
Based on extant literature, we propose that this relationship will be mediated by three constructs: anti-fat attitudes, perceived body acceptance by others, and external body image shame.
Unfortunately, although perhaps intended to be helpful, parental messages about child eating-related behaviors may transmit and reinforce harmful cultural appearance ideals. Anti-fat attitudes, a form of explicit weight bias, are comprised of three dimensions: dislike of fat individuals, the belief that weight loss failure is the responsibility of the person who is fat, and fear of gaining weight and becoming part of a marginalized out-group (Crandall, 1994). Regardless of intent, these eating-related messages likely indirectly communicate that the child’s current weight or body size is unacceptable (Kroon Van Diest & Tyłka, 2010) and, in addition to reinforcing and leading to internalization of societal values and weight bias, may also lead the recipient to change their perspective on their own body. Later, participation in fat talk may serve as an opportunity to express agreement with these sentiments and provide distance from the undesirable out-group (Alperin, Hornsey, Hayward, Diedrichs, & Barlow, 2014; Webb, Fiery, & Jafari, 2016).
When caregivers provide their children with restrictive/critical eating messages, it is likely that they are perceived as communicating a lack of acceptance of the child’s behaviors and a desire to change the child’s body. Indeed, Kroon Van Diest and Tyłka (2010) found that restrictive/critical caregiver eating messages negatively correlated with perceived body acceptance by family members; further, perceived acceptance accounted for the relationship between recall of caregiver eating messages and levels of body appreciation. In accordance with work by Tylka et al. (2014), fat talk may serve as a means by which individuals confirm their perceptions of their family’s critical view of their body. Disclosing fat talk among family members may be used to assess an individual’s standing with these important others and seek affirmation; for instance, if a family member provides reassurance in response to a self-deprecating fat talk statement, this could provide information on the individual’s current status as related to their appearance (Shannon & Mills, 2015).
Body shame refers to the shame that an individual experiences when they perceive that their appearance does not align with society’s idealized body shape or weight, particularly if they have internalized the thin ideal (McKinley & Hyde, 1996). Body shame is a multifaceted construct: external body shame describes the emotion that an individual experiences as a result of fearing that others will view their body and appearance as inadequate, whereas internal shame is characterized by self-directed negative evaluation (Goss & Allan, 2009). This perceived inadequacy associated with external body image shame likely contributes to distress in social situations if they perceive that others will criticize their appearance (Duarte, Pinto-Gouveia, Ferreira, & Batista, 2014).
Unsurprisingly, external body shame has been linked to a variety of body image disturbances (Daye et al., 2014; Duarte et al., 2014). Furthermore, a recent study by Oliveria et al. (2018) found that recall of restrictive/critical caregiver eating messages strengthened the relationship between external body image shame and other maladaptive outcomes (e.g., disordered eating behaviors). The results of their study support that recall of early caregiver eating messages is linked to increased present-day distress through feelings of inferiority (and that this recall also increases the likelihood that body image concerns will be present). Body shame has also been demonstrated to mediate the relationship between recall of these messages and later disordered eating behaviors (Oliveira, Marta-Simões, & Ferreira, 2019). Consistent with an affect regulation perspective (Daye et al., 2014; Webb et al., 2016), the expression of fat talk may function as a means of managing external body shame in the family environment stemming from earlier exposure to critical parental appearance-related commentary (MacDonald et al., 2015; Shannon & Mills, 2015).
In sum, restrictive/critical caregiver eating messages may be one contextual vehicle through which parents transmit cultural ideology reinforcing marginalization of larger bodies and communicate a lack of acceptance of the child’s physical appearance, simultaneously promoting body shame which may manifest through expressing fat talk when around family members in the present day. However, this has not been tested together in a unified model. The present study sought to integrate and extend complementary lines of research demonstrating: (a) restrictive/critical caregiver eating messages are associated with both reports of positive (i.e., perceived body acceptance by others; Kroon Van Diest & Tyłka, 2010) and negative (i.e., body shame; Daye et al., 2014) body image, and (b) engaging in fat talk with peers is associated with both anti-fat attitudes and body shame (Webb et al., 2016) in exploring a preliminary sociocultural model of family fat talk in college women. The inclusion of measures of both positive and negative body image is responsive to contemporary calls to provide a more holistic understanding of how these different dimensions of embodiment may operate simultaneously in contributing to the prediction of criterion variables of interest (e.g., Webb & Hardin, 2016).
Therefore, informed by elements from existing theories (Thompson et al., 1999; Tylka et al., 2014; Webb et al., 2016), we anticipated recall of more frequent restrictive/critical caregiver eating comments earlier in life to be strongly correlated with current levels of engaging in fat talk with family. We also hypothesized that perceived body acceptance by others, external body shame, and anti-fat attitudes would help explain this link when adjusted for participants’ body mass index (BMI) in a concurrent multiple indirect effect model. BMI (albeit an imperfect indicator) was included as a covariate in our model given that research has demonstrated significant positive relationships between restrictive/critical caregiver eating messages (Daye et al., 2014; Kroon Van Diest & Tyłka, 2010) and complaining about one’s appearance with family (MacDonald et al., 2015) with this biometric indicator among undergraduate women.
Section snippets
Participants and procedure
Three hundred and sixty-two undergraduate women consented to participate in this IRB-approved project from University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The specific measures used in this analysis were drawn from a larger data set from which two papers were recently published (please see Webb & Hardin, 2016 and Webb, Rogers et al., 2018). The primary measures featured in the current study did not overlap with those examined in the previously published work with the exception of socio-demographic
Preliminary analyses
Missing data examinations at the variable level indicated the following percentages: age (5.5%), restrictive/critical eating messages (4.4%), body acceptance by others (5.0%), anti-fat attitudes (5.0%), self-involvement in family fat talk (5.5%), external body shame (5.0%), and BMI (6.1%). Despite the fact that these levels of missing data were notable (Parent, 2013), when evidence points towards data missing completely at random (MCAR), it is acceptable to perform a complete case analysis
Discussion
Previous research has identifed the family context as an important factor in exerting risk for body image disturbance and disordered eating among children, adolescents, and young adults (Rodgers & Chabrol, 2009; Rodgers et al., 2009; Rodgers, 2012). The present study provided an initial test of a sociocultural model of engaging in fat talk within the family environment as a correlate of the frequency of recalling restrictive/critical caregiver eating messages. We additionally tested perceived
Author note
The results reported here were previously presented during a poster session sponsored by the Society for the Psychology of Women (Division 35) at the American Psychological Association’s 2016 Convention held in Denver, CO.
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