Understanding Gender Patterns: Early Stage Development of a Gender Neutral Body Talk Scale

Fat talk is defined as the negative body talk that occurs in social contexts. Previous literature suggests that fat talk is more of a feminine rather than masculine conversational tendency, yet the measures that have detected such gender differences have an inherent gender bias within the scale or have been developed using only females. The present study reviewed the history of fat talk as well as key parameters associated with this phenomenon and proposed a new gender neutral measure of body talk. The new measure attempted to capture instances of initiating and responding to fat talk in same-gender dyads and groups as well as mixed-gender dyads and groups. While examining fat talk in these contexts, this measure also assessed if females and males interpret fat talk items in a comparable way. The results from the initial version of this measure suggested the need for separate female and male body talk scales that more directly address how and why the genders communicate body dissatisfaction.